- Joined
- Dec 1, 2007
- Location
- Near Toronto Canada
INTRO:
A lot of people have been asking about which speakers, soundcard, and earphones they should get. Unfortunately this isn't as straightforward as picking a graphics card, so I'll try to help, and keep everything in simple non techy terms wherever possible. To the eye the $200 monitor looks better than the $100 monitor, the $300 to the $200, and so on (Assuming we're looking at an improvement in quality while maintaining the same size and formfactor).
Unfortunately, audio is far less straightforward, as no two ears are created equal.
First of all, lets look at what sound, for a human, is. Sounds are vibrations which travel from their source to your ear through the air (or water, depending on which one you happen to be in at the time)
WHAT IS SOUND?:
Sounds are measured as a frequency. The average human can hear from about 80-20,000Hz. Most decent sound systems will have a range of atleast 20Hz-20Khz.
Anything below about 250Hz is interpreted by most people's ears as bass- though some people may not interperet bass until as low as 120Hz or less, depending on whether they are fidelity people, or i-feel-it-g (1) people.
If you're looking into a sound system, this is one of the first questions you should ask yourself. Are you one of those people who easily gets a headache or feels discomfort when you FEEL bass? Then you're not going to be happy with a system that has a subwoofer unless you payed well over $1000 for it.
Now, since we're talking about average PC sound for the average person, we're only going to talk about 3 things- speakers, cables, soundcards. That's it. We're not going to discuss line out to a receiver and other higher end audio solutions here. I don't want to overcomplicate things.
EQUIPMENT:
SO, lets start buying stuff.
To begin, lets examine what the sound you're hearing on your computer is. We're hearing, in the case of analogue sound, a signal, say, from a game, which is converted from digital to analogue by your soundcard, then amplified by your sound card, then sent via a copper cable to your speakers. The quality of the DAC (digital to analogue conversion), the OPAMPS (amplification), capacitors, and signal routing on your card, as well as the type of minijacks it uses and the quality of the cables, all dramatically affect sound quality before it even reaches a speaker. Thus, the soundcard is perhaps the most important component of any reasonable quality PC sound system.
A digital signal does not go through amplification on the soundcard, remains digital, and exits the soundcard via a digital out to the amplifier (all PC sound systems have a built in amp) which converts the signal to analogue. This permits the omission of certain quality components on a soundcard and permits the use of a lower cost interconnect cable as signal degradation in digital media is vastly less pronounced than analogue.
So what is a soundcard? Basically, a soundcard consists of the following main components:
(credit to Sir Barton, who's photo I modified)
DSP Digital signal processors, or controller chips, are the heart of any audio chipset. Be it an Audigy chip, a CMI, AC97, HD, this is the component which is responsible for controlling the rest of the components on the board. Think of it as the sound south bridge (controls and directs surrounding components). Some chipsets are better geared toward certain things than others. An M-Audio Audiophile chipset is music geared, CMI's are media geared and Xfi's/Audigy are geared toward EAX effects, and carry a substantial amount of onboard memory to permit immediate access to frequently used material.
CAPACITORS are basically like little camels on your PCB that carry the sound around to eachother on their backs until it finally comes out the I/O. The better bred the camels are, the faster they'll walk and the less stuff they'll drop on the way. Thus, solid state polycaps are thoroughbred soundcard camels, and should be used whenever possible.
OPAMPS Are what will amplify an analogue signal, and the quality of the opamps will heavily affect the quality of the sound output. Poor quality amplification will make for poor quality uneven and muddy sound. Many higher end sound cards feature opamps which you can remove and replace easily should you wish to for not a lot of money.
I/O Just like with video, audio is heavily dependant on the quality of every component it passes through. Cheap not-even-gold-plated low pressure connectors and cheap skinny low quality speaker cables aren't going to make anyone's day any brighter.
HOW DO SPEAKERS WORK
APPENDIX:
(1) I FEEL IT G: someone who prefers to feel strong bass at all costs, even if it completely drowns out the actual note with a blurred tone or overpowers any melodic frequencies which may be pertinent to the current sound
FIDELITY: You prefer to hear the actual note the way it was supposed to sound, regardless whether it means you cant listen as loud, or 'feel' the music as much
(Don't know? Go to a good HI FI shop and try earphones. If you liked Sony or Bose, you're an I FEEL IT G person)
Now, obviously, once you start getting into spending over 20 thousand dollars, these two start to cancel eachother out because the quality of the equipment is just rediculous...
