What's your sound set up?

[Tolkem]

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a nice life!
So, I was wondering about how you deal with sound? I mean, do you have any special set up? Speakers, DAC's, or any other piece of hardware to make your sound be as best as possible? I have an amp connected to my pc and 2 bookshelf speakers, and that's basically it. Oh, and I have volumio running inside a VM https://volumio.com/ to act as the "music player".

 

[theLegionWithin]

I use audacious for my media player - hardware wise I have a creative branded speaker package (4x speakers & 1x subwoofer) that I've had for 8 to 10 years, works really well for me.

 

[Condobloke]

I have an incredibly complex arrangement

a Z-cinema bass, situated on the floor. Two attached desk speakers on my ...desk. Thats the hardware

Software. All music I play via DeadBeef

Movies etc via VLC

It works. Without complaint. Either at a whisper. or at a roar.

Empty house on one side of us and a Park on the other......no neighbours to complain if I happen to give Jimmy Barnes a long leash (

)
I occasionally give Demis Roussos and Anna Fedorova a similar 'length of leash'.....among many others.

I love my music, my sound system is quite perfect.

 

[Tolkem]

a Z-cinema bass, situated on the floor. Two attached desk speakers on my ...desk. Thats the hardware

That's a pretty cool system. 2.1 systems are really good, I used to have one of those (no z-cinema, tho), but I traded for a Sony stereo system, which is where the two bookshelf speakers are originally from, coupled with an amp they sound really good.

 

[Tolkem]

I have a creative branded speaker package (4x speakers & 1x subwoofer) that I've had for 8 to 10 years, works really well for me

4.1 system? It's been a while since I last heard of those. That's the whole point; as long as it works for you, nothing else should really matter.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@Tolkem :-

Mine's similar to @Condobloke 's - a 2.1 setup - except mine's a bit odd. It's nearly 25 years old by this point, and was originally marketed by Goodman's as a speaker system for MP3 players. It's got a pair of mid/treble speakers, which I have mounted on the bedroom wall (home-made brackets, natch!), then a combined sub-woofer/30W amp unit which sits under the bed, firing back at the wall.

I just reach under the bed and turn it on at the beginning of a session, then audio is controlled by the OS after that.....aided by an audio utility I built myself, which allows seamless switching between sources without any reboots needed, or owt like that. (Re-boots for audio switching were always Puppy's "Achilles heel".....until recent Puppies began using PulseAudio).

My utility, which I built a few years ago, kinda 'aped' PulseAudio's functionality but without PA's complexity, instead working directly with ALSA system calls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

The biggest peculiarity of my setup, however, is the connectivity. The only connection this has to the amp consists of a 1.5 metre cable with a 3.5 mm jack-plug on the end....and that's IT. Mind you, it makes sense, 'cos the original intention was that you plugged this into your MP3 player where the headphones would normally go, so...

Think about it.

All I did was to buy an extender cable with a female 3.5mm socket on one end and a male 3.5mm plug at t'other - around 3 metres in length - and it now plugs direct into the computer's headphone socket. It sounds wacky, I know, but at a quarter of a century old it still sounds great.

Works for me.

EDIT:- I have thought about using my original 1st-gen Wharfedale "Diamond" bookshelf speakers - themselves over 40+ yrs old, yet still sounding fantastic - with an amp direct from the PC's line-out socket.....but I'm getting lazy in my old age. I can't be arsed with the hassle of moving 'em from the front room.....where they've been for the last 30 years!


Mike.

 

[KGIII]

Mostly, nothing special. I do have a media room with a computer that has just 5.1 surround and some mid-level speakers. That computer gets very little use - hence the 'mostly nothing'.

In my studio, I have very expensive studio monitors. It's just stereo, so other than the price it's still nothing all that special unless you need monitors.

In my study, which is where I usually am if I'm online, I just have a pair of speakers. They're Bose but not all that high end. They were under three figures, I believe. They do the trick and I see no reason to replace them. They play a lot of YouTube in the background.

 

[Thunderpants]

For TV and movies I use combinations of DVB-T2 USB tuner, media server, Firefox, VLC and a £12 USB powered speaker (<1W).

