Best 2.1 Sound System for Under $400

[esldude]

I added some youtube clips using your P120 mike above in my last post.  I think I added them after you replied.

[Nobear]

22 minutes ago, esldude said:

I added some youtube clips using your P120 mike above in my last post.  I think I added them after you replied.

 

Very nice! The C1000 sounded cleaner to me, but I don't know if that was more the mic or the interface. Anyway, the P120 sounds good for the price!

[Ralf11]

golden ratio dimensions minimize the problems with longitudinal and transverse room modes (i.e. resonances)

 

this affects bass up to mids

 

do a search here for "master handbook" and you will find a thread I started with 2 sources to help explain room acoustics

[Nobear]

Alright, I measured my bedroom. Compared to the dimensions you guys have been talking about, it is tiny: about 12.5ft X 11.5ft X 9ft (height). It also is my bedroom, so it has, well, a bed, and other furniture, and a 3-faced corner closet.

 

It seems like, due to the limitations of my bedroom and budget, my best bet may be to return my ProMedia and get those LSR305s, and hold off on a subwoofer until I live somewhere with a bigger room dedicated to listening and/or doubling as a home theater, but not also serving as a bedroom with extraneous furniture. It seems it would be too much work and expense to make my bedroom half decent for bass, and that it will never be optimal. I guess the bedroom I grew up in was probably better for bass, which may be a big factor in why a 20 watt iSub sounded louder there than a 65 watt Klipsch subwoofer sounds here.

 

Now, for LSR305s, would it be advisable for me to do anything special to make them sound as optimal as possible given what I have to work with, or is their range of 43Hz-24kHz much more forgiving of room acoustics than below 43Hz?

[Ralf11]

Some Bad news from the Master Handbook of Acoustics:

 

Rooms smaller than ~1,500 ft3 are highly prone to sonic coloration (p. 331, citing Gilford)

 

Optimum room size for music is larger than that for speech and is from 3,000 ft3 to 35,000 ft3 (based on reverb time of 0.6 ms to 1.1 ms) - p. 348-349 Hndbk

 

but the bed might actually help as it can act as an absorber

 

how do you feel about headphones?

 

you can just treat the !&^*()_* out of it and make it sound a lot better...

[Nobear]

22 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

how do you feel about headphones?

 

You know, the more I discuss acoustics here, the better an idea headphones seem to be lol! The thing is, I had a pair of Sennheiser HD280s years ago, but I gave them to my sister. She was actually making music in the intervening years, while I was wasting most of my time on computer games, so I consider that she made much better use of them than I would have.

 

That said... I liked their flat and full frequency response. The main reasons I like speakers and subwoofers are to feel the bass, and to conveniently share music with others who come over. But I guess I can have both those things to a decent extent with my ProMedia's, and get headphones for quality listening and/or recording.

 

I would want a pair of closed studio headphones for multitrack recording anyway. Are HD280s still tops, or what closed studio headphones would you recommend these days for $100-200, that offer a full and flat frequency response?

 

I was wondering why some people spend up to $55,000 on a pair of headphones. I guess even open headphones wouldn't be noticeably affected by room acoustics, is that right?

 

PS: Out of curiosity, how many cubic feet are the cathedrals with the best pipe organs? I guess a mansion with a cathedral-dimensioned room would be ideal for reproducing the sound of a pipe organ :P.

[STC]

 

In the same book at page 331,

 

Quote

"There is no such thing as perfect room proportions. It is easy to place undue emphasis on a mechanical factor such as this. In reality, one should be informed on the subject of room resonance and be aware of the consequences. In striving to attain high sound quality, reducing sound colourations by attention to room modesis one of many factors to consider."

 

Do not worry too  much if the room volume is below 1500ft3. If you have enough absorption it will still sound good. 

[Ralf11]

I believe all of us kibitzers agree - absorb the fk out of it.

 

personally, I hate headphones, but do recognize their superior SQ/$$ status.  But you want t fell the bas, so...

[STC]

My bedroom used to be my listening room. Never used any special absorber or treatment. The curtain, bed and carpet was good enough. And I leave the wardrobe open when listening so that it could absorb a little more. 

[Ralf11]

the wardrobe might act like a helmholtz resonator...

