I work from home, and I have a dedicated room for this, where I spend my working hours and some leisure time too. The room is quite small.
My current setup is integrated audio on mobo Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS4, headphones Beyerdynamic DT531 connected to front headphone jack of Antec P182B case. The integrated audio picks lots of interference, and the background noise coming from that is actually quite loud, making the current setup pretty much intolerable. I didn't have such interference issues with my previous computer.
The interference noise changes if I go to 3D mode, or if I download something over the network, etc. In fact I can hear almost everything I do on the computer as changes in the interference noise. PSU is Corsair VX450EU if that matters.
I'd like to use some active monitors for speakers, prefer balanced audio connections and/or optical. Stereo sound is enough, and 2-way speakers seem to be the way to go.
I'd also like to be able to use headphones when I feel like it.
Can you recommend me some parts based on the above, please. I tried to search for a sound card with balanced outputs, but only found ridiculously expensive ones. But if I just keep my onboard audio and use the optical out to get bit perfect sound output, then I would need to find speakers that can take optical spdif in. And neither of those approaches solves the problem for headphones, or does it?
EDIT: the audio output is used for listening to music while I work, and playing games or watching movies on my leisure time. It won't be used for the work itself, but it's still very important to bring me happiness.
Quality audio system for small home office
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
I AGREE
with alleycat.
You should try to get the sound out of the computer case with a USB DAC and then to a T amp and then to speakers of your choice.
go here for lots of good ideas:
http://www.audio-magus.com/category_s/6.htm
You should try to get the sound out of the computer case with a USB DAC and then to a T amp and then to speakers of your choice.
go here for lots of good ideas:
http://www.audio-magus.com/category_s/6.htm
Thanks, those seem to make sense.
So I could get a plain DAC or external sound card, which has coaxial and/or optical spdif in and/or usb in.
It would contain the DAC itself, and a headphone amp, and volume control.
As outputs it would have balanced xlr outputs and a headphone jack.
This is pretty much what I am looking for.
But one question remains: do they use much power? Many of those listed on the url you gave say max consumption is 60W which sounds ridiculous for a little box like that. I'd like to keep my heat sources low for being green and having a quite small working room.
So I could get a plain DAC or external sound card, which has coaxial and/or optical spdif in and/or usb in.
It would contain the DAC itself, and a headphone amp, and volume control.
As outputs it would have balanced xlr outputs and a headphone jack.
This is pretty much what I am looking for.
But one question remains: do they use much power? Many of those listed on the url you gave say max consumption is 60W which sounds ridiculous for a little box like that. I'd like to keep my heat sources low for being green and having a quite small working room.
They shouldn't use much power. The purple one in Greg's link uses less than half a watt. I don't know why a DAC would need a 60W power supply. Anyway, have a good look around, there are plenty of DACs out there. You might want to think about whether you need balanced outputs though, as this will limit your choices.
I use a pair of Tannoy Reveal 5A's - they take either unbalanced 1/4" patch cord or balanced XLR inputs, are built like tanks, can be picked up for $cheap and sound fantastic for the money.
They'd be no use without a decent source though, and IMO the best thing you can do to get rid of the interference in the short term is ditch the onboard sound - even a basic PCI card, although "technically" inferior to most of today's onboard hardware, will bring about a marked increase in stereo sound quality just by pulling the sensitive analogue stage up out of the EM volcano that is your mobo. Not a definitive solution, but would give you an instant improvement in the short term.
They'd be no use without a decent source though, and IMO the best thing you can do to get rid of the interference in the short term is ditch the onboard sound - even a basic PCI card, although "technically" inferior to most of today's onboard hardware, will bring about a marked increase in stereo sound quality just by pulling the sensitive analogue stage up out of the EM volcano that is your mobo. Not a definitive solution, but would give you an instant improvement in the short term.
As a general statement , for a small room I reckon you would be well served by looking for a pair of active monitors that are made for home recording studios. Most of them have digital inputs these days and nearly all have balance inputs. Maybe a nearfield would be good if your room is small, but I'm using a mid field pair in my room which is also small and they sound fine. There's a bunch around that come at not bad prices.
At the low end of the market look at the Behringer range, they're cheap and not bad although the gear snobs will say otherwise: http://www.behringer.com/02_products/lo ... m?lang=ENG
At the high end if you want great sound and have some money get a pair of Genelec monitors: http://www.genelec.com/ And look... they're made in Finland so maybe you could just go down to your local and pick up a pair!
In between there's a great range: I'm using a pair of Alesis M1 monitors which I quite like. In a couple of studios I've heard the Tannoys that Blackworx mentioned and they're nice. You could also look for stuff by Event, Mackie and Fostex for example.