For listening to music, I use a 2 channel audio chain of flac files > media server > Audacious > Topping D10 Balanced USB DAC > Teac AX501 class D amp > Tannoy speakers and a Quad L2 sub.

 

[JasKinasis]

I don’t have anything special. I’m mostly just using my laptops built in speaker. And on my Linux desktop PC, I have an ancient pair of speakers connected. But I usually listen to music through headphones.

I mostly use cmus - a simple, lightweight terminal based music player. Running it in a tab in a tmux session. And I have some custom key-binds set up in dwm to control playback via bash cmus-remote commands that I have aliased in Bash.

I also have a couple of USB audio interfaces for recording (a two input Digidesign MBox 2 for quick, simple recordings and an 8 input Behringer UMC1820 with a Behringer ADA8200 connected, to bump it up to 16 mic inputs for recording drums). But again, I use headphones for monitoring their output. I need to get some decent, studio quality monitors at some point.

 

[Fanboi]

Right now, I've dropped my externals altogether for my JBL wireless headphones. They're great. 22hrs charge, pretty good audio quality. Got them a few years and they provide me decent audio without upsetting the neighbours. Best of all, I can do the chores, cook, etc. listening to music.
I was worried about the build for a while, because they have multiple joints for a good fit -- and they are pretty damn comfortable -- but after years of being dropped, seized in, and accidentally dropped and kicked, they're still intact. Heck, they survived about a year in the wilds during my sojourn in the bushes (long story if you didn't read my return post).

I think given the cash to buy a decent 5.1 sound system or high-end headphones with excellent noise cancellation, I'd choose the latter. Headphones (wireless headphones) have grown on me (though I hate earphones/buds, they don't fit my ears and I don't like the pressure that buds cause when you force 'em too deep). I don't see myself considering another home theatre system until I move to a more rural setting (small town in the countryside, no cities for at least 100km, that sorta thing).

As for my music player, I use the same thing as for all media: MPV. It supports sockets, so I have scripts for managing playlists, actions, etc. I have no music library management tools, just a decent filing system on my storage HDD.

All in all, nothing fancy, but does what it should.

 

[dos2unix]

I have a soundBlaster AE-5plus. I run the front speakers and subwoofer to a LogiTech Z625 2.1 setup. I run the rear speakers to
a Behringer USB50 pair, I have dual inputs to the Behringers, one side to PC, the other side to the mp3/midi player on my drum set. I also have 1300watt Mackie Thumper, It isn't connected to the PC, but I use it for my Bass, and I record the lows from it.

I run Fedora 41 because I like the flexibility that pipewire gives me.

 

[The Duck]

This is my set up that my brother gave me many years back and as old as it is it still rocks the house enough for me.

Altec Lansing ACS33 (2.1 for PC)

Although not really hifi , having a set of decent sounding speakers for the PC does help when you are listening to MP3, watching movies, acc...

myoldvintagehifi.blogspot.com

Spoiler

Altec Lansing ACS33 (2.1 for PC)

Although not really hifi , having a set of decent sounding speakers for the PC does help when you are listening to MP3, watching movies, acc...

myoldvintagehifi.blogspot.com

 

[Tolkem]

For TV and movies I use combinations of DVB-T2 USB tuner, media server, Firefox, VLC and a £12 USB powered speaker (<1W).

For listening to music, I use a 2 channel audio chain of flac files > media server > Audacious > Topping D10 Balanced USB DAC > Teac AX501 class D amp > Tannoy speakers and a Quad L2 sub.

Quite the set up you have there!

 

[Tolkem]

I've dropped my externals altogether for my JBL wireless headphones

I, too, own a set of JBL wireless headphones, tho I use them mostly for audio/video editing, and sometimes when in the rare occasion I have some spare time, for gaming, but not so much for listening to music or watching movies, for that I prefer the speakers.

 

[theLegionWithin]

This is my set up that my brother gave me many years back and as old as it is it still rocks the house enough for me.

wew, AL speakers! I had some of those years back, loved them - really good quality audio gear.