[GUTB]

Someone trying to get quality sound out of any room for $400, let alone a bedroom, is never going to achieve that goal -- unless he can find ultra deals on quality vintage gear.

 

$400 will take headphone listening much further; if you're willing to buy used headphones you can probably achieve entery level mid-fi. The very best value in mid-fi in my experience is the B&W P7, which you can easily find used for $200 or less. You won't ever get the soundstage of speakers though.

[rando]

On 5/20/2017 at 4:53 PM, Nobear said:

Background: I've been using a Monsoon MM-700 (originally $150, no longer sold) flat panel 2.1 system for years... 

 

2) If I buy a quality 2.1 3.5mm system for my budget, how big a difference will an external DAC make, versus connecting it straight to a mid-2014 MacBook Pro?

 

3) How big a difference will a USB filter make at this level?

 

5) How likely am I to be able to tell the difference between CD-quality and higher resolution audio at this level (again, sub-$400 total)?

 

6) What is the best combination of gear for me, and for my budget?...

 

As far as tastes, I listen to many genres, from classical to trance. I appreciate quality, but I also like to feel the bass. A pipe organ can go down to 16 Hz, which is lower than the listed response of any sound system I'm aware of in my budget. That said, I am interested in ability to reproduce frequencies down to 16 Hz, even if the response curve falls off and I only hear/feel a portion of the impact of the lowest pipes on a pipe organ.

 

Thank you in advance!

The pipe organ comment necessitated reviewing the meat of his original post.  Unquoted sections were eliminated for the sake of clarity.  Question five could have been eliminated but I think the answer will be as helpful as refresher on acoustics was.  

 

I expressed a viewpoint on BB computer speakers and the advantages of going direct through a Chinese distributor.  Moreover we are trying to decide how to make a lower end set of speakers sound their best in a real world situation.  One the large companies selling through BB actually account for.  Hard truth here is running them in just below distortion level, using wide tonal range music, outdoors for double digit hours a day over the course of a few weeks is the only way to get listenable sounds out of them.  They will never sound good but they will voice well enough to portray the dynamics originally intended when the music was recorded.  It will not work if done in a cramped bedroom while you are gone all day no matter how much pink noise or whatever you run through them. 

 

This is where your greatest gains in all aspects of sound quality are going to come.  Not cables, or a DAC costing 3x as much as the speakers, or very high resolution source material, USB/line/power filters, etc.  The Altec Lansing/Klipsch/Logitech's of this world are designed to be abused and still function.  Not to bring an epoch of sound production into their millions of customers homes.  With a lot of work they can overcome some of these inbuilt faults but they are never ever going to sound good.  

 

Once you have acquired or tediously extracted something that will express frequencies reasonably accurately is when higher quality source material will produce better results.  Differences between a 320 mp3 and 24-96 FLAC become discernible and lose a large portion of wearying quality.  Take the BB speakers back and let's focus on either headphones or something that meets your needs.

[esldude]

I don't necessarily agree with the run in statements.  However, JBL 305s are run 100 hrs at max level before leaving the factory.

[Ralf11]

BTW, OP do you rent or own the house?

[esldude]

Follow up on the max power test.  I take it from the statement below that I misinterpreted it as being done to every 305 at the factory.  Looks like the final design has to pass the test, but not that each one is run in for 100 hrs. 

 

JBL Professional Reliability - Prior to becoming a production-ready design, each 3 Series model is subjected to JBL’s tough 100 hour power test, in which the speaker is required to play continually at full output for 100 hours without failure. This demanding test ensures your 3 Series speakers will deliver years of reliable performance.

 

From this page:

 

http://www.jblpro.com/www/products/recording-broadcast/3-series/lsr305

[Nobear]

17 hours ago, GUTB said:

$400 will take headphone listening much further; if you're willing to buy used headphones you can probably achieve entery level mid-fi. The very best value in mid-fi in my experience is the B&W P7, which you can easily find used for $200 or less. You won't ever get the soundstage of speakers though.

 

9 hours ago, rando said:

Take the BB speakers back and let's focus on either headphones or something that meets your needs.

 

With all the info on room acoustics, I am leaning toward focusing on headphones now. A question of secondary importance, then, is what I should do with my Klipsch ProMedia 2.1s that I can still take back. I do want to have some speaker sound better than my internal laptop speakers, mind you, especially for when others come over. It seems people here agree that taking my ProMedia's back and replacing them with 305 monitors would be an improvement, likely worth doing, but keep in mind it would eat away a little more into my headphone budget.

