Desktop audio question...

[sglords]

Actually ts is looking for passive or active monitor ?
Gd if can provide budget

 

[Gymrat76]

Actually ts is looking for passive or active monitor ?
Gd if can provide budget

Currently using actives, but also open to passives, if I can find something that pairs well and gives great sound (am I silly for spending that kind of $ for desktop? haha)

I don't really have a budget, but I guess I'm open to spending 2-3k (speakers + amp).. I want to get the best sound for that price range.. will I need an integrated amp with DAC/standalone DAC or is the output from my Asus Xonar DX good enough? Plan to reuse my active sub if possible/needed as it provides enough on the low end for my tastes

 

[wwenze]

Passive studio monitors are hard to find and usually provide less value than their active versions

www.diyaudio.com/forums/everything-else/274940-price-amp-inside-studio-monitors.html

But when get to the more expensive monitors, then passive monitors start to make appearance again.

Part of having internal amplifier is to save cost on crossover and power supply (the math behind I'll save for another post) and to also have built-in room compensation thanks to that active crossover. And of course the cost. Downside is reliability - few brands have 5 year warranty and you can expect stuff to start dying after warranty period.

Meanwhile, when you have such budget for expensive monitors, you want them to last - hence passive with external amp. And usually your whole setup is more elaborate. With actives, you need AC power cables - not always available. And you need to control the room compensation individually - not easy when you have multiple of them in hard to reach places. With passives, everything is controlled by one central console, connected by just a single speakon connector.

 

[Philip]

What is wrong with your current setup? How are you integrating the speakers with your sub? Using onboard audio?

Phil

 

[wwenze]

Currently using actives, but also open to passives, if I can find something that pairs well and gives great sound (am I silly for spending that kind of $ for desktop? haha)

I don't really have a budget, but I guess I'm open to spending 2-3k (speakers + amp).. I want to get the best sound for that price range.. will I need an integrated amp with DAC/standalone DAC or is the output from my Asus Xonar DX good enough? Plan to reuse my active sub if possible/needed as it provides enough on the low end for my tastes

I've seen studio use Adam A7 for the computer as well as a guy using Adam A7 at his desk... So... Where's the problem

Best sound for that price range... Watch out, while $400 to $1000 is where companies finally get things right and work to fix small issues, $1000 onwards you will still find speakers that sound different from each other because they are designed for different purposes and rooms. So just because it is more expensive does not mean it will sound better in your room. Audition is important.

 

[Gymrat76]

What is wrong with your current setup? How are you integrating the speakers with your sub? Using onboard audio?

Phil

Let me answer the second question first.

All speaker line outputs from my Xonar DX sound card. The sub is plugged into the centre channel, which I swapped to sub output on the software, with a low cutoff at 75Hz.

There's nothing wrong per se with my setup It's great for movies, for gaming... for music, I like to listen at higher volumes and I find that the mids become a tad muddy and not so pronounced and the also the highs don't stand out as much... Of course, this is in comparison to my friend's secondary living room setup, using a pair of LS50s (don't even wanna compare with his music room setup as it's again a totally different league).

At this point, I'm happy to keep the current setup, I'm just exploring to see if I can significantly improve the sound by going for a different setup. Like I said, backside itchy post

 

[t258jgn]

Dynaudio LYD-6 Near-Field Studio Monitors

Adam Audio F7 Nearfield Studio Monitor Speakers

 

[Philip]

Let me answer the second question first.

All speaker line outputs from my Xonar DX sound card. The sub is plugged into the centre channel, which I swapped to sub output on the software, with a low cutoff at 75Hz.

There's nothing wrong per se with my setup It's great for movies, for gaming... for music, I like to listen at higher volumes and I find that the mids become a tad muddy and not so pronounced and the also the highs don't stand out as much... Of course, this is in comparison to my friend's secondary living room setup, using a pair of LS50s (don't even wanna compare with his music room setup as it's again a totally different league).

At this point, I'm happy to keep the current setup, I'm just exploring to see if I can significantly improve the sound by going for a different setup. Like I said, backside itchy post

Xonar DX appeared to be a movie and gaming oriented sound card. Not exactly what you would call a music-first component. Do you mean LFE or low freq cut off? Either way, the output from both sub and speakers is probably overlapping causing muffled mid and high. Especially since you're using different brands of components.

Consider getting a USB DAC and ditching the sub. Can upgrade to bigger monitor speakers like the Swan M200 MK3 with respectable bass reproduction.

