Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[imitation]

If your looking to put together an audiophile grade 2.1 system for less than a grand I have a suggestion.
Start with an Audiophile 192 $180.00
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/703610/

Go to http://www.northcreekmusic.com/
And buy the Echo Micro Monitor kit. $150.00

If your handy with wood you can build the boxes yourself, if not you can buy them for $100.00 from http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=302-702

Speaker wires, Clarity Labs Emberglow $150.00
http://www.responseaudio.com/clarity%20labs.htm

For the subwoofer and Amp you can use ether the Klipsch pro media 5.1 ultra or Creative labs 5.1 GigaWorks S700 ($250.00). The 4.1 Klipsch will work nice too. The 2.1 will be light on the bass but if that doesn’t bother you they will work fine. The preamp on those is attached to one of the speakers and will detach but is not designed to sit on its own.

 You will have to adapt the ¼ inch TRS outputs to mini plugs and you can sell the satellites on Ebay. The Echo monitors are big for desktop speakers (8 x 12 profile) but they sound amazing. You would have to spend a grand for anything better. Total $930.00 I’ve heard 5k home stereos that didn’t sound this good.

[Bartabedian]

I use JBL control 1's on my desktop, cost me about $100 a pair some 5 or 6 years ago on Ebay. These are generally used as near-fields in recording studios (a great alternative to the NS-10's, blech!). I've got 5 of them running through an Audigy 2 Platinum Pro 5.1 setup (using the creative sub, surprisingly not bad at all, really). Even when just using the front two, you'd be hard pressed to find a better speaker at a better value. My other 5.1 setup uses much more expensive Meyer's HD1's (about $2.5K-$3K a pair) and although they are fantastic for recording & mixing, I enjoy plain 'ol listening on my JBL's.

[imitation]

That’s the thing I love about these North Creek speakers there very smooth compared to most near field studio monitors I’ve heard. You can listen for hours without fatigue. $550 for their Sprit kit will give you a near field speaker that is tough to beat at any price. I think the silk dome tweeters are a better match for the Bash amps. Which can be a little  harsh. Both Klipsch and creative use preamp circuitry to roll the highs off a little but can still be harsh with most studio monitors.

 What I like about M-Audio's cards (besides much cleaner drivers without all the extra junk that comes with the Audigy) is you can run multiple cards off the same driver. Making is easy to have separate systems. You can have a 5.1 setup for gaming and movies and a 2 channel setup for music. Making it practical to use 2 channel tube amps with your computer.

[freezingcold]

If you are looking for a good source of good but inexpensive speaker cable (and other cables)... Try www.bluejeanscable.com  I have purchased 12-guage plenum rated speaker cable from them several times.   It is only about $.39/foot the last time I purchased.

I have not purchased any of their video cables, though.

freezingcold

[iCamp]

Your priorities are misplaced.  I'd go to an electrical supply store, buy 12 gauge stranded wire for the speakers, and then put the $150 into getting better speakers.  You will get more bang for your buck that way.

Agreed 100%

[Mr ChriZ]

Audio phile wise I'd loose the sub and buy a proper set of Stereo speakers ;-)
If you want a cinema system thats different, but for music, it just aint
right with a sub.  Unless your spending a grand or so on a decent sub then you can hear the direction it's coming from which sounds crap.
Not that much music seems to make use of Stereo any more...
I agree that for such cheap speakers, there's no point in having that decent a cable,  think i'd spend 10% value of speakers on cable, unless i was loaded.

Trouble I always have is affording the house to go round it all :-P

[Imatation]

These speakers are cheap because there a kit, even the crossover network has to be assembled. For the component quality and sound you’d have to spend more than a grand to get anything better in the retail market. They are very much worthy of good cables and I think you would have to spend more than $150 more on the speakers to get a greater improvement than these cables would provide. Three way systems are not ideal for stereo reproduction but this is a desktop system, which is usually in a small room next to a wall. In that situation a three way system is a good as it gets. Unless your computer desk is in the middle of your living room a floor standing speaker system is not an option. Besides this is my idea of the best complete system for under a grand.

[Mr ChriZ]

These speakers are cheap because there a kit, even the crossover network has to be assembled. For the component quality and sound you’d have to spend more than a grand to get anything better in the retail market. They are very much worthy of good cables and I think you would have to spend more than $150 more on the speakers to get a greater improvement than these cables would provide. Three way systems are not ideal for stereo reproduction but this is a desktop system, which is usually in a small room next to a wall. In that situation a three way system is a good as it gets. Unless your computer desk is in the middle of your living room a floor standing speaker system is not an option. Besides this is my idea of the best complete system for under a grand.

