Zak, g8ina, Lowe...you lot are a bad influence....

[dave87]

http://forums.hexus.net/general-cons...-speakers.html


Advice in that thread has prompted expenditure......on this:









Better be worth it.....

[g8ina]

Yes it will

I'vve now got my office back upstaits and its going to have a Marantx PM32 amp (courtesy of Freegle, intermittant left channel, vol control - cleaned - sorted), a pair of KEF Q dual concentric speakers, and a Netgear MP101 streamer.

Knocks spots off (almost) any PC speaker setup.

[Hicks12]

But what speakers are being paired with it?.

Good choice on a stereo amp! Cant go wrong with denons, i didnt understand what the fuss was about in non pc(active) speaker setups but then after listening to some in richersounds god i was sold. Year later i had just a basic pioneer vsx510 avr (for bluray, dts etc) and just a cambridge audio s20 (bookshelf) pair, was very good and the plan was the always move to a full 5.1 surround setup, got a influx of money and family chucked in money towards it and ended up getting me

Fronts: Tannoy v4 floorstanders
Centre: Tannoy VC
Rear: Tannoy V1

God they pack a punch, so impressed with the setup and it cost me £410 in total (for the tannoy speakers), would never go back to basic pc speakers! So i hope you find its as epic as i have .

Although i do still have these s20 to sell now as i cant find any other hifi to put them with in the house .

[Biscuit]

I have tannoy F1 customs all round which is great... except i want to replace the fronts with floor standers and they dont do the F1 range anymore, i would have to get the V range which is a different kind of veneer

Damnit

[dave87]

I've just set them up.......







...and wow. Why did I wait so long?


The Speakers are the rears from my Home Theatre set for the moment (the Denon amp that powers that is going off for repair) so I will need to change them. That said, they are surprisingly loud (so I presume high sensitivity) - the Denon is rated for 2x45w @ 8 Ohms. These speakers are rated for 120w @ 8 Ohms, and I've barely got to move the volume dial at all before they are rather loud.

The CD player in the setup is an old JVC one, but it does the job (quite well, I believe). The other source is my PC.

[g8ina]

wow. Why did I wait so long?

This

[Steve]

I bet that printer produces some rich tones. What RMS is it?

[dave87]

I bet that printer produces some rich tones. What RMS is it?

Damn, you spotted the secret weapon....adds extra 'something' to the sound

[Terbinator]

If i was to go the amp route i wouldn't be forgoing the 'quality' of my D2X by passing the signal to said amp would i? The one in the OP looks ideal.

[dave87]

If i was to go the amp route i wouldn't be forgoing the 'quality' of my D2X by passing the signal to said amp would i? The one in the OP looks ideal.

The connection between the PC and the Amp is analogue, so the better quality soundcard (I'm using a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio), the better quality the interconnect used (Nikkai something or other - not particularly expensive), the better the quality amp etc, all has an impact on the sound.

If it is a digital link (i.e. Coax or Optical) it is a digital signal up until the DAC in the receiver, at which point it is then turned to analogue. That is how my 5.1 setup is connected (HDMI or Optical/Coax depending on the kit connected) - so the Denon AVR-2809 I've got does the decoding as well as the amplification.

I would have thought at the price range of stuff I've got, it isn't likely to make a huge difference. That said, some people swear by external DACs, and probably with good reason, albeit I wouldn't have thought at this level of kit/expenditure.

[Terbinator]

...

If it is a digital link (i.e. Coax or Optical) it is a digital signal up until the DAC in the receiver, at which point it is then turned to analogue. That is how my 5.1 setup is connected (HDMI or Optical/Coax depending on the kit connected) - so the Denon AVR-2809 I've got does the decoding as well as the amplification.

...

By interconnect i take it you mean the jacks/wires used between PC and amp, in my case?

How come you don't have your new amp doing the amplification as well, or is the AV just better suited for it in terms of components and/or less 'hoops' for the signal to jump through?