Potsy
At the low end of the market look at the Behringer range, they're cheap and not bad although the gear snobs will say otherwise: http://www.behringer.com/02_products/lo ... m?lang=ENG
At the high end if you want great sound and have some money get a pair of Genelec monitors: http://www.genelec.com/ And look... they're made in Finland so maybe you could just go down to your local and pick up a pair!
In between there's a great range: I'm using a pair of Alesis M1 monitors which I quite like. In a couple of studios I've heard the Tannoys that Blackworx mentioned and they're nice. You could also look for stuff by Event, Mackie and Fostex for example.
Potsy
alleycat wrote:They shouldn't use much power. The purple one in Greg's link uses less than half a watt. I don't know why a DAC would need a 60W power supply. Anyway, have a good look around, there are plenty of DACs out there. You might want to think about whether you need balanced outputs though, as this will limit your choices.
That purple one can output 0.4W from it's output connectors, but I fail to find where it says that it uses less than half a watt, so maybe you mistook that for the consumption? It probably uses a lot more than it can output.http://www.audio-magus.com/DAC707_Super_Pro_USB_p/dac707usb.htm wrote: Output voltage ± 3.5V / 400mW
Almost all the other DACs in that same site have something like this on their feature list: Max power consumption 60W
However 60W sounds hard to believe for me too, so it would be nice to know for real, because it would be very ungreen to use that much power for so simple task.
Please read from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_audio the subtitles Interference reduction and Differential signalling and you will probably agree with me that unbalanced is crap and a compromise that I don't want to take.
Potsy, yeah, I think I'd like a pair of active near-field monitors. In fact I have been browsing http://www.genelec.com/ a bit lately 
My friend has a pair of behringer speakers that take spdif in directly. That would be a very simple option, but I am not convinced that they are good enough, since I paid a bit more for my headphones than he paid for the speakers. However it won't solve my problem of wanting to use headphones sometimes, so I'd still need to get at least a separate soundcard anyway.
Currently I'm thinking of a pair of the cheapest Genelecs that can take digital input, ie. Genelec 8130A, and maybe the matching subwoofer.
But then I would need a soundcard that can output AES/EBU digital signal (spdif is consumer version, aes/ebu is professional, not that I would mind between those 2 because digital is as good as it gets, though).
So I would still need 3 things from the soundcard: AES/EBU output, headphone jack and a physical volume control knob or a remote. For this I haven't yet found a reasonably priced choise, as all the professional cards seem to be very expensive.
Of course non-functional requirements from the soundcard would be low background noise and also low lag.
My friend has a pair of behringer speakers that take spdif in directly. That would be a very simple option, but I am not convinced that they are good enough, since I paid a bit more for my headphones than he paid for the speakers. However it won't solve my problem of wanting to use headphones sometimes, so I'd still need to get at least a separate soundcard anyway.
Currently I'm thinking of a pair of the cheapest Genelecs that can take digital input, ie. Genelec 8130A, and maybe the matching subwoofer.
But then I would need a soundcard that can output AES/EBU digital signal (spdif is consumer version, aes/ebu is professional, not that I would mind between those 2 because digital is as good as it gets, though).
So I would still need 3 things from the soundcard: AES/EBU output, headphone jack and a physical volume control knob or a remote. For this I haven't yet found a reasonably priced choise, as all the professional cards seem to be very expensive.
Of course non-functional requirements from the soundcard would be low background noise and also low lag.
lm, you're right I misread the specs. In any case, however, a USB DAC should have quite low power requirements. For example there are many which are powered from USB only, and others which use AA batteries.
I don't think unbalanced is "crap", it's what most people (even "audiophiles") use in their hifi systems. Certainly you would need to use balanced if you're interested in sound recording and production. Personally, I consider it overkill for a small home system, something you will eventually find out for yourself.
The interference you are currently experiencing is a result of the integrated audio, and in most circumstances just having a decent quality soundcard will alleviate all your problems. I prefer the idea of a USB DAC because it is a simple, universal, external solution. You can easily use it with any PC/laptop and hifi gear you might have either now or in the future.
I don't think unbalanced is "crap", it's what most people (even "audiophiles") use in their hifi systems. Certainly you would need to use balanced if you're interested in sound recording and production. Personally, I consider it overkill for a small home system, something you will eventually find out for yourself.
The interference you are currently experiencing is a result of the integrated audio, and in most circumstances just having a decent quality soundcard will alleviate all your problems. I prefer the idea of a USB DAC because it is a simple, universal, external solution. You can easily use it with any PC/laptop and hifi gear you might have either now or in the future.
I also looked into that soundcard, and some things puzzled me. Maybe you can help me clear them up.Tez wrote:I just bought an ESI Juli@ soundcard and am very pelased with it. It has interchangable rca and trs in/outs. The driver is very simple and well implemented, and installed takes up less than 1mb.
