Speakers for iMac?

[teidon]

If I wanted audiophile quality, I wouldn't be using my imac and Mp3s as the source.

Actually computers can be much better sound sources than CD players. You can buy as expensive DAC for your computer as your budget ever allows (most expensive ones are crazy expensive, like several tens of thousands). DAC is a very important component in sound system, especially so in audiophile setups. (CD players have a DAC build-in, quality depends on the price tag of the CD player)

The other, even more important reason why computers are better sound sources is that you have whole lot of individual songs in your computer but your CD player can take only one disc at a time with limited number of songs. With your computer you can create what not kinds of playlists, and they can be as long as you want, you can listen to one album at a time or you can mix all songs of one artist or genre together or do what ever comes to your mind.

And no, no serious audiophile touches MP3s. But luckily there are these so called lossless audio codecs. And with computers you aren't stuck to CD quality sound, which is 44,1KHz/16bit, but you can have some 96KHz/24bit or even some crazy high resolutions like 192KHz/24bit and beyond.

So computers are not only better sounding sources than CD players, but you can have your whole music library only few presses away. And you don't need to listen to music in front of your computer, you can send it to your living room too - or any room.

 

[DoFoT9]

Actually computers can be much better sound sources than CD players. You can buy as expensive DAC for your computer as your budget ever allow

is it possible to find cheapish but decent quality DACs? say for $200-$300? also, how do they work? do they process the sound instead of the computers sound card?

i am considering purchasing either z5500s or some nice bookshelf speakers (which i forget the name of, about $400 each though), i would also use the DAC with my IE6 Sennheiser earphones and soon to be Weststones. suggestions?

 

[teidon]

is it possible to find cheapish but decent quality DACs? say for $200-$300? also, how do they work? do they process the sound instead of the computers sound card?

i am considering purchasing either z5500s or some nice bookshelf speakers (which i forget the name of, about $400 each though), i would also use the DAC with my IE6 Sennheiser earphones and soon to be Weststones. suggestions?

There are DACs in many price ranges, but if you are going to use speakers that costs 400$ a pop, I highly recommend more expensive DAC than 200-300$. I had Cambridge Audio DacMagic (350€) and then switched to Wavelength Proton (850€) and there was an improvement in sound even though my front speakers are only 200€ a piece (active speakers).

I want to underline the fact that DAC is very, very important part of sound system.

The function of DAC is basically very simple. It takes digital audio signal (from CD disc, MP3 file...) and converts it to analog signal. But that is very important step in sound system, because the DAC is actually *the device* that generates the very signal that moves the speakers - after being sufficiently amplified. So if the DAC is bad, the signal will be bad and the sound coming from the speakers will be bad. There's no way around that.


There are many kind of DACs out there, and if you want to use headphones every once in a while, there are DACs that have built-in headphone amp. For example the Wavelength Proton that I have is not only a DAC, but it also has headphone amp with headphone out (3,5mm jack). It of course also has a pair of RCA connectors to connect to your speaker system (-> amp -> speakers).

And for the record, if anyone spend hundred or couple or more USD/EUR for headphones, do yourself a favor and buy headphone amp.

For whole lot of, and then whole lot more, information about computer audio devices, have a look at Computer Audiophile and it's forums.

 

[Tigerman82]

is it possible to find cheapish but decent quality DACs? say for $200-$300? also, how do they work? do they process the sound instead of the computers sound card?

I think the NuFoce uDac is probably the best choice there is. The uDacs are small, cheapish and have, I'm told, amazing quality. Moreover, they look good with the iMacs.

I'm actually going to buy the black uDac-2 this week and use with my mid 2010 iMac and my Audioengine A2 -speakers.

 

[vixducis]

Ok we're going a little bit off topic here but isn't it cheaper and more expandable if you just buy yourself a good receiver and send your audio there via Toslink?

 

[Tigerman82]

Ok we're going a little bit off topic here but isn't it cheaper and more expandable if you just buy yourself a good receiver and send your audio there via Toslink?