Phil

 

[PsychoChicken]

From my years working here in the US at a hifi speaker manufacturer and a high end manufacturer (both now defunct) I would say part of the muddiness is because of the high crossover frequency for the subwoofer. Knock it down to the 45 to 60 Hz range (depending on how low your full range speakers can go and stay clean) . Any competant shoebox sized speaker can go down to 60 Hz with no trouble. Bass becomes non-directional for most of us at about 60 Hz. There is some variance because it depends on the distance between each persons ear drums. Anything above 60 Hz adds mud to the sound.
The only directional cues from your subwoofer below 50 HZ should be wind "Chuffing" through the port, or the foam surround snapping when fully extending at full power. When quality testing our subwoofers before being boxed up, we would run them at full power at 20Hz. If we heard anything not mentioned above, it was a problem that had to be fixed. Of course, you can not hear 20 Hz anyway, so it was easy to identify any sound coming out. The first time we tested our 18 inch dual suspension brutes it took most of the afternoon to make the windows, switch covers, outlet covers and other things in the final assembly room stop rattling.

I would bet you can improve the sound by dropping your crossover point down, and also elevating the full range speakers enough for the tweeters to be at ear level. If not, then tip them back so that they are aimed straight at your ears but then the sound quality will diminish as you lean forward or back. If you still feel the highs are lacking, it would be because your tweeters are 5+ years old and have ferrofluid in them. That stuff becomes gooey and thick with age. After about 5 years the drop in tweeter response is quite noticable. I never buy speakers with damped tweeters for that reason. 10 and 12 year old speakers still sound like new if the tweeters are not damped with ferrofluid.

 

[Gymrat76]

From my years working here in the US at a hifi speaker manufacturer and a high end manufacturer (both now defunct) I would say part of the muddiness is because of the high crossover frequency for the subwoofer. Knock it down to the 45 to 60 Hz range (depending on how low your full range speakers can go and stay clean) . Any competant shoebox sized speaker can go down to 60 Hz with no trouble. Bass becomes non-directional for most of us at about 60 Hz. There is some variance because it depends on the distance between each persons ear drums. Anything above 60 Hz adds mud to the sound.
The only directional cues from your subwoofer below 50 HZ should be wind "Chuffing" through the port, or the foam surround snapping when fully extending at full power. When quality testing our subwoofers before being boxed up, we would run them at full power at 20Hz. If we heard anything not mentioned above, it was a problem that had to be fixed. Of course, you can not hear 20 Hz anyway, so it was easy to identify any sound coming out. The first time we tested our 18 inch dual suspension brutes it took most of the afternoon to make the windows, switch covers, outlet covers and other things in the final assembly room stop rattling.

I would bet you can improve the sound by dropping your crossover point down, and also elevating the full range speakers enough for the tweeters to be at ear level. If not, then tip them back so that they are aimed straight at your ears but then the sound quality will diminish as you lean forward or back. If you still feel the highs are lacking, it would be because your tweeters are 5+ years old and have ferrofluid in them. That stuff becomes gooey and thick with age. After about 5 years the drop in tweeter response is quite noticable. I never buy speakers with damped tweeters for that reason. 10 and 12 year old speakers still sound like new if the tweeters are not damped with ferrofluid.

Hey, thanks for the insight and interesting perspective from the 'inside'!

The Mackies I have are less than a year old, so dount it's a tweeter problem.The frequency range of the CR4's are 70-20kHz. My PSB sub is 50-150Hz. I'll drop my sub crossover down from 75Hz to 70Hz and see if that works to improve the quality of the mids and highs.

The speakers are also angled slightly upwards to ear level using the provided foam stands from Mackie, so it's not a positional issue.

Will play around with the settings and feedback, thanks!

 

[Gymrat76]

The small changes to the low frequency cutoff didn't make much changes to the sound. I've tried bringing the speakers a little forward so they're not as near the wall to see if there's a difference.

I went to my friends place and auditioned his living room setup, which was pretty amazing. I suppose a question would be whether it was possible to get the kind of staging and sense of space with bookshelves on a desk, vs a living room setup with large speakers?

To explain further, on my setup, the sound is pretty clear but very directed towards me (like listening on a pair of headphones) - conversely, on my friend's setup, listening to the music with my eyes closed, it feels like I'm standing in the middle of a concert hall and listening to the band/singer..There's a feeling of space, don't know how else to describe it.