 

Remember that I do have an audio interface, a slightly outdated M-Audio M-Track, which I understand will suffice for both the level of speakers and headphones I'm looking at realistically.

 

As for headphones, if they are going to serve as my main listening gear, they absolutely have to be as comfortable as they are high quality. As I mentioned before, I've owned a pair of Sennheiser HD280s, which I've since given to my sister, who has made good use of them for recording. I remember that, as much as their sound quality and frequency range exceeded that of my speakers, I could only wear them for so long before they got uncomfortable. I have pretty big ears, and my ears would physically get sore after a while from being smushed into a small space. I remember I would also sweat in them after a while.

 

The isolation was a double edged sword. It'd be useful for multitrack recording, and for blocking out unwanted noise in public environments. I live on a street that's not terrible, but it's also not the quietest environment. Then again, if you actually needed to hear someone or something in your environment, chances are you wouldn't hear it with such isolating headphones. It'd be nice to be able to do some multitrack recording, but that's probably not my top priority. My most immediate recording goals involve a technique I've developed to hum and whistle two independent voices simultaneously. That would only require multitrack recording if I wanted to make four-part harmony out of two tracks.

 

Some headphones I'm considering (ranked roughly from lowest to highest price) are:

 

1) Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (either 80 or 250 Ohms)

2) Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro

3) AKG K701

4) Sennheiser HD650

5) B&W P7

 

1 and 5 are closed backed. I read 1 and 2 are very comfortable. The comfort of 1 apparently incurs some tradeoff in isolation inferior to, say, Sennheiser HD280s. Would their isolation of 18dB still be good enough for multitrack recording? How about for discreet airplane listening? 5 I mention because GUTB recommends them, but I don't know how they compare to the other headphones on the list in terms of either comfort or audio quality.

 

4 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

BTW, OP do you rent or own the house?

 

If you're getting at how free I am to modify it, I would want to avoid permanent structural modifications if possible. I am living with my mom while I work and go back to college. I don't want to give her a heart attack!

 

PS: Am I correct in assuming that room acoustics make little or no perceivable difference with headphones, even open-backed ones?

[Ralf11]

Right - the room doesn't affect the headphone sound.  An extra sheet of drywall on all walls, with the acoustic goop in between, might be doable.  Tearing up the floor for extra bracing, no.

[rando]

If you were happy with your previous and current new speakers I would look on Craigslist or similar for 2.1 or 5.1 powered speakers to supplement headphones.  You might end up very pleasantly surprised.

 

Good luck finding a set of cans that meet your needs.  Or IEM's if nothing can accommodate your well endowed ears.

[Nobear]

1 minute ago, Ralf11 said:

Right - the room doesn't affect the headphone sound.  An extra sheet of drywall on all walls, with the acoustic goop in between, might be doable.  Tearing up the floor for extra bracing, no.

 

Would room modifications be less important if I got the 305s and did away with a subwoofer for now? Is it mostly just for sub-43Hz (the low end of the 305s), or is there still acoustical tweaking of the room and/or placement you would recommend?

[Ralf11]

the things I've mentioned are all worthwhile no matter what speakers are used

[Nobear]

10 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

the things I've mentioned are all worthwhile no matter what speakers are used

 

In that case, I think I'll keep my ProMedia's as a "good enough" consumer-grade system for casual listening and when people come over, and focus on choosing a comfortable pair of headphones for quality.

 

I've read that professional mixers try their tracks out on consumer-grade stuff, just to make sure they don't sound terrible on what the average consumer is likely to have. My ProMedia's I guess can also serve that purpose.

[Nobear]

2 hours ago, rando said:

Good luck finding a set of cans that meet your needs.  Or IEM's if nothing can accommodate your well endowed ears.

 

Let me be clear. My ears fit inside HD280s. They are not freak show level huge. I just measured the longest diameter of my ears to be 2.5". It's more that they stick out a bit. They are not as flatly aligned to the sides of my head as are the ears of most people. Pressing them in to align with the sides of my head bends the cartilage. At a certain threshold, the cartilage very audibly pops. Having headphones that force my ears flat with the sides of my head for long periods of time gets uncomfortable. The ear I sleep on is often sore when I wake up because of this.