Well why not use the speakers of your home theater instead of buying dedicated computer speakers... I think many people want to keep their hifi/home theater and computer separate, and I bet most of us have our receivers far away from our iMacs. I don't know about others but I just hate seeing long cables going along the wall.

One nice feature of a DAC (like the uDac) is that it has a headphone jack as well. Unless you buy USB-speakers (which almost never are of excellent quality) you must occupy the headphone jack of the iMac with the speakers. If you need to use headphones, you have to reach into the back of the iMac, unplug the speakers and plug in the headphones. When you're done with the headphones, you have to do the unplugging process all over again. With a DAC you don't need to unplug anything and you don't have to reach into the back of the iMac.

 

[teidon]

Ok we're going a little bit off topic here but isn't it cheaper and more expandable if you just buy yourself a good receiver and send your audio there via Toslink?

Cheaper? No, you need a good DAC in that setup too. Receivers have DAC in them, along with amplifier, power supply and maybe some other fancy things (like DVD/BluRay player, etc). And you get all that in one package that costs how much? 200? 300? Decent amp alone is more than that, not to mention good DAC. And what if you need more powerful amp? Or you aren't happy with the sound the DAC produces? You need to replace the whole device. Of course it's cheaper to buy cheaper devices, but cheap is cheap no matter which way around you look at it.

Expandable? Not sure about that either. See above and also for example if you use iTunes as your chosen media player, you can use Airport Express (or few) to stream music from your computer to anywhere in your house wirelessly. So one moment you can be listening to music in front of your computer and the next moment you can be in your living room and listen to the exact same song on better speakers. And once you are done listening to music, and want to watch a movie on your big screen, you just flip a switch and you can enjoy the movie.


Of course what's a good setup for one isn't good for another. For example I listen to a lot of music in front of my computer. So having good setup in living room would serve me little purpose as music listening setup. The expensive speakers would be sitting there doing nothing but collecting dust, while I would be listening to music on my Mac's internal speakers.

 

[Davieis]

Bose Companion II Series 2.

 

[DannyBres]

I am looking at the Audioengine A2 and the M-Audio AV30.

Anyone got any advice on which to go for?

 

[vixducis]

Cheaper? No, you need a good DAC in that setup too. Receivers have DAC in them, along with amplifier, power supply and maybe some other fancy things (like DVD/BluRay player, etc). And you get all that in one package that costs how much? 200? 300? Decent amp alone is more than that, not to mention good DAC. And what if you need more powerful amp? Or you aren't happy with the sound the DAC produces? You need to replace the whole device. Of course it's cheaper to buy cheaper devices, but cheap is cheap no matter which way around you look at it.

I personally own a pioneer vsx-1020, which is considered to be a pretty good receiver in its price range. I also bet that 90% of the people can't justice the extra price of your DAC over the receiver for less than half the functionality. In fact, with speakers in the sub $1500 range they won't even hear a difference.

Expandable? Not sure about that either. See above and also for example if you use iTunes as your chosen media player, you can use Airport Express (or few) to stream music from your computer to anywhere in your house wirelessly. So one moment you can be listening to music in front of your computer and the next moment you can be in your living room and listen to the exact same song on better speakers. And once you are done listening to music, and want to watch a movie on your big screen, you just flip a switch and you can enjoy the movie.

What if you want to connect a gaming console... or a blu-ray player? Or if you want to play dts movies? Or if you don't want to use iTunes?

 

[Tigerman82]

I am looking at the Audioengine A2 and the M-Audio AV30.

The thing about the AV30s is that while they are good they are as great as AV40s. I read a bunch of reviews of those speakers and they all pretty much commented that AV30s are good but... get the AV40s if you can.

On the other hand, Audioengine A2s have received praise without being compared to other speakers. Moreover, they are smaller than AV30 and more stylish (M-Audio speakers can seem a bit plastic-looking while Audioengine speakers are clean-looking and more along the lines of hifi-speakers). However, the A2s can require a little tuning and I would say that desktop stands for the A2s are a must (otherwise they just don't sound as good).

