PC Speakers ~ Need Advice

Price in audio gear sure, but good is perceptive to the person listening.

I have heard some supposedly high end 2.1's too, from logitech or more notoriously creative... and I don't like them either. It always is a DSP issue, as many of them add compression to make their crappy cones sound better. I like my audio natural sounding, with a flat reponse all the way through the range. I am not one of those who likes the boomy bass or tinny highs.

I think we would need a direct comparison if we want to judge what sound we like. The Klipsch 2.1 Promedia is a perfect example- higher end computer speakers, but I don't think they sound natural. They don't sound bad, but its a processed sound that just irritates me.

Creative is notorious for screwing up their audio output. "Enhanced MP3 Sound" they would call it, and it was the reason I would never buy Creative stuff.
 
Lol Creative speakers are just terrible. Back in the day I got my hands on an Inspire 5.1 set and they sounded like complete ass.

I too like a flat sound, and if it wasn't for me getting my 2.1 set free I would have invested in some studio monitors already. My only complaint with the Creature 2s would be the crossover doesn't do a good enough job at separating low mids keeping them from the satellites.
 
I love studio monitors too. The midrange comes out so much cleaner then most any consumer solution.

I will admit my gear is somewhat limited by the alc888 onboard sound I use. It's not a completely limiting factor though, as that sound chip isn't terrible. Even on paper, its only marginally worse then most home theater stereos. In real life, I have a hard time noticing the difference.
 
I would say avoided with a higher end DAC. I think a lot of the sound cards out there don't sound any better then the good onboard solutions that come with the midgrade motherboards... but if you spend $100+ on a sound card you will notice the fuller, more detailed sound. That said, I don't think much is gained by investing in a top-dollar studio sound card over a mid grade one either... but that's just my opinion I don't have a lot of experience with studio gear.
 
It depends on what you have to plug those into. Fuller sound isn't really an argument anymore as before that was all in how many voices your chip could handle at once. These days, all onboard solutions can handle 128+ voices in software. All you're paying for in higher end cards is a DAC (if you're running analog out), OPAMPs, and the possibility of having a headphone amp that can support anything over 30ohm. Literally, that's it. All can be had for like 60 bucks in a USB external DAC which also support toslink output. If you have a low end sound setup, it makes any of that pointless. For actual computer sound, I would put my JBLs between low and mid range in quality and even still it would be rather pointless to waste any money on higher end output. I have an X-Fi Extreme Music, and there is literally no difference between it and the codec on my current older board, or the codec on the newer ASRock Extreme 6 X79 I had. Unless you count not needing to install unnecessary nonsense, that's a plus.

If I had studio monitors or the PA setup I had at my old house then it would be worth it. Even a nice high end set of cans like HD650s. My current cans crap out at 17k. Pathetic really.

Another thing to mention is software. Most all sound cards have **** for drivers and real software support for the powerful hardware they come with. I've owned an STX, X-Fi Titanium Pro, Xonar, and a few others along side my Extreme Music. Pretty much all had terrible support unless you found that sweet spot driver.
 
Im with ya. The driver support is something that onboard solutions seem to do pretty well. I think it just has to do with numbers, as there are far more onboard audio chips out there then discrete.

As far as the op-amps in the ALC888 though, they are rated for .03% THD irrc, which isn't as good as the <.01% as most home theater gear runs, but its also a difference that I just can't notice normally. The only time I do is when I am playing certain uncompressed music, the instrumental stuff where even my cones have a hard time replicating some notes.

I remember in the early days of onboard sound, the THD would be .3%, and that is easy to hear. It sounds terrible in the high end frequencies.
 
As of this gen (Haswell, another reason for upgrade) in the desktop market ASRock is now offering swappable OPAMPs on their motherboards among other new features. If they added a headphone amp that supported 600ohm cans and reduced or got rid of line noise there would be no need for a card.

I personally only use Microsoft drivers for my current onboard because I don't really care at the moment. Oddly enough, since I traded my PA sound has been at the bottom of my list of worries.
 
Swappable opamps in motherboards huh? That's pretty nice. I have always thought about just soldering in my own, but I never did the research to figure out if anything else needed to be upgraded, like caps or what not.

I too have been complacent with my onboard sound. Part of it is because I don't even turn my stereo on anymore, I just use the 2.1's, but also because I don't listen to much music on it either. For just TV watching, it's almost worse to have high end audio because the shows are recorded so poorly. I remember a lot of times you could tell the artificial inserts of noises and whatever in shows, because the audio system I had was so clean.
 
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