Can you connect a pair of speakers AND headphones simultaneously to that card and then select programmatically which ones to use? It seemed to have so small number of outputs that I was not totally sure if it's possible.
If you do connect headphones, does that limit you to using either the rca side of the card or the balanced, which one or no limits?
I browsed their forums a bit, and their users didn't seem to be really happy with the drivers, any comment on that?
Unfortunately I do not think this is possible. You have a choice of the rca connectors or the trs connectors, each having 2 inputs and 2 outputs. I currently have my speakers connected through rca and as such cannot use my headphoneslm wrote:Can you connect a pair of speakers AND headphones simultaneously to that card and then select programmatically which ones to use? It seemed to have so small number of outputs that I was not totally sure if it's possible.
If you do connect headphones, does that limit you to using either the rca side of the card or the balanced, which one or no limits?
I browsed their forums a bit, and their users didn't seem to be really happy with the drivers, any comment on that?
I swapped over to the trs outputs to try my Audio Technica A900 headphones, which have a low impedance, but they sounded pretty bad. I really think this card requires a headphone amp, so you are kind of limited to no outputs, sorry this was a bad recommendation for your requirements lol. I'm planning on buying a stereo amp and getting some bookshelf speakers, so this can double up as a headphone amp.
I'm surprised that people are unhappy with the drivers. They are very minimalistic and worked straight away with no problems. The 1mb installation certainly beats the ~200mb X-Fi installation
I'd like to add a positive vote for the AEs too: I set them up in my fathers office and they sound great. You could combine them with a Trends Audio UD-10.1* and have great sound. Another option is a set of (used) monitor speakers with an efficient amplifier. I use a Kingrex T20U amplifier with USB dac built in with some sweet KEF monitors. The Kingrex gets good reviews around the web and sounds very good. It doesn't have a headphones jack though, so that might be a dealbreaker for you. Oh, and keep in mind that the Kingrex requires banana plugs on your speaker wire.Tez wrote:In terms of active monitors I have heard many positive reviews of the Audioengine A2/A5.
*: before reading this thread I never heard of Audiomagus; I have *no* idea if their prices are competetive, I merely linked to them for the products.
I'm using a Presonus Central Station as a preamp for a pair of Yamaha HS550M monitors and the matching Yamaha subwoofer. Into the central station I have plugged digital coax from my PC, balanced TRS from a POD XT Pro that's doubling as a USB audio interface on my Mac, and a stand-alone DVD player unbalanced. That still leaves another TSR and digital optical inputs for future use. I have a pair of Grados hanging on a hook under one of the monitors, which are mounted on the wall behind my desk.
My office is about 8' square.
My office is about 8' square.
First one detail: I'm moving in by the end of month, so couldn't yet implement anything for the office.
I also realized that the interference can not be heard, if I connect line out from computer to my stereo amp, and then my headphones to that. The interference was pretty much constant volume that did not depend on pc volume settings, when I connected my headphones to the front port of the case. I could not put the pc main volume higher because it would be too loud, but now that I connect it to my amp, I can use the amp to set a good volume level, and have the pc main volume near max to eliminate the interference effects.
Amy, your office has some details I also have planned to implement, like monitor wall-mount and having a hook for headphones. Currently I have just this single 30" HP LP3065, but I was thinking of making a wall-mount for it, that can be upgraded to hold two 30" monitors later. Though this 30" is plenty for me at the moment, so it might take a couple years before I get another one if at all.
I think I have also figured out what I am going to buy. Since my old stereo amp and these headphones are now giving me decent sound quality, I don't have to buy something immediately. So I decided to go for something that might sound like huge overkill, and I don't really have the money for it yet, but I can start saving for it and be motivated about it.
So it's going to be a pair of Genelec 8240A Bi-Amplified DSP Monitoring System http://www.genelec.com/products/2-way-monitors/8240a/ with Genelec Loudspeaker Manager software http://www.genelec.com/products/dsp-pro ... -software/
and a usb volume control knob Griffin PowerMate http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate
I realize it costs some serious money, but I'll just save for it and it's not a problem.
The sound would go from my pc's coaxial s/p-dif output through a trivial converter to the XLR AES/EBU input in one of those speakers, and the second one is daisy chained to the first one. The converter only changes impedance and connector type, and it's totally passive, so I don't have to get a new soundcard, but I can get one later if needed. I am not sure if my integrated audio allows bit-perfect digital out, so I'll find out.
The griffin powermate is a usb volume knob, that I can place to a convenient location, and it's small enough for not being in the way. The genelec loudspeaker manager software can use the powermate to control the volume level in the speakers instead of just the pc.
The management software includes a calibration microphone and the software can adapt the speakers to the room where they are used, flattening the frequency response if the room warps it. It would be very flat already, if the speakers were used in an anechoic chamber. Of course my room is far from such a chamber, so after getting this stuff, the most important thing I can do to the sound quality would be acoustical treatment of the room. I'm going to investigate that better next month when I have moved. It would help towards pc silencing too.
