$1000 High Quality PC stereo setup

[bb7_rider]

Originally Posted by Smokin Whale

I'm looking through these responses here and I'm not seeing any mention of subwoofers... there is no way a 5 or 6" driver is going to output any sort of deep bass! Unless you never listen to anything with bass, I see this as a pretty glaring omission. I've built a system around a similar price lately... however I've made some pretty radical choices (It's a little "dodgy" and I'm bit of a basshead, but it works great)... this is what I ended up with. All of it was bought used:

Asus Xonar D2X PCIe Sound Card - $120
Wharfedale 8" 80w RMS Bookshelf Speakers (these are lovely and flat for monitoring) - $50
240W RMS 2-channel Hertz Car Amplifier (puts out 80w x2 at 8-ohm) for bookshelfs - $30
Dell ATX PSU with 250w on 12v rail to power the above - $10
15" Audiopipe 1000w RMS Competition SPL subwoofer - $120
Custom ported built box to suit - $130
Yamaha P3500S PA 2000w RMS Power Amplifier (1200w RMS at 8ohm for sub) - $430

Now you probably think I'm a lunatic and not a true "audiophile", but it is the most awesome sounding system I've ever heard and listened to critically. I've had friends over and they're just blown away (sometimes literally ) by it. I used to have the AudioEngine A5's and a sealed 12" peerless subwoofer to match, but it can't match the clarity, range of frequencies (sub 30hz is glorious) and power of my current system. Only gripe is that my old 12" Peerless did have tighter bass, but it couldn't handle lows too good. As for the A5's I never liked the bass hump as they just couldn't do bass, and you can't tweak low-pass and high pass filters like you can with separate amplifier/speaker combos.

In other words, if you want quality with a bit of flexibility, go DIY and get some amp/passive speaker combos. If you need practicality and style though, powered bookshelfs are a good choice. Don't get me wrong, DIY isn't always the prettiest

I wouldn't recommend using a PC psu to run a car amp, especially driving a sub, as the power draw varies so much, I can't see the PSU coping with going from a few W to near it's maximum current and back every beat, and a lot of them don't like having the 12v rails maxed with nothing on the 3 & 5v rails. If you are going to run a car amp you're much better off running it off a sealed 12v deep cycle battery connected to a decent charger, as the battery will smooth out the current draw the charger sees. I've personally done this with a 500w monoblock running a 400w 12" sub in a sealed box to good effect, but it's not something your average user will want to have the bulk and complexity of setting up.

[Smokin Whale]

Originally Posted by bb7_rider

I wouldn't recommend using a PC psu to run a car amp, especially driving a sub, as the power draw varies so much, I can't see the PSU coping with going from a few W to near it's maximum current and back every beat, and a lot of them don't like having the 12v rails maxed with nothing on the 3 & 5v rails. If you are going to run a car amp you're much better off running it off a sealed 12v deep cycle battery connected to a decent charger, as the battery will smooth out the current draw the charger sees. I've personally done this with a 500w monoblock running a 400w 12" sub in a sealed box to good effect, but it's not something your average user will want to have the bulk and complexity of setting up.

You didn't really read my post properly... the PC PSU is for the bookshelfs, not the sub. I know anything over a few hundred watts isn't worth fiddling around with car amplifiers and PSUs, as they can't really cope. But mids and highs are more constant (and draw much less power), so they seem to handle it better.

Besides, car amplifiers are no-where near as sensitive to ripple as computers are. Slight droops don't make much of an effect, as amplifiers have their own massive capacitors in them to ensure stable input and output. As for the longevity of the PSUs... well, they are handling it fine, have had two in a setup like this and neither have blown in a year of use... and it always gets switched off when not in use.

If you have these sorts of things lying around, it can be a very cheap way to get a reasonable amount of power for not much money.

