This may give y’all the vapours but I’ve never owned a set of speakers for my computer. Well, maybe some crappy little creative things