Again, I'm not hoping to match his kind of setup (turntable with valve monoblocks through a huge pair of Wharfedales in a living room setup) but just wondering if a good pair of bookshelves with a good power amp can give me something like that

 

[kimsix]

My table setting also some thing like yours with a right wall. You will need to put your casing on the floor to give bigger bookshelves as much space. The desk placement still affected the sound stage compared to putting on stands away from walls and table. It is a limitation you see if you can live with. However the imaging and quality 100% improve for me moving from 4" Qacoustics to 5" SCM7, the Q sounded slow and flat now. SCM7 do not have ports hence mid-bass booms against back wall is reduce significantly imo.

ATC prices are now down, it is a good investment. It does not use ferrofluid tweeters, like psychochicken (pro-guy) said, it should not suffer with age. Wish to see more ATC users around HWZ.

 

[Gymrat76]

My table setting also some thing like yours with a right wall. You will need to put your casing on the floor to give bigger bookshelves as much space. The desk placement still affected the sound stage compared to putting on stands away from walls and table. It is a limitation you see if you can live with. However the imaging and quality 100% improve for me moving from 4" Qacoustics to 5" SCM7, the Q sounded slow and flat now. SCM7 do not have ports hence mid-bass booms against back wall is reduce significantly imo.

ATC prices are now down, it is a good investment. It does not use ferrofluid tweeters, like psychochicken (pro-guy) said, it should not suffer with age. Wish to see more ATC users around HWZ.

It's on my list of speakers to check out What amp do you pair your SCM7's with?

 

[wwenze]

The small changes to the low frequency cutoff didn't make much changes to the sound. I've tried bringing the speakers a little forward so they're not as near the wall to see if there's a difference.

I went to my friends place and auditioned his living room setup, which was pretty amazing. I suppose a question would be whether it was possible to get the kind of staging and sense of space with bookshelves on a desk, vs a living room setup with large speakers?

To explain further, on my setup, the sound is pretty clear but very directed towards me (like listening on a pair of headphones) - conversely, on my friend's setup, listening to the music with my eyes closed, it feels like I'm standing in the middle of a concert hall and listening to the band/singer..There's a feeling of space, don't know how else to describe it.

Again, I'm not hoping to match his kind of setup (turntable with valve monoblocks through a huge pair of Wharfedales in a living room setup) but just wondering if a good pair of bookshelves with a good power amp can give me something like that

Don't toe-in your speakers. And have your speakers as far apart from each other.

Your speakers are 4-inch woofers, so no way they actually go down to 75-Hz as most 5-inch bookshelves can't reach that low either. Even with the sub crossover max-ed out to 150Hz there is probably still a hole in the frequency response between satellites and subwoofer.

 

[mypillowtalks]

Hello

Do you have the equaliser function on your soundcard?

Sometimes by attenuating certain frequencies (eg. 80hz, 100hz), the resultant output may sound less "muddy", this may yield a more pronounced high frequencies (vocals/high pitchs).

However, the disadvantage may be that the system sound less "powerful", or less "punch", as 80hz and 100hz are associated with basslines/mid-bass in general.

If you soundcard comes with the equaliser function, another method which you can experiment is to shift up the crossover frequency to about 100hz.

Frequencies above 100hz will go to your monitors, and frequencies below 100hz will go to the PSB subwoofer.

After which, experiment, by using the equaliser function on your soundcard, to attenuate frequencies on the subwoofer if it is too boomy or muddy.

In this manner, your monitor might sound clearer as they have a lesser spectrum of audio frequency to reproduce.

No guarantee it will work but worth a try

 

[PsychoChicken]

A living room setup should sound better than a desktop setup. Done right, there is a "sweet spot" about twice the diameter of a soccer ball. With your head inside that sweet spot there is a wonderful soundstage. The lead singer will often be forward of the band and in the center, the drums will be in the back center. This with only two speakers. A good starting point to achieve this is the have the speakers 1/3 of the way into the room from the short wall, and 1/3 of the way into the room from the side walls. You should be in the centerline 1/3 of the way from the back wall. Yes, the speakers should be toed in toward you, but aimed a bit to the side of your head. If possible go for a "live end--dead end" setup with the speakers in front of the livlier wall (glass or other reflective surface) and the deader wall behind you (thick drapes, open wall to adjoining room). If you have a wife, she probably will not like the way the furniture has to be arranged to achieve this. If you sit with the speakers in front of the long wall, your soundstage will lose depth. It will be a "V" shape with the lead singer and drummer a few inches in front of your nose, and the rest of the band in a straight line heading for the speakers.

