Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
jihadjoe wrote:If you're going to use them mostly for music then $50 more will get you these:
http://www.amazon.com/Audioengine-Premi ... B000VKEFMS
cynan wrote:At $129, these Hercules XPS 20 80 will be way better bang for your buck than the audioengine A2. Plus, they should get you better bass response (especially extension) with their 4" vs the 2.75". These normally go for Around $170 or more (eg,Musician's Friend, Amazon, zzsouds). At $129, I wouldn't look any further for a pair of powered monitors for gaming and music. Fidelity will be way superior to any Logitech 2.1 system.
After a quick search, the only review I could find was in Dutch (Google translate to the rescue). Once you get to the $200 mark, you get into other monitors that would give these competition. But if looking for something under $150 (and particularly $129), I doubt anything else would beat the build quality and performance of these.
The Egg wrote:Why? The two big reasons were CRTs and maybe wiping floppys. CRTs are long gone as monitors and even if you still have a boot floppy lying around, as long as you don't stick it on top of the speaker itself it should be OK.You just have to be sure that you're getting a pair which are magnetically shielded.
notfred wrote:The Egg wrote:Why? The two big reasons were CRTs and maybe wiping floppys. CRTs are long gone as monitors and even if you still have a boot floppy lying around, as long as you don't stick it on top of the speaker itself it should be OK.You just have to be sure that you're getting a pair which are magnetically shielded.
The Egg wrote:I'd be mostly concerned about mechanical (aka magnetic) hard drives. I haven't done any testing myself, but I can't imagine that putting one in close proximity to a large magnet is a good idea.
Captain Ned wrote:The Egg wrote:I'd be mostly concerned about mechanical (aka magnetic) hard drives. I haven't done any testing myself, but I can't imagine that putting one in close proximity to a large magnet is a good idea.
Not to worry. The sheer amount of coercivity a read/write head must overcome to flip magnetic cells in a vanishingly small area means the mostly-static EM fields from a speaker magnet/voice coil assembly haven't a chance on scrambling your bits. No, the whole danger from speakers was the purple fringes in your CRT-based TVs back in the days of Cro-Magnon Man, especially tweeter magnet assemblies.
The Egg wrote:Speaker magnets are way weaker than the magnets in the HDD itself that are used for the head positioning.I'd be mostly concerned about mechanical (aka magnetic) hard drives. I haven't done any testing myself, but I can't imagine that putting one in close proximity to a large magnet is a good idea.
NovusBogus wrote:So Audioengine is worth it then? Massdrop frequently offers the A2+ for the price of the A2.
notfred wrote:The Egg wrote:Speaker magnets are way weaker than the magnets in the HDD itself that are used for the head positioning.I'd be mostly concerned about mechanical (aka magnetic) hard drives. I haven't done any testing myself, but I can't imagine that putting one in close proximity to a large magnet is a good idea.
tsoulier wrote:Thinking about buying these today , I am not a big gamer or really need much for what I do.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6836121048
The Egg wrote:Self-powered Studio Monitors often provide substantially better sound quality than most computer speakers. You just have to be sure that you're getting a pair which are magnetically shielded.
Milo Burke wrote:Against others' recommendations, I don't recommend bargain basement studio monitors. I've heard many of them, and they are just as colored and cloudy as a lot of the speakers you want to avoid. (Really good studio monitors, on the otherhand, are fantastic!) I'd stay away from all of the studio monitors less than $300/pr.
ludi wrote:Personally, I would call either the Pioneer set or the Micca set a coin toss. Either one is the right size and price point for a basic desktop monitor.
I'm at work after-hours often enough to enjoy tunes at proper listening levels, and although my system was custom built, it's in the same ballpark: 5-inch woofer, 1-inch dome tweeter, ported box, roughly 85dB efficiency, and amplified at 40W/channel. Bass falls off below 50Hz but the accuracy and detail across the audible range is incredible, and the imaging is spot-on. Nearfield listening with a small, good pair of bookshelf speakers is a genuine treat.