Fair play :-)

[Imatation]

Don’t underestimate the importance of good cables, speaker and interconnects. $150 is going cheap for Hi Fi speaker cables. There are many articles and equipment reviews that make this point. They’re just as important as good resistors and capacitors in your equipment. I’ve seen cables selling for 15 grand. I can hear the difference between the 16 gauge radio shack and quality cables so for me it’s worth it. Or maybe it’s all in my head either way as you say it makes me happy

[iCamp]

Don’t underestimate the importance of good cables, speaker and interconnects. $150 is going cheap for Hi Fi speaker cables. There are many articles and equipment reviews that make this point.

Articles & reviews don't make it so.
There's also a lot of scientific evidence that audiophiles are gear-crazy (not necessarily a bad thing ) and there is no difference between a decent yet generic 12 guage speaker cable and a $1000 botique cable. 
Still, if it floats your boat to own pretty high-end cables, go for it. 

[imitation]

Cheap or dirty or lose connectors are the cause of most cabling problems. Just skin oil on the connections can cause measurable distortion. So radioshack wire with clean gold banana connectors I’ll admit should be enough even though I still don’t think $150 is to much for good shielded cables with gold connectors.

The DAC 1 is nice but that’s a grand right there. If money were no object I’d spend $3500 this DAC http://www.wavelengthaudio.com/usbdac.html

Yes the inside of a pc is a noisy environment, but that problem has been licked for a while. Good PCI sound cards are capable or producing very clean sound. The 192 measures a signal to noise ratio of –113db coming out of a pc. I don’t know what you heard from your 192 but it wasn’t noise or midrange hash caused by electromagnetic interference.

[imitation]

Interesting to see you admit that the $150 cables don't get you much over quality Radio Shack cables (with gold connectors), presuming the connectors are free of contaminants.

I admit that most people can’t hear the difference so they’ll be sufficient.

$3500 for a DAC that only works up to 48kHz sample rate?   Some of the digital audio I listen to goes up to 96KHz. 24 bits. http://www.aixrecords.com/ for more info.

The point was high end DAC’s are not part of a budget system. Whether or not upsampling offers an improvement is another argument.

People who do audio for a living (i.e. pro studios) use external audio conversion.  They avoid any analog audio inside the PC.   There is more to quality audio than just a high S/N ratio.

Well noise was one of the characteristics you said you heard which would show in a “Signal to Noise ratio” test. Even if you did hear noise and midrange hash from your 192 the assertion that the cause was EM interference from the PC is pure speculation on your part.

They spend a lot of money on cables and interconnects to, but were all just gear happy right.

[freeryd1]

other than customizing reasons/urges, why jettison the sattelite monitors from the Klipsch 5.1 or 4.1?

also, it's pretty critical to at least acknowledge that speakers are perhaps THE most subjective bit of audio gear, and what compels YOU to prefer the extra work of cobbling together an allegedly superior set of satellites might seem nonsensical and even downright wasteful of time AND money.

I have known people who swear that their "prestige" label stuff sounds better than midrange quality gear, despite the fact that other musically critical ears cannot hear any superiority, and some even find inferiority.

so what are your reasons for insisting that one jettison the very musical horndriven Klipsch satellites?

[JONCAT]

Nice to see this forum, I have spent the last year or so 'up' in the MC forum.

I'd have to agree re: the Klipsch. My brother has the 4.1 and when I first heard it I was impressed. I'm on my second set of floorstanders and things sound VERY nice.

Which leads me to comment on the M-Audio gear....I have owned the 24/96 & the Delta 44. Both were pretty nice. But, the EMU1212M I recently picked up is simply MUCH more stable in the same rig. The DSP Patch Studio is rock solid and very flexible. I am stream webcast with Winamp via wave out and using MC simultaneously w/ ASIO here at home. Anyway, the 1212M is cheap these days. I swear I walked by it in CompUSA the other day w/ a 100$ price tag??? That's a deal. The 192 is nice but I really got fed up w/ flimsy breakout boxes and their cables. It just bugged me. They are pretty similar, feature wise, IIRC? The 1212M is bursting with I/O's and the support is better than M-Audio so far. Mods are being done in the forums at Head-FI so that's another avenue of support/tweaking. Overall the switch has been really great...now if I can just get MC11 to stop using 60% of the CPU at 32/192kHz !!!! (why? MC10 and Wavelab use 5% ...argh! : )

Cables, wires, & interconnects matter as much as we want them too. I built some CC89259 speaker wire and was going to upgrade to a friend's silver wire, but I'm happy...the Klipsch are singing. They'd probably sing with the zip cord. I know they would, but hey it was fun to make them and they are shield and twisted with the CC design which is interesting in it's own right.

Nice to meet you all!

JC

[imitation]

Why do we upgrade any part of a sound system? If you go to the klipsch forum you find a lot of promedia owners replacing their sats with the reference series RSX-4 or RSX-5’s. Klipsch did a very nice job on the promedia’s considering there price point but truth is there cheap, there’s only so much you can do with 5 bucks to spend on materials for a satellite speaker. There’s room for improvement.

