I have ordered the Focal Bird 2.1 system but am now having second thoughts about a couple of things:
1. They are not magnetically shielded and will be used within a foot of my iMac or MacbookPro. Is this a problem?
2. The DAC with subwoofer is meant to sit behind the computer. My computers have spinning drives, not SSD. Would vibration from the sub cause hard drive corruption?
Any advice would be appreciated. Why do I think of these things after I hand over my money? Hopefully I can cancel my order Monday and get a refund if the above issues are indeed significant.
Diane
First of all Focal Bird sounds like one of those overpriced sound kits that are sold in Brookstone, especially since it lacks any kind of technical data to support its audio fidelity.
Moving onto the issue at hand, you want a good audio setup. If you're able to afford the Focal Bird you have a generous budget. For any audiophile setup you need a quality standalone DAC, such as the oDAC (Objective DAC). I would vouch for the oDAC to be the best bang for your buck, holding its own against $600+ components. Choice of DAC would mostly lie in personal preference and taste, but most audiophiles consider 24-bit 96kHz to be the bare minimum for a good DAC.
Then what I would recommend getting are:
1. Active subwoofer + Active studio monitors or passive bookshelf speakers with standalone amp. These you can go on a site like Musician's Friend. Behringer, Yamaha, M-Audio, Audioengine, etc. have quality monitors. These tend to outperform any and all kinds of "audiophile" products, projecting music as what they are supposed to sound like. That would make sense since these are made for music production mostly.
However if you are going for a specific kind of sound signature, such as those found in Grado and Bose, then you might want to look into different kinds of speakers. Another con that studio monitors have are size; they are almost as your desktop printer.
Standalone components give you the most flexibility and often times the best sound, but you really some know how and experience to get the most out of it. Also it might not look the best.
2. Active 2.1 system. Swans M10 comes to mind. These aren't common among audiophile-quality products since most of them don't have subwoofers (the main speaker cabinet can reproduce the subwoofer range in most cases; the subwoofer then only serves to give the vibration feeling and nothing else). But the few that do get a lot of hype in the audiophile community tend to be very good, such as the Swans M10.
As for cables any kind of decently-shielded cable will do. Don't fall for the Monster snake oil.
Subwoofer vibration won't really harm your computer hard drive. Laptops already have shock absorption built in, especially with the MacBook Pro's hard drive cage. As for the iMac, the aluminum body will absorb most of the vibration before it gets to the hard drive anyway.
I think magnetic shielding only makes difference in close proximity to CRTs.
Not necessarily true. The switching power supply found in most computers may create interference with unshielded audio components. This is most prominent where cables are really long, but can still be found in small scale setups such as home audio.
