What's in a set of speakers?

How much emphasis should a musician put on speakers? Personally I have 5.1 surround sound with a high quality sound card, to deliver brilliant sound. It can also play things back in DVD quality (which, by the way, does represent a noticeable difference compared to CD quality).

Nevertheless, perhaps speakers are less important. Perhaps it's the notes and not the sound which counts.

What are your thoughts?

Depends what type of music you're listening to. If you listen to Techno frequently, I doubt that 5.1 surround sound will enhance your listening experience much.

Speakers are pretty important though, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to listen to music (apart from playing it and going to concerts, of course). Having good quality speakers might lend itself to inspiration and is quite important for listening to orchestral music as they will enable the listener to hear all the details clearly.

That said, I've got crappy speakers on this computer (when your television sounds better than your computer, somthing has got to be wrong :().

My new laptop has those crappy built in speakers which are actually much MUCH better than my old computer speakers. I'm listening to a Seiken Densetsu track right now, and there are some stereo effects that sound really amazing. I'm sitting here and suddenly im hearing piano arpeggios from either side of the room, way out. Then I realize it's from my laptop, which is on my lap, and I'm like 'Waht?' I dunno.

I don't know what kind they are or anything, but they are much better than my desktop comp's are. I guess speakers do vary quite a bit in quality and all. I never really noticed any of it...

On my desktop, I couldn't hear some parts of songs, like in Unlimited:SaGa, I couldn't hear some piano rolls in the background, and the bass was always soooo soft no matter how high I pumped it up. I listen to these songs on my laptop and it's WOW... There's the bass!

My new laptop has those crappy built in speakers which are actually much MUCH better than my old computer speakers.

What kind of laptop do you have, and what kind of speakers are in it? I've always thought that laptop speakers were notoriously small and tinny, but if good ones do exist, it would be nice to have them onboard and not have to buy external speakers to lug around.

It's just a Gateway. It's new, and that's all I can tell you. I'm not much of a hardware guy...so I don't even know how to check what kind of speakers they are. I don't really have to have anything spectacular anyway. These are good for me!

Some folks say speakers are the most important thing for you to invest in.. If you do music production.. they are your windows into what your making.. so obiviously.. if your window distorts your view of what your working on... that's a problem.. and as it turns out most consumer speakers have this problem... in fact.. you have to spend lots and lots and lots of money.. try in hte $1000+ range to get speakers that.. well minumally distort what your hearing.. That said.. a lot of people 'in the bizz' talk about 'knowing your spakers' another words.. play music that you know how it sounds on one system.. play it on other systems.. play your creations on lots of systems.. this way you can get a feel for whats up on your system.. and you kind of compensate for that while working.. And of course for critical listening situations.. its nice to have really nice speakers.. so that you find that you start to hear stuff you didn't even know was in the mix.. But I think in practice.. pricey speakers are expensive.. and you really need to figure out what makes sense in terms of your own budget... but.. speakers are one of the most important things to invest in.. if your working creatively with music production / recording / composing where you do a lot of critical listening...

I agree - speakers are perhaps the most important factor. I've recently bought myself a new soundcard and the like - and also new speakers - but I just can't get the quality of sound that I would from a good pair of monitor speakers. That said I think we're dong different music - I'm more into the production side of things - where it's important what exactly the sound is like - when you're 'composing' more. For you, the most important thing is how it looks on the page...

A quick thing about the DVD sounding better than a CD - I'm not sure about this. The audio on a DVD is often exactly the same quality as CD - 16bit, 44100Hz - the only difference is the fact that its coming out of more speakers...

You can burn higher quality audio onto DVD I think, something like 96Khz instead of 44.1Khz. My soundcard came with a little demo comparing CD quality and DVD quality, and it's surprising just how much better DVD is.

Ah ok. Yes. 96K will sound better - but then any film you may watch will be at 44.1K and there are relatively few recordings at 96k... just because of compatibilty...

well....

here's a link to some stuff on surround sound: SOS series on Surround Sound

and here's another thing on DVD audio: another sound thing on DVD audio

and on last thing.. there's some more stuff on this.. and more links... on a blog entry I did on my blog... Who Care's About Quality.. my responce to a pretty kewl issue of Mix Magazine

Without bothering to read through it myself... let me try breaking things down a little... first of all.. there's a difference between surround sound and DVD audio.. DVD audio can be stereo if you like.. When you mix music.. if you have 2 instruments that take up the same, or overlaping frequency range.. and your mixing in stereo.. you will normally put them on opposit ends of the ends of the stereo fild.. that is on opposit sides of your virtual sound stage... This way you are able to hear more of the details of each instrument... When you start working with 5.1 surround sound.. you suddenly realize that things are REALLY different... Having more more speakers.. does have psyco acoustic implications.. and it really is a whole other ball game... because now if you have stuff taking up the same frequency range.. you have a lot more space to spread them around.. depending on what your aprouch to building a 5.1 sound stage is...

I believe that conventional DVD's audio set up is 'somewhat sucky.' By which I mean.. you have to make a choice between bit depth depth and sample rate... that is that there's a kind of maximum data through-put to the way conventional DVDs are set up... But alas there are also SACDs.. DVD+A and a variety of other formats that don't have this sort of limitations...

here's a thing on SACD on SOS

But all this sorta gets more into issues of high def audio... which is.. not really nessisary...

I personally think.. if you're a composer, or someone who works with sound.. It's important to have a good system for listening to music on.. Never mind if you're actually producing music with that same sound system as your monitoring system...

If you are just using your computer as a compositional tool.. developing a score... If what you hear played back from your computer plays a roll in the desision making process in your composing.. you might want to invest in a good system... Although this is sorta complicated... If you are doing this kind of thing.. it's also important that you invest in something like the Garritan Personal Orchestra sample library.. (read an sos review here), along with whatever notation or sequencer program you might be using.. and the monitor system.. because other wise.. your dission making process will be made on the basis of faulty data....

As if all this weren't bad enough... there is also the issue of the acoustic properties of the room you're listen to while working... as sounds bounce of the walls.. different types of surface will refflect different parts of the frequency spectrum in different ways.. which will effect what you hear... So on top of all these issues.. there's the issue of trying to make a 'nutral sounding room' for critical listening...

GPO's pretty nice for the price, though I prefer some of the samples from

East West Quantum Leap's Symphonic Library Silver, it's closest competitor that I know of (actually it's on sale until July 31st, and at 50% off, it's great buy!). It has more of a "Hollywood" sound though, so it's probably better for suited for film/video game soundtracks. East West also has "Gold" and "Platinum" Editions, which has more instrument choices sampled at 24-bit with multiple mic set-ups (it's a lot more expensive too, however!). Also, there's Vienna Symphonic Library, which is also pretty damn expensive, but can work wonders if you put in the effort of mixing it and whatnot. Note that these programs are either in the Gigasampler or Kontakt format (though I believe at least GPO and EWQLSL come packaged in Kompakt form for stand-alone use). In any case, you'd probably want to get a professional level soundcard (such as those from M-Audio). But I digress (heavily so).

Anyways, about speakers... for mixing purposes, headphones are probably better since they are a cheaper investment (100 - 300 for a goo set of pro headphones), though if you can afford the monitors, go for it :blink:. But it might also be a good idea to have a cheap set of speakers just to test out how your mix would sound to the average consumer, and you can make additional tweaks from there. 5.1 (or 4.1, 4.2, 6.1, 7.1, etc) Speakers aren't necessary unless you want to use surround panning for you pieces. If you want to use them for movies and games though, and don't want to invest solely for music making, they'll probably do well enough.