[millsy_c]

I did the following:
DSE A2760 Amplifier (intend to mod it) - 120
Audio-GD NFB 3.1 (or 3) DAC - 250 shipped i think
Tannoy Mercury Custom F1 - 220 shipped

I find myself wanting for more though, so I'd probably be looking at high efficiecy bookshelves and a miniwatt as my next upgrade.

Not sure how the xonar compares to the audio-gd, but I have a mini itx case so it fits on top of the DAC nicely

[zbloke]

Originally Posted by Smokin Whale

You didn't really read my post properly... the PC PSU is for the bookshelfs, not the sub. I know anything over a few hundred watts isn't worth fiddling around with car amplifiers and PSUs, as they can't really cope. But mids and highs are more constant (and draw much less power), so they seem to handle it better.

This is a bit of a misnomer actually. I've recently done the calcs on a diy active speaker system. The transient requirements of your mids/highs are going to tax that computer psu. I'd look for a meanwell smps or something that shouldn't be too expensive but much better at dealing with current transients.

For high freq the transient is still significant enough that while your avg power is probably 1-2W at reasonably loud listening levels the transient is more like 30W. The computer PSU isn't set up to deal with that and your amplifier supply rails will drop because its set up for a mainly static load that doesn't vary as dynamically as an amplifier load. I'd also bet that the computer PSU isn't built to handle a capacitive load like a car amp and the start up inrush currents won't be doing you any favours there either. Chances are those inrush currents will cause that computer PSU to fail at some point.

[Everlong]

Speaking of subs, my trusty Yamaha finally died after 15 years of service, so I have ordered this as I can get it wholesale. Anyone had any experience with Klipsch stuff? Is 10" overkill? Will be paired with A5s.

[millsy_c]

Originally Posted by Everlong

Speaking of subs, my trusty Yamaha finally died after 15 years of service, so I have ordered this as I can get it wholesale. Anyone had any experience with Klipsch stuff? Is 10" overkill? Will be paired with A5s.

I've seen 18" used in audiophile setups, comes down to the speaker/enclosure quality as much as anything

[Smokin Whale]

Originally Posted by Everlong

Speaking of subs, my trusty Yamaha finally died after 15 years of service, so I have ordered this as I can get it wholesale. Anyone had any experience with Klipsch stuff? Is 10" overkill? Will be paired with A5s.

I used to run a 1000w RMS 15" woofer with A5's, so not really. It should complement it nicely.

[Everlong]

Thankyou for feedback

[^catalyst]

Originally Posted by FuzzyKaos

I must be breaking some sort of law, I have a pair of VAF Signature i91 and a 10" subwoofer under my desk, things dont jump about, but stuff does vibrate to an extent that I can hear it, and its everything that is in front of the speakers not below or behind. lol and oh boy, its not cos my desk is empty, i have tonnes of crap on it.

Good speakers I guess. You can barely feel any movement if you put your hands on em, got Deadmau5 - The Veldt cranking atm, sounds magnificent.

Deadmau5 won't do that as its more punchy/shorter note length. you want some DUBstep. Not to be confused with BROstep.

Go grab Author - Green & Blue or anything on Tempa. Checkout Trusik blog.

[StreekG]

Originally Posted by Everlong

Speaking of subs, my trusty Yamaha finally died after 15 years of service, so I have ordered this as I can get it wholesale. Anyone had any experience with Klipsch stuff? Is 10" overkill? Will be paired with A5s.

You would think, i run a 10" Active Polk Audio PSW300 sub with my Swan 2.0 bookshelfs.

It cranks up very easily i usually have the gain pretty low...

I am thinking to change to a Swan 10" sub though.

[redhairkid]

Just purchased a set of Audioengine A2's to replace my logitech x540's as I'm not entirely happy with the way they handle my music. I've heard that the A2's are quite good but lack bass. Would the Audioengine A8 sub be overkill for this set of speakers or would it compliment it well? I wont purchase it until I've heard the A2's by themselves. They'll only be used in a bedroom playing mostly metal music.