seperates / all-in-one / or computer setup?

[admin_exported]

i'm happy to spend a bit of money on a decent sound system but cant decide out of 3 options:

1. seperates - cd player, amp and speakers - best sound quality but at a price?

2. micro hi fi cd/radio system - all in one, good sound quality?

3. use my computer which is on most of the time i'm in - but what would i need to spend to upgrade it sufficiently? decent sound card? how much for a decent set of speakers equivilent to hi fi speakers? anything would be better than my £30 logitech 2.1 but i wouldnt know what to go for

appreciate any advice 😀

 

[gpi]

Music libraries stored on computers and iPods still need first rate amplifiers and loudspeakers for the best results. Sometimes a separate DAC is also required.

If i was starting again I'd probably go for your option 3 and a pair of these to start with - AVI ADM9 active loudspeakers.

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="golfgti16vgrey"]
i'm happy to spend a bit of money on a decent sound system but cant decide out of 3 options:

1. seperates - cd player, amp and speakers - best sound quality but at a price?

2. micro hi fi cd/radio system - all in one, good sound quality?

3. use my computer which is on most of the time i'm in - but what would i need to spend to upgrade it sufficiently? decent sound card? how much for a decent set of speakers equivilent to hi fi speakers? anything would be better than my £30 logitech 2.1 but i wouldnt know what to go for

appreciate any advice 😀
[/quote]

From scratch I would go 3. Either way, rule out 2 if you want good sound.
Option 1. Good fun, go to a dealer, audition to your budget, come away with a nice smile-inducing system.
Option 3. Future of hifi music... If you do it right, you will have a system every bit as good as option 1. - A computer can make lossless, 'bit perfect' copies of a CD. Playing back from a HDD is much less prone to error, than from an optical medium. And in the not so distant funture, Solid state drives will take over, creating a silent, perfect playback medium.
Also with more and more higher-than-CD quality downloads becoming available, you get the added bonus of a potentially better sound than any 'typical' hifi setup.

It all depends on budget though.

I personally now mainly use a squeezebox duet, through a cheap DAC, feeding into a decent amp and speakers. The above mention ADM9s look very interesting also.
This way, I have no computer switched on anywhere near my listening area although I do have a NAS (very quiet fanless), fairly close, which holds all my music and feeds my squeezebox.

If you want to playback via computer you just need an SPDIF on your soundcard, nothing more. and with an outboard DAC you will get decent quality.

 

[Anonymous]

well i basically want to improve my sound quality, not volume, so does that mean speakers with better range or something?

can i make a significant improvement with a more expensive set of pc speakers? i honestly dont know much about audio, where the bottlenecks are etc. all i know is when i was younger i bought a crappy walkman (matsui i think) and it sounded awful and just by changing the earphones to sony/panasonic it sounded a lot better!!!

 

[a91gti]

Option three for now, I occasionally hook my laptop up to my stereo and it sounds pretty good.

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="golfgti16vgrey"]
well i basically want to improve my sound quality, not volume, so does that mean speakers with better range or something?

can i make a significant improvement with a more expensive set of pc speakers? i honestly dont know much about audio, where the bottlenecks are etc. all i know is when i was younger i bought a crappy walkman (matsui i think) and it sounded awful and just by changing the earphones to sony/panasonic it sounded a lot better!!!
[/quote]

How much money have you got?
What is the format you currently use (you should think about lossless if you don't use it already)
Have you an SPDIF out on your soundcard?

 

[the record spot]

The quality of the sound you hear has as much to do with the quality of the recording and mastering than anything else. So, hi-resolution, lossless, etc., are only as good as the original mastering and the best versions of a recording are not necessarily the latest or most recent. So there is no guarantee that the recording you hear sourced from a PC will necessarily be better than you would get from a CD / Amp / Speaker 'tradtional' set-up. Quite the opposite in fact.

The 'future' of music reproduction and listening might well be away from component to centralised hard disk replay through distributed-around-the-home systems but that doesn't equate to 'better'. Currently the manufacture of the supposedly dinosaur turntable is on the up, so the flash young things of the digital don't have it all their own way. Equally, Linn and Apple are but two of the industry leaders who offer master quality downloads (at a price).

