Sound

Today I treated myself to some slightly extravagant powered speakers to listen to music from my laptop on. I love listening to music but for some reason it took me 6 months to get around to buying something to do it with. I have headphones but I'm really not a big fan of using them. Apart from it being bad for your hearing, they always seem to get uncomfortable after a short time.

So what do you do if you like to hear your music properly and you have your collection on a laptop/mp3 player? My first thought was to buy some PC speakers but I was very disappointed by what is available. There aren't many plain stereo systems (2.0), most of them being at the cheap and nasty end of the range. More common are the stereo plus sub (2.1) systems which all seem to be tuned for movies or games, but not music. They invariably have too much bass response (even those with a bass adjustment) and little in the way of mid range. This is because everything above the (normally stupidly low) cross-over frequency is handled by some tiny satellite speakers.

So what do you do, I hear you asking again. Well my idea was to find some low end active studio monitors. These are speakers made for home recording studios and their design goal is to produce as even response as possible across all frequencies, with minimal distortion. I went for Samson's Media One 4A model which I found at my local musical intrument shop, Just Music in Wilmersdorf. I compared them to a couple of more expensive models and thought they sounded pretty good. When I got them home my choice was confirmed - they sound awesome, especially compared to the PC speakers I tested earlier. Also, it turns out they have heaps more output than I will ever need - they're rated at 20W per channel.