 Yea those guys over at Head-Fi are sure big on Emu cards. I’ve heard both the 0404 and the 1212 and didn’t really care for ether of them. The 0404 sounded too forward, like it’s being pumped up by an equalizer, and the 1212 was detailed but flat. The M-Audio cards just sound more natural to me. I think you’re in the minority having stability problems with M-Audio cards and drivers, they have a good reputation for simple rock solid drivers; you can’t say the same for Creative cards.

 You don’t miss what you don’t hear. I thought my 4.1’s sounded great then I got the 5.1 ultras and they sounded better, and then I replaced the sats with the North Creek monitors and said wow! I don’t know were or if this road I’m on ends but I’ve yet to be disappointed. I guess I’m just another nutty audiophile, but I have plenty of company.

[imitation]

I think if you took the DA converters on the 192 and placed them outside your computer it would sound the same. However that’s just speculation on my part. I agree DA conversion outside of a PC is better, I agree that music recorded at higher sample rates sounds better. Unfortunately all my music was recorded at 41.1 kHz so I would have to upsample.

The higher signal to noise ratio due to the card being inside the PC was not speculation on my part. There is more to s/n than just the standard measurements.

I don’t understand, your saying you can hear distortion that can’t be measured by standard measurements yet you think people who say they can hear the difference in speaker cables are just gear crazy. You seem pretty gear crazy too my friend. I think you might be an “audiophile”.

Your still missing the point though I’m not talking about the best of the best here I’m talking about a complete hi-fi pc system for $830.00 ($730.00 with Radio Shack cables).
You’ve got more than that just in your dac. Come up with a better complete system for less than a grand.

[imitation]

The music on CDs was not recorded at 44.1kHz, but 48kHz.  The sample rate for the recording studios was 48kHz until somewhat recent times (think DAT).   Only when the CD was mastered was it downsampled to 44.1kHz for the CD format.  Incidentally, the 44.1kHz sample rate for CDs was chosen because Sony wanted to be able to use VHS video format as a medium for transport of audio masters (keep in mind that when the CD format was being designed by Phillips, the hard disk sizes were in the single-digit megabyte range).   The 44.1kHz sample rate fits nicely into the television frequencies of the VHS tape.  To be honest, I don't remember the details of why it is so, however the back issues of the Journal of the AES have all the details you might want.

Thanks for the recording history lesson but I don’t see what that has to do with what you quoted or the fact that I have a cd not dvd audio collection. I would still have to upsample to make use of 96khz 24 bit equipment.

That is not what I said at all.  It seems that you have created a strawman to argue against.  However, I will say that I am not an audiophile.    For numerous years in my career, I was an Audio Engineer.  A card-carrying member of the Audio Engineering Society.  http://www.aes.org/

The reason I sad you were speculating as to the source of this noise was because the only way to know for sure would be to listen to the card outside of your pc to eliminate the offending EM and see if the sound changed. Process of elimination, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you didn’t do that. What you heard could have been caused by any number of things, might even be a driver issue.  Or please tell me how else you eliminated other causes?

I wasn't missing the point at all.  That you now say "($730.00 with Radio Shack cables). "  verifies my initial comment on this thread.  And that comment was that paying $150 for cables on a $1k system was a waste.  Indeed, if you had originally said "Hi-Fi on a budget for $730, we would not have had this conversation.

No I said “a complete hi-fi pc system for $830.00 ($730.00 with Radio Shack cables)” What’s in the parentheses is your idea. Besides you switched arguments on me. Sure spending over a grand on a dac would offer a much greater improvement than $150 speaker cables but this is a budget system so you don’t have a grand for the dac1, or thousands more for better speakers and amps. That’s why I say your missing the point. You have the 100 you saved by using cheaper cables. So where would you spend that 100 bucks.

If you get the Radio Shack high-quality cables, you'll get some good cabling for a reasonable price.  The connectors are made of a material that does not fatigue, so the shell of the RCA plug maintains a tight (oxide-free) connection to the jack.  The gold plating also reduces oxidation.   The shielding is also very good.  What the cables lack is a marketing budget, like the one that Monstar cables have.

Very well said and I mostly agree however I think there is room for real improvement and the clarity labs emberglows are much better speaker cable at a reasonable price.  I wouldn’t pay more than $150 though. 

[imitation]

Ah avoided questions and masked escape with sarcasm. My Kung Foo is stronger.
Here’s a quote from your aixrecords.com talking about there system.

“Cardas provided custom lengths of cabling for both the system interconnects and the speaker feeds. This system sounds amazing!”

You think $150 is expensive you should price Cardas. You should email them and tell them they could of bought concert tickets.