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December 13, 2008 - 2:30am
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Welcome to Stereophile Forums Ito. It's nice to see your parents supporting you "habit." Being an audiophile can make you poor, but at least it seldom kills, as some other habits can.
Until you can move off campus (highly recommended
), getting a couple of quality small speakers is a good idea.
Would you consider ditching the receiver for now and going with a pair of powered speakers, like the Audioengines? I've got the small AE2s on my desktop and I've seen great reviews of the AE5s. If your computer system is top notch, as I suspect it is, this could be a great solution.
Have you considered high quality headphones? Many around here love the AKG K701s. Others like the Grados and Sennheisers, all of which have some great cans at the top of their lines. I'm driving 701s with a $540 Woo Audio headphone amp and the sound quality rivals my $30,000 source/amp/speaker system.
I don't know those speakers you've listed well enough to pick a pair, but you've listed some good lines. Others here will be more up to date about bargain speakers.
Dave
id go for a good pair of cans (ive got the senn hd650s and akg 701s, love em) .. a dorm room is a wretched place to listen to music, acoustically..so you want to take the room out of the equation.
I didn't know my dad had it in him, normally he is against me spending money on anything, but he's been more than keen on audio situation.
I agree that the dorm is a terrible place to listen to music, it makes my subwoofer sound much boom-ier than it did in my room at home, as well as the sound is overall a bit more muddled. However, I am only planning on being the dorms for one more semester. So I will have Christmas and Summer at home, next semester in the dorms yet, and then moving into an apartment for next year. I've already invested in some decent closed headphone (Technics RP-DH1200) which I use in my art studio classes or when I want to shut my room mate out. I want to get the AKG 701's eventually, but I am happy with my Technics at the moment.
As for a set of powered speakers, I kind of want to avoid that because I want to be able to use these speakers again later when I upgrade (cause it's bound to happen). Not to mention those Audioengines look ugly as hell in my opinion.
Thanks for your help though!
Home theaters in a Box (HIB) are designed to be used with the speakers that were included so it's hard to say what outcome will be had by substituting something else. Paradigm is always unbelievable value for the money and they really stand behind their products. Great people do do business with and most importantly great sound. To my ears most Polks are too warm sounding and don't give a true sense of what's on the recording. Plus they are usually more difficult to power than their specs would suggest. The LG is spec'ed at 115 into 4 ohms into 8 ohms that's about 57 watts, but they probably figure their wattage into 1% total harmonic distortion which would destroy a speaker. Real world is probably 15-20 watts, maybe less. With that in mind you don't want an inefficient speaker, like the Polks tend to be in the real world. The Monitor Audios tend to be a bit on the bright side and most inexpensive HIB set ups are quite a bit on the bright side so putting them together might be like nails on a chalk board sonically speaking. So out of Paradigm, Polk, and Monitor which are the brands that I have extensive first hand experience the Paradigms would be most promising. I have minimal experience with Energy and PSB stuff and they make nice products too. The other products on your list I have no first hand experience with so I won't comment on them.
haha, so the LG is pretty much a piece then? I figured as much, I knew the speakers were, but I was kind of hoping that receiver was decent mainly cause it's on the smaller side and it looks damn nice. Oh well.
If this a better choice, I could though my LG up on craigslist/ebay and see if I can make like 100 bucks off of it and us that towards a new receiver. I really don't want to have my choice of speaker limited heavily because of my receiver. And correct me if I'm wrong but when you say that the polk's are warm, that means that they are bass heavy (sorry, I am still quite new too all of this)? As for accurate, as long as they sound great, that's all that matters too me. Thank you so much for your input!
I hate to be an a** and double post, but does any one else have any input for me.
I've decided that I will be getting a new receiver (or amp/preamp?) to run the speakers sometime, probably within the next 6 months.
Do I understand correctly that you have both the surround system and the two channel system in your dorm room?
The power rating of your surround sound system is useless for many reasons. You state that you are feeding data from your computer to your SSR optical input. How are you doing this?
No, I have two surround sound systems in my dorm. I have a 7.1 system which is our gaming/movie/entertainment system. The receiver is an Harman/Kardon AVR 235. This is also the system I use when I have home from college (i.e. during Christmas and Summer). I have two Yamaha tower speakers, an infinity center, a jbl sub, and some crummy surrounds, but they do the job for now.
Now, for my computer speakers I have a crappy LG 5.1 receiver. I normally run it in 2.1 for music with my crappy Sony bookshelf speakers that I added too it. I throw it into 5.1 when gaming. I send the signal to the receiver via optical out on my computer's sound card. So basically I want to get new speakers for my computer, where I do most of my listening. I figure that my LG won't be able to handle anything decent, so I figure I'll just throw it up on craigslist and see if I can get about 100 for it or something and use that to buy a better receiver?
I don't know, I'm just playing around with different ideas, I really don't want this to kill my wallet.
Sorry for the double post again, but I think I am going to go with Audiogon for buy my speakers
I have it narrowed down between:
Energy RC-10
B&W 601 S3
Paradigm Mini-Monitor V.5
Basically, what do you guys this would sound the best for rock/electronic music and work the best on a decent receiver.
I would look into Amps/Preamps, but I really know NOTHING about them and from just looking for a little bit online I got the impression that they are normally much more expensive than receivers.
If anyone has any more info that would help me at all, I would love you
Ito: I'd look at an "integrated amp" - it's basically a reciever without a tuner (as I understand the terminology). Integrated amps can be good and cheap, and that's all you'll need as far as amplification (they combine a preamp and power amp). Some from Jolida, Onkyo, Marantz, and others can be found for less than $500 (some around $350) and sound great.
Sorry - can't comment on those speakers.
Ito-
Those are all good speakers from excellent companies. You couldn't go wrong with any of them. The choice between those really depend on personal preference and system matching. If you can't listen to them (because you are buying used) and have done a good amount of reading on all three pick one and begin to enjoy music at a higher level. Any of them will be better that what you have now.
I have an old set of energy's and am VERY happy with them.