The speakers themselves have a DSP that takes the digital input signal, and all the control signals/settings, and the DSP does the equalization (if any) and volume control, and then feeds the signal to the rest of the system, which is just the DAC, amps for both speaker elements, and the elements themselves. There's no control on the analog side at all, everything is done on the digital side, even the cross-over is digital. This approach sounds very nice to me.
I don't think I could get any nearer to the way it was supposed to sound, as these are pretty much the same stuff that is used in the mixing studios.
I also realized that the interference can not be heard, if I connect line out from computer to my stereo amp, and then my headphones to that. The interference was pretty much constant volume that did not depend on pc volume settings, when I connected my headphones to the front port of the case. I could not put the pc main volume higher because it would be too loud, but now that I connect it to my amp, I can use the amp to set a good volume level, and have the pc main volume near max to eliminate the interference effects.
Amy, your office has some details I also have planned to implement, like monitor wall-mount and having a hook for headphones. Currently I have just this single 30" HP LP3065, but I was thinking of making a wall-mount for it, that can be upgraded to hold two 30" monitors later. Though this 30" is plenty for me at the moment, so it might take a couple years before I get another one if at all.
I think I have also figured out what I am going to buy. Since my old stereo amp and these headphones are now giving me decent sound quality, I don't have to buy something immediately. So I decided to go for something that might sound like huge overkill, and I don't really have the money for it yet, but I can start saving for it and be motivated about it.
So it's going to be a pair of Genelec 8240A Bi-Amplified DSP Monitoring System http://www.genelec.com/products/2-way-monitors/8240a/ with Genelec Loudspeaker Manager software http://www.genelec.com/products/dsp-pro ... -software/
and a usb volume control knob Griffin PowerMate http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate
I realize it costs some serious money, but I'll just save for it and it's not a problem.
The sound would go from my pc's coaxial s/p-dif output through a trivial converter to the XLR AES/EBU input in one of those speakers, and the second one is daisy chained to the first one. The converter only changes impedance and connector type, and it's totally passive, so I don't have to get a new soundcard, but I can get one later if needed. I am not sure if my integrated audio allows bit-perfect digital out, so I'll find out.
The griffin powermate is a usb volume knob, that I can place to a convenient location, and it's small enough for not being in the way. The genelec loudspeaker manager software can use the powermate to control the volume level in the speakers instead of just the pc.
The management software includes a calibration microphone and the software can adapt the speakers to the room where they are used, flattening the frequency response if the room warps it. It would be very flat already, if the speakers were used in an anechoic chamber. Of course my room is far from such a chamber, so after getting this stuff, the most important thing I can do to the sound quality would be acoustical treatment of the room. I'm going to investigate that better next month when I have moved. It would help towards pc silencing too.
The speakers themselves have a DSP that takes the digital input signal, and all the control signals/settings, and the DSP does the equalization (if any) and volume control, and then feeds the signal to the rest of the system, which is just the DAC, amps for both speaker elements, and the elements themselves. There's no control on the analog side at all, everything is done on the digital side, even the cross-over is digital. This approach sounds very nice to me.
I don't think I could get any nearer to the way it was supposed to sound, as these are pretty much the same stuff that is used in the mixing studios.
computer speakers and headphone amp
I've seen good reviews of Genelec speakers. For a lower cost but apparently very good alternative, check out the computer system from Axiom (http://www.axiomaudio.com/audiobytecomp ... akers.html). Haven't heard them but I have and like the M22s.
For combined headphone amp /DACs check out http://www.headphone.com/products/headphone-amps/.
And for reviews of similar stuff http://www.head-fi.org/.
For combined headphone amp /DACs check out http://www.headphone.com/products/headphone-amps/.
And for reviews of similar stuff http://www.head-fi.org/.
I think that will be a top sounding set up. If you're going to spend the cash on those speakers it's also worth thinking about the room rather than relying on calibration too much. If it sounds nice it's always nicer to listen in and be in. There are many ways of making a room sound good without much effort. Books are great - in my case a long bookshelf across the back of the room and in the corner fixed a boomy bass sound and my storage problems!
Potsy
Potsy
Last edited by potsy on Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hmmm... generally hard flat surfaces bounce sound back. You want lots of uneven surfaces. But not soft stuff over the top of hard surfaces (like egg cartons) because the sound goes throught it and still bounces around. So you're in a bind - uneven stuff will generally collect dust. But there's always a solution - how about this bass trap on the roof of a studio. Got a spare boat to hang around? I think its full of something soft, and man, does it look far out!
Image pinched from Audio Technology Magazine, latest issue, no60. A great mag.
Image pinched from Audio Technology Magazine, latest issue, no60. A great mag.