As someone who had M-Audio and Audioengine as options and did hours of research... Audioengine A2s are the better choice by far. If you have room for M-Audio AV40 then get them, but if you want something small and stylish with a tight sound (and as much bass as a small speaker can have) you cannot beat A2s. They (black version) look great around the iMac.

 

[DannyBres]

Thanks Tigerman! Any chance of a picture of your setup?

 

[teidon]

I personally own a pioneer vsx-1020, which is considered to be a pretty good receiver in its price range. I also bet that 90% of the people can't justice the extra price of your DAC over the receiver for less than half the functionality. In fact, with speakers in the sub $1500 range they won't even hear a difference.

Of course it matters what you want or need and what you are willing to pay. If you need a multichannel amp for BluRay, then you simply need A/V receiver, there's (by my knowledge) no other way to get multichannel audio out. But if you on the other hand want good sound quality (read: hi-fi) for music listening, then A/V receivers are pretty bad. Unless you want to listen to multichannel music, in which case A/V receiver is again your only choice.

And I have 800€ active speakers (2x front + sub) and I am pretty much sure that anyone who isn't deaf can hear a difference between DacMagic (350€) and Proton (850€).

What if you want to connect a gaming console... or a blu-ray player? Or if you want to play dts movies? Or if you don't want to use iTunes?

Depends if you need multichannel or not, and if the devices have separate digital out. There are DACs that have multiple digital in connectors. The one type of DAC that does not exist is multichannel DAC. You might be able to manage with multiple 2-channel DACs and amps, but that would be messy.

But if you need multichannel audio, A/V receiver is your only choice. But multichannel movie/gaming and hi-fi music are two different worlds. Sure you can listen to music using A/V receiver, but there's a sound quality cap in those receivers, and if you want better than that, you need other equipment besides the receiver.

And there are many other ways to stream music wirelessly to your home theater / hi-fi setups. Ones that don't even require a computer, much less iTunes.


At the end of the day, there are those who really care about sound quality (audiophiles) and those who simply don't. It's equally pointless to try to sell a 10000$/€ hi-fi setup for someone who doesn't care about sound quality as it is to try to sell 100$/€ setup for an audiophile. Switch the price tags, and you have two deals.

 

[Tigerman82]

Thanks Tigerman! Any chance of a picture of your setup?

I took a quick picture (with flash):



I will buy the uDac-2 within a few days and will place it below the screen. The uDac is matte black so it will go perfectly together with the matte black A2s and of course the iMac.

 

[SnowOwl]

I use these and they lookgreat next to my imac. The sound quality is very good too.

http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk/Default.aspx?pagename=Aego-M-loudspeaker

 

[jrcsh6]

Actually computers can be much better sound sources than CD players. You can buy as expensive DAC for your computer as your budget ever allows (most expensive ones are crazy expensive, like several tens of thousands). DAC is a very important component in sound system, especially so in audiophile setups. (CD players have a DAC build-in, quality depends on the price tag of the CD player)

The other, even more important reason why computers are better sound sources is that you have whole lot of individual songs in your computer but your CD player can take only one disc at a time with limited number of songs. With your computer you can create what not kinds of playlists, and they can be as long as you want, you can listen to one album at a time or you can mix all songs of one artist or genre together or do what ever comes to your mind.

And no, no serious audiophile touches MP3s. But luckily there are these so called lossless audio codecs. And with computers you aren't stuck to CD quality sound, which is 44,1KHz/16bit, but you can have some 96KHz/24bit or even some crazy high resolutions like 192KHz/24bit and beyond.

So computers are not only better sounding sources than CD players, but you can have your whole music library only few presses away. And you don't need to listen to music in front of your computer, you can send it to your living room too - or any room.

not to beat a dead dog but computer are only capable of all of this. 99% of them are inferior to a cd. the high bit rate stuff is very hard to come by. (i would highly recommend the beatles apple usb in 24bit flac!), lossless is still a lower sample than a cd though hardly worth noting.


a "genuine audiophile" would likely have a serious set up with vinyl and a cd player and they don't care if they have to change cd's or records when they want another song.