Given the decisions you have to make, I'd sit down with examples of both traditional and PC based and consider the pros and cons of each. Not an easy choice; I use my laptop all the time at home and it too is always on, but the record deck canes the lot of them when it comes to a believable and 'real-life' playback for me. Horses for courses....!

 

[Anonymous]

my sound card (its a dell pc) has blue pink green yellow and black outputs all the same 3.5mm size.

in device manager the sound card is called:

sigmatel high definition audio codec

& on dells system information using the service tag its a

INTEGRATED SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY ADVANCED

so i'm not sure that its a good one or not, usually integrated isnt so good right?

basically i havent got hundreds to spend but i was thinking of getting a £200-300 all in one hifi such as a denon/yamaha/onkyo but then thought if i could spend the same and get the pc to do the same job why not? as my pc is on nearly all the time i'm here. as for the music i play its either ripped from cd's which i buy and sell on amazon/play etc, or downloaded from azerues (demo purposes 😉)

 

[fr0g]

With that budget, and your circumstances I would simply (for the time being) get an amplifier and speakers. My main listening for years was through a PC - > amp - > speakers, and it sounded just great. Direct from the soundcard wont be the last word in detail, but it will be better IMO than throwing the money at a mini system. You can later add a proper soundcard with an SPDIF (Is it a desktop or laptop?)...and then a DAC such as the Beresford. But a great start IMO, would be a budget amp and speakers from somewhere like Richer sounds or Superfi...
(of course you can always add a cd player too later...)

For example, you can pick up the Eltax monitor 3 for £70 from Richer Sounds, and the NAD 315BEE amp for £165 from Superfi leaving money over for some stands and cables, and maybe an improved soundcard?

*EDIT - For cables I have used this ebay shop a few times now and the Van Damme cables are as good as anything I have used...Soundstable

 

[Alec]

i have the same on board sound as you, and i concur with frog - it wont be the "last word", but it will sound vastle better than what you currently have. whether it will sound better than separates with a cdp, i dont know, as ive no experience there, but you can certainly get decent sound out of a pc. as i say, in your position id do as frog says, due to the convenience of hdd sources - and coz, personally, i like having my music choice displayed on screen.

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="al7478"]i have the same on board sound as you, and i concur with frog - it wont be the "last word", but it will sound vastle better than what you currently have. whether it will sound better than separates with a cdp, i dont know, as ive no experience there, but you can certainly get decent sound out of a pc. as i say, in your position id do as frog says, due to the convenience of hdd sources - and coz, personally, i like having my music choice displayed on screen.[/quote]
...And I still spend more than half my listening time through headphones on the laptop...And for long sessions I always grab the Beresford first.

 

[a91gti]

Total hijack here but I wonder if you are on GolfGti.co.uk Mr16v?

 

[Anonymous]

no but i love mk2 golfs, i drive a '92 driver 1.8 at the mo but i want to replace it soon as its nearing 232,000 miles! everythings just a bit tired with it even tho its been looked after well.

back to music i was looking at better pc speakers and saw the logitech z4 2.1 speakers... they seem to be a lot better than the x210 ones i have??? how about in a mk2 golf can i improve the sound easily without spending a lot?

 

[a91gti]

You can buy replacements for all the standard speakers in a golf, various manufacturers do them. Have a look on the forum I mentioned, there is a section that deals with ice. I know ****** all about which are best tho as I have no sounds in mine (the pipe sounds too good!).

 

[Anonymous]

hi another question about golf's. in standard form does the mk3 have betters speakers than the mk2? I'm thinking of getting a mk3 for various reasons and having better speakers would be another plus point. i still prefer the mk2 but i think when i get one again it would be to really look after, only use at weekends etc.

 

[a91gti]

Depending on the spec` level you can get a better speaker setup in a mk3 but the difference is not huge. I seem to remember that a lot of mk3s have a large full range speaker in the door and a tweeter on the dash.