Trying not to drift too far O/T

[dave87]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I have two different setups.

Home Theatre - Denon AVR-2809 + 2x Acoustic Energy (AE) Evo 3, 2x AE Evo One, 1x AE Evo Centre, Samsung 40b530, SkyHD, 360, PS3, HTPC

Study - Denon PMA-510AE + Acoustic Energy Evo Ones (at the moment, need to get another set of speakers so I can put these back in my home theatre as the rears) and a JVC XL-V264 CD Player

The key difference is the Analogue vs Digital part. Degrade a Digital signal where the potential values are 0 or 1 - and it is easy enough for the electronics to work out what it was meant to be. Degrade an analogue signal (which has values between 0 and 1) and it isn't so easy. Largely, once the signal is degraded, it is nigh on impossible to recover it exactly to the original. With that in mind:

In the Home Theatre setup, the link between the devices (HTPC, 360, PS3, SkyHD) to the receiver (Denon AVR-2809) is done digitally, either by HDMI or Optical/Coax digital links. In that setup, the audio is passed, still digitally encoded, directly to the receiver. It then converts the Digital Audio to Analogue, amplifies it and sends it to the speakers. Lot easier to run 1xHDMI or 1x Optical or Coax lead instead of 6 phono leads (5.1=6channel).

In the Study setup, the link between the PC or CD Player and the amp (Denon PMA-510AE) is analogue. This means the conversion from Digital to Analogue is done by each device, rather than the amp - so each device has its own DAC. This is good and bad - some DACs are, as I understand it, better than others. It also means that the quality of everything post the DAC is more important -the better quality the cable (to a point) the better the sound.

In the home theatre setup, the DAC is in the receiver, so it doesn't make any difference with the quality of the optical/HDMI/Coax leads as they are carrying a digitally encoded signal - if it works, it works - if it doesn't, you'd soon know. In the study setup, it is analogue - which is infinitely harder to reconstruct to an accurate representation of the original, more so on the fly. So you want it arriving in the same shape it left the original device (i.e. PC or CD player in my case). This is done by having the best quality interconnects (cables) that you can distinguish between. I've not set the bar very high - mainly because it isn't worth it, at the moment, to me. I got a decent (ish) cable which looks sturdy enough to last more than five minutes. In very high end system hand made cables can be the norm - whether it makes a noticeable difference or not is very hotly debated.

Hope that explains things a little better? I must admit I'm more enthusiastic novice than any level of expertise, and this really isn't that top end stuff. That said, it still brings a smile to my face - so worth every penny I think

[Terbinator]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I have two different setups...

On the contrary, i shouldn't have worded my posts so dumb - i know the ins and outs of A/D audio (signals in general) so i feel i've lead you astray now

But yeah, it makes more sense you've mentioned you have two systems, not sure how i didn't pick-up on that.

[dave87]

It was half written in response to your question, half written as a more general explanation for others who perhaps don't have the same grasp of AV concepts/technology - so don't worry, your post wasn't that dumb

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

On the contrary, i shouldn't have worded my posts so dumb - i know the ins and outs of A/D audio (signals in general) so i feel i've lead you astray now

Blame the chicken!!

[scaryjim]

... it still brings a smile to my face - so worth every penny I think

Absolutely - I recently bought some new speakers to go with my small PA amp which set me back £120 for the pair. It took me a week or two to test them, but when I did - taking into account this was a 3.5mm jack to 2x RCA cable (albeit a good quality one) from the headphone output of my phone to the line in of the amp - the smile on my face was so wide my head almost fell off, and it stayed there for the entire evening - in fact, it got wider every time a different band came on shuffle!

So yeah, IMNSHO a moderate investment in nice sound equipment, as opposed to having some fairly generic desktop computer speakers, is well worth it.

Now I just need to see if I can persuade the wife to let me have a 150W PA system set up in the bedroom to run my computer through...