Sound question...?

[simplygreg]

Hey guys,

So at the minute I am a student with a laptop which all of my music is on. At present I have a crappy £10, two speakers setup that I simply plug into the front of my laptop - the headphones input jack.

Now. I don't really have the money to upgrade and get a PC which has a great soundcard and then buy a speaker setup system. Therefore, what is the best solution here....?

I don't really want to buy a 2.1 speaker system to simply plug into the headphone jack on my laptop - as i presume the sound won't be very good? I am not sure about this so please give advice... My laptop is just an acer laptop so there isn't a great soundcard in there...

Is there anyway that I can buy a hi-fi of somekind which connects into my laptop so i can play my music library on my laptop from the hi-fi?? Is this possible? Or.. get a new PC lol

Thanks peeps

[staffsMike]

I would try it on a set of decent speakers first. 2.1's can sounds fantastic and Creative gigaworks T20's are amazing (2.0) for what they are.

I would never really buy a laptop sound card to be honest but perhaps a usb one would be good so you could use it with lots of pc's.
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

T20's
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
Pc world are actually selling these for £40 ** £10 cashback from creative

[Thorsson]

The Logitech X240 are very good for the price.

[s3ds]

i use older versions of logitech X-230 and z-2300

you can feel the bass from the latter two door away i have a environmental health noise pollution letter to prove this ( was a one off party so some one lied )

[a.rees]

Well your only gonna get as good as a sound card produces, being thats its a laptop your only option for a new sound card is via USB or PCMCIA, Express card. But you are not going to get the best audio unless its a digital connection.

I think you will find your laptop output will be good enough to play music, its not like it is going play THX, DTS, DD Movies with a top notch speaker set up. All you need to do is buy a decent set of speakers! From what you have said you will only need a 2.1 speaker setup or even 2 speakers which can produce full-range stereo sound with a decent amount of Watts RMS per channel.

A good start would be looking at Creative/Logitech speakers, I have experience with both of these and I think you can't go to wrong, just don't go for cheap cheap or you will end up with that crappy tinny sound.

As suggested by others the creative Gigaworks is a good start.....

[TooNice]

I agree that it all starts with the sound card, and I'd look into a decent DAC/Sound card (USB or PC card & Variant) before splashing on a new set of speakers. However, 'digital connection' does not automatically mean better sound quality, it only means that the Digital to Analogue conversion process is done later by the speakers DAC - which is not always better. I can vouch for the Gigaworks too though, at least for the price (pretty sure they don't come with digital inputs).