~~~~THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. ITS STILL PROGRESSING. FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS UNTIL ITS DONE. ~~~~~~~
A lot of people have been asking about which speakers, soundcard, and earphones they should get. Unfortunately this isn't as straightforward as picking a graphics card, so I'll try to help, and keep everything in simple non techy terms wherever possible. To the eye the $200 monitor looks better than the $100 monitor, the $300 to the $200, and so on (Assuming we're looking at an improvement in quality while maintaining the same size and formfactor).
Unfortunately, audio is far less straightforward, as no two ears are created equal.
First of all, lets look at what sound, for a human, is. Sounds are vibrations which travel from their source to your ear through the air (or water, depending on which one you happen to be in at the time)
WHAT IS SOUND?:
Sounds are measured as a frequency. The average human can hear from about 80-20,000Hz. Most decent sound systems will have a range of atleast 20Hz-20Khz.
Anything below about 250Hz is interpreted by most people's ears as bass- though some people may not interperet bass until as low as 120Hz or less, depending on whether they are fidelity people, or i-feel-it-g (1) people.
If you're looking into a sound system, this is one of the first questions you should ask yourself. Are you one of those people who easily gets a headache or feels discomfort when you FEEL bass? Then you're not going to be happy with a system that has a subwoofer unless you payed well over $1000 for it.
Now, since we're talking about average PC sound for the average person, we're only going to talk about 3 things- speakers, cables, soundcards. That's it. We're not going to discuss line out to a receiver and other higher end audio solutions here. I don't want to overcomplicate things.
EQUIPMENT:
SO, lets start buying stuff.
To begin, lets examine what the sound you're hearing on your computer is. We're hearing, in the case of analogue sound, a signal, say, from a game, which is converted from digital to analogue by your soundcard, then amplified by your sound card, then sent via a copper cable to your speakers. The quality of the DAC (digital to analogue conversion), the OPAMPS (amplification), capacitors, and signal routing on your card, as well as the type of minijacks it uses and the quality of the cables, all dramatically affect sound quality before it even reaches a speaker. Thus, the soundcard is perhaps the most important component of any reasonable quality PC sound system.
A digital signal does not go through amplification on the soundcard, remains digital, and exits the soundcard via a digital out to the amplifier (all PC sound systems have a built in amp) which converts the signal to analogue. This permits the omission of certain quality components on a soundcard and permits the use of a lower cost interconnect cable as signal degradation in digital media is vastly less pronounced than analogue.
So what is a soundcard? Basically, a soundcard consists of the following main components:
(credit to Sir Barton, who's photo I modified)
DSP Digital signal processors, or controller chips, are the heart of any audio chipset. Be it an Audigy chip, a CMI, AC97, HD, this is the component which is responsible for controlling the rest of the components on the board. Think of it as the sound south bridge (controls and directs surrounding components). Some chipsets are better geared toward certain things than others. An M-Audio Audiophile chipset is music geared, CMI's are media geared and Xfi's/Audigy are geared toward EAX effects, and carry a substantial amount of onboard memory to permit immediate access to frequently used material.
CAPACITORS are basically like little camels on your PCB that carry the sound around to eachother on their backs until it finally comes out the I/O. The better bred the camels are, the faster they'll walk and the less stuff they'll drop on the way. Thus, solid state polycaps are thoroughbred soundcard camels, and should be used whenever possible.
OPAMPS Are what will amplify an analogue signal, and the quality of the opamps will heavily affect the quality of the sound output. Poor quality amplification will make for poor quality uneven and muddy sound. Many higher end sound cards feature opamps which you can remove and replace easily should you wish to for not a lot of money.
I/O Just like with video, audio is heavily dependant on the quality of every component it passes through. Cheap not-even-gold-plated low pressure connectors and cheap skinny low quality speaker cables aren't going to make anyone's day any brighter.
HOW DO SPEAKERS WORK
APPENDIX:
(1) I FEEL IT G: someone who prefers to feel strong bass at all costs, even if it completely drowns out the actual note with a blurred tone or overpowers any melodic frequencies which may be pertinent to the current sound
FIDELITY: You prefer to hear the actual note the way it was supposed to sound, regardless whether it means you cant listen as loud, or 'feel' the music as much
(Don't know? Go to a good HI FI shop and try earphones. If you liked Sony or Bose, you're an I FEEL IT G person)
Now, obviously, once you start getting into spending over 20 thousand dollars, these two start to cancel eachother out because the quality of the equipment is just rediculous...
~~~~THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. ITS STILL PROGRESSING. FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS UNTIL ITS DONE. ~~~~~~~
Last edited:
. All of my music is in FLAC, running Foobar2000 with ASIO output. I have also upgraded the OPamps to LM4562NAs. My sound card is stereo only, but uses 3 OPamps for stereo output. The old OPamps were very harsh compared to the stockers, but the new ones really mellowed out the highs and gave it a more detailed sound overall. 