Obviously this is a hard setup to achieve from a desk top. My desktop has a pair of Snell CLS.5 I won in an in house contest that used to retail for about $750 (US) powered by my old Stereo Amp and a 150 watt 8 inch powered sub (employee discount purchase from our parent company). It is plenty good for gaming and gives credible music. The living room has the Home Theater/music setup that sounds awesome. Unfortunately having the speakers close to the big honking TV does not let me gain the full effect of the sweetspot, but everything is a compromise.

Decide what is important to you and go for it. If you are happy with gaming and having "sonic wallpaper" background music then do not spend too much money on your upgrade. If you want awesome music and home theatre then leave your desktop alone and get a real rig for your living room. Most of us do not have to go overboard on speakers beyond the left and right channel. They do the heavy lifting. The center channel is there to anchor dialogue. The surround speakers add a little sizzle in the back but do not justify a heavy outlay of money since our ears are not all that picky about sounds behind us. You could actually wait a year or two before buying surround speakers and a subwoofer if you buy muscular floorstanding mains and a capable center channel. The sound will be so much better than what you have now that you should be happy enough. The overall cost will be less than if you get an adequate setup now and then want to replace it all with an upgrade later. I still do not have a subwoofer in my living room. The mains put out ample bass without any muddiness, just not enough to be "punched in the gut" by sound effects.

 

[86technie]

Let me answer the second question first.

All speaker line outputs from my Xonar DX sound card. The sub is plugged into the centre channel, which I swapped to sub output on the software, with a low cutoff at 75Hz.

There's nothing wrong per se with my setup It's great for movies, for gaming... for music, I like to listen at higher volumes and I find that the mids become a tad muddy and not so pronounced and the also the highs don't stand out as much... Of course, this is in comparison to my friend's secondary living room setup, using a pair of LS50s (don't even wanna compare with his music room setup as it's again a totally different league).

At this point, I'm happy to keep the current setup, I'm just exploring to see if I can significantly improve the sound by going for a different setup. Like I said, backside itchy post

Just my two cents, using a soundcard to act as a AV receiver
is not a good idea.
Cuz the cross over between the main speakers and subwoofer
isn't in sync.

The rear of the soundcard is just a line ouput for 5.1 setups,
PC speakers like 5.1 the crossover and speaker are calibrated
in sync hence you see that most you don't need to do anything
in order to work unlike standalone speakers + sub woofer.

My suggestion try to get a cheap receiver and do up a proper setup.
You can try audition Denon M40 Stereo receiver which have a LFE
out.

You can just get the receiver and pair with any bookshelf speaker you want than get a proper subwoofer with LFE out.
The sound quality would be much better with such setup as you have a receiver ensuring that the 2.1 setup is in sync.

This Denon M40 Stereo cost below $400.
Even if you are look at Wharfdele speaker you need something to drive it.
Main thing here is not about your speakers but you lack something to control it and drive them properly.

There are cheap options, probably you have time visit Adeplhi and see what type of receiver with sub out you can consider.
Cheers.

 

[Philip]

Hold it! You're comparing PC audio with full analog stereo? Save the trouble, it's mission impossible. You can forget about getting remotely close to the soundstage and musicality of a proper hifi using a PC. Not even an AV receiver will help. I've tried all that before, and have settled down with a turntable + tube amp + bookshelf speakers setup for critical music playback.

Phil

 

[orbvius]

Come in ssrr

 

[3dfxplayer]

The small changes to the low frequency cutoff didn't make much changes to the sound. I've tried bringing the speakers a little forward so they're not as near the wall to see if there's a difference.

I went to my friends place and auditioned his living room setup, which was pretty amazing. I suppose a question would be whether it was possible to get the kind of staging and sense of space with bookshelves on a desk, vs a living room setup with large speakers?

To explain further, on my setup, the sound is pretty clear but very directed towards me (like listening on a pair of headphones) - conversely, on my friend's setup, listening to the music with my eyes closed, it feels like I'm standing in the middle of a concert hall and listening to the band/singer..There's a feeling of space, don't know how else to describe it.

Again, I'm not hoping to match his kind of setup (turntable with valve monoblocks through a huge pair of Wharfedales in a living room setup) but just wondering if a good pair of bookshelves with a good power amp can give me something like that

Its impossible to get that kind of soundstage with a PC setup, the speakers are way too close to each other and way too close to you, in Hi-Fi the environment (room) is just as important as the equipment.