 

[teidon]

lossless is still a lower sample than a cd though hardly worth noting.

If you rip a 44,1KHz/16bit CD, you get bunch of 44,1KHz/16bit files that are identical to the CD.

a "genuine audiophile" would likely have a serious set up with vinyl and a cd player

Genuine audiophiles might be little old-fashioned. The thing still is that if you want the best of the best sound quality and you are willing to pay for it and see some trouble for it, computers beats both CD and Vinyl players in both sound quality and convenience.



Anyways, I'll try and take a photo of the Genelec 6010A's next to my yet-to-receive iMac 27" on top of the best speaker stands ever: a stack of 15 manga books.

 

[Killyp]

lossless is still a lower sample than a cd though hardly worth noting.

44.1 KHz lossless is the same sample rate as 44.1 KHz PCM (CD), and the same bit depth (16 bit), but is a lower bitrate as the data is saved in a condensed form...

 

[teidon]

44.1 KHz lossless is the same sample rate as 44.1 KHz PCM (CD), and the same bit depth (16 bit), but is a lower bitrate as the data is saved in a condensed form...

That doesn't matter because what the lossless codecs do is that they remove useless leading zeros from the samples. For example "0000001001001110" is exact same as "1001001110". The later just saves 6 bits of storage. And when there are 44100 samples per second, removing leading zeros tends to affect some.

Lossy codecs (MP3, AAC, etc) are quite different than lossless codecs. For example in lossy codecs the best way to describe sound quality is to use bit rate (256kbit/s VBR, 320kbit/s CBR, etc). Sample rates and bit depth have very little meaning there. With lossless, the exact opposite is true. Sample rate and bit depth (44,1KHz/16bit, 96KHz/24bit, etc.) is the way to describe sound quality, while bit rate just tells how much disk space the file uses.

 

[Killyp]

That doesn't matter because what the lossless codecs do is that they remove useless leading zeros from the samples...

That's the point I was trying to make, but I didn't do a very good job of it

 

[raychristenpaul]

....recently bought an Audica MPS-1, just a 2.0 system. It's small (kinda heavy), solid built and the sounds are impressive. Well, it all depends on oneself towards the end....I'm happy with mine.

 

[SuperMiguel]

Is it really worth it? To get speakers for the imac? My 2011 sounds really good

 

[Shikasta]

"really good" sound

Is it really worth it? To get speakers for the imac? My 2011 sounds really good

If you were colour blind and had never experienced the full range of colours some other people saw then you might think as you do.

BUT, what if you woke up one day with full colour perception restored. I reckon you'd be SHOCKED by what you'd been missing but never realised.

Translate that to your ears and the sounds they are capable of hearing.

The down side to all this is the further you go looking for GREAT sound the more expensive it tends to get. The art is in finding a sound system that makes you smile when you sit and listen to it, and doesn't tire your ears/brain.

However, if you really believe what you have is 'really good', I'm happy for you (and your wallet!)

Just saying...

 

[SuperMiguel]

If you were colour blind and had never experienced the full range of colours some other people saw then you might think as you do.

BUT, what if you woke up one day with full colour perception restored. I reckon you'd be SHOCKED by what you'd been missing but never realised.

Translate that to your ears and the sounds they are capable of hearing.

The down side to all this is the further you go looking for GREAT sound the more expensive it tends to get. The art is in finding a sound system that makes you smile when you sit and listen to it, and doesn't tire your ears/brain.

However, if you really believe what you have is 'really good', I'm happy for you (and your wallet!)

Just saying...

Umm nice

 

[TMRaven]

I strongly suggest you get externals for your iMac. The speakers have no extension on both the bottom and top end. You will literally not get a lot of bass detail that most songs provide. The speakers are compressed sounding-- their soundstage is compressed to about a 5 foot cube in front of you. A more robust 2.0 system will be way wider and deeper in its imaging. Because the soundstage is so compressed, the instruments aren't every separated as well.

There's an overall lack of timbre for the iMac speakers. It's a grating, shrill, tinny sound. More robust speakers are warmer, yet still provide a sparkle when called for.