 

So, I'm looking for headphones that either enclose a large volume of space, or are angled to better accommodate ears that stick out a bit.

[GUTB]

3 hours ago, Nobear said:

 

 

With all the info on room acoustics, I am leaning toward focusing on headphones now. A question of secondary importance, then, is what I should do with my Klipsch ProMedia 2.1s that I can still take back. I do want to have some speaker sound better than my internal laptop speakers, mind you, especially for when others come over. It seems people here agree that taking my ProMedia's back and replacing them with 305 monitors would be an improvement, likely worth doing, but keep in mind it would eat away a little more into my headphone budget.

 

Remember that I do have an audio interface, a slightly outdated M-Audio M-Track, which I understand will suffice for both the level of speakers and headphones I'm looking at realistically.

 

As for headphones, if they are going to serve as my main listening gear, they absolutely have to be as comfortable as they are high quality. As I mentioned before, I've owned a pair of Sennheiser HD280s, which I've since given to my sister, who has made good use of them for recording. I remember that, as much as their sound quality and frequency range exceeded that of my speakers, I could only wear them for so long before they got uncomfortable. I have pretty big ears, and my ears would physically get sore after a while from being smushed into a small space. I remember I would also sweat in them after a while.

 

The isolation was a double edged sword. It'd be useful for multitrack recording, and for blocking out unwanted noise in public environments. I live on a street that's not terrible, but it's also not the quietest environment. Then again, if you actually needed to hear someone or something in your environment, chances are you wouldn't hear it with such isolating headphones. It'd be nice to be able to do some multitrack recording, but that's probably not my top priority. My most immediate recording goals involve a technique I've developed to hum and whistle two independent voices simultaneously. That would only require multitrack recording if I wanted to make four-part harmony out of two tracks.

 

Some headphones I'm considering (ranked roughly from lowest to highest price) are:

 

1) Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (either 80 or 250 Ohms)

2) Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro

3) AKG K701

4) Sennheiser HD650

5) B&W P7

 

1 and 5 are closed backed. I read 1 and 2 are very comfortable. The comfort of 1 apparently incurs some tradeoff in isolation inferior to, say, Sennheiser HD280s. Would their isolation of 18dB still be good enough for multitrack recording? How about for discreet airplane listening? 5 I mention because GUTB recommends them, but I don't know how they compare to the other headphones on the list in terms of either comfort or audio quality.

 

 

If you're getting at how free I am to modify it, I would want to avoid permanent structural modifications if possible. I am living with my mom while I work and go back to college. I don't want to give her a heart attack!

 

PS: Am I correct in assuming that room acoustics make little or no perceivable difference with headphones, even open-backed ones?

 

DT770 Pro: no

K701: no

HD650: GOD no

 

But, take my recommendations with the understanding that my standards are probably way higher than the average responder on this thread. I think $400 is too little budget for good sound. If you're going down the headphone route, an amp and DAC are still critical.

[Nobear]

2 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

DT770 Pro: no

K701: no

HD650: GOD no

 

But, take my recommendations with the understanding that my standards are probably way higher than the average responder on this thread. I think $400 is too little budget for good sound. If you're going down the headphone route, an amp and DAC are still critical.

 

What do you so dislike about HD650s?

 

The only ones you didn't compare your recommendation to are the DT990s. What about those?

 

Keep in mind that I'm determined not to spend more than I can reasonably afford right now, and that I value comfort as much as sound quality (see my latest post about the size and angle of my ears).

 

As I mentioned, I have an (unopened but not returnable) M-Audio M-Track that my sister gave me, which I understand will suffice for the level of quality attainable in my budget.

[GUTB]

Well, it's better than your motherboard audio, so not a disaster in terms of sound quality. Comfort, I have to recommend the Fostex TH-X00, 600, 610, 900. Very light on the head and soft. Bio-cellular drivers are very flat impedance curve, easy for even mediocre amps to drive well. The 900 is the only hi-fi product in the range and probably well outside your price range. The AudioQuests use the same driver. The others are strong mid-fi and can be had for around $400 or less on the used market. The HD650/600 grips your head like a vice and is very boring.

 

Planars are better than dynamics. But you need a real amp, and they tend to be heavier / less comfortable.

 

Hi-fi starts at around $1,000.