Gaming Looking for a speaker buying guide or help purchasing some.

[kjb1686]

Hi everyone i am in the market for a half way decent set of speakers so i was looking to find a guide or someone to help me with this. I don't know the first thing about speakers all i know is that there are 2.1 ones and 5.1 ones after that i don't know which i need or what i need. I was looking for some help buying some i don't know what a good price range would be either i was thinking about 100-150 that sound about right. If i can get some decent ones for cheaper i will now i won't be getting these for another week or so but i wanted to be able to get some research done before i make my purchase. I would appreciate any help that someone can give me thank you.

 

[Originality]

2.0 speakers are the easiest to get and they just sit on either side of your monitor. 2.1 speakers have a subwoofer that sits on the floor by your feet. 5.1 speakers have at least 4 speakers that you have to arrange for surround sound which makes it much more difficult to place properly.

You don't need to spend a lot for some good speakers - even about $60 would be enough. I can't offer much more help than that since I'm not an audiophile, I just like music.

 

[FAST6191]

I'm not an audiophile, I just like music.

Which immediately places you above just about every self described audiophile (I believe the pejorative is audiophool)- it is not something to aspire to.

Anyway back on topic as Originality said if you are going PC speakers then you can do an awful lot with not a great deal of money if you avoid either specialist audio places or general consumer big store electronics for the same reasons you probably buy general consumer electronics and PC hardware online. It goes to 7.1 these days as well which is either a complete surround of four plus subwoofer along the front. This said as long as you are not heading into audiophool territory I highly recommend an audio bar for greater than 2.1 sound as it saves having to trail wires or mess with wireless speakers (if you thought general wireless was terrible/annoying you have seen nothing yet) although a look at US amazon says they are a bit above Originality's quite acceptable $60 entry level (although if the amazon reviews are anything to go by $70 might get you one that works well). It does not give you the full 5.1 experience (a dubious bonus for me most of the time) but pretty close actually.

This said these last few years I have added or modified a lot of general hifi stacks* to run from PCs and/or TV sets (which probably have a PC connected to them) and although a PC equipped with FFdshow or something similar has a set of nicer options than just about every hifi I have ever seen the few options hifi sets have and that at the same time they are usually geared to drive speakers.

I should also note unless you live in the middle of a field the difference between awesome sound system and neighbours knocking on your door is not a lot, if anything at all, so when buying a decent speaker setup it often pays to make sure you have a decent headphone setup as well and doubly so if you plan to watch anything past half ten at night.

*they often come with a general line in but otherwise you can snatch the would be CD player or something. I have also been known to pull apart an all in one stack and subvert a few things but I will spare coverage of that for now other than to say it is a fairly nice way to add a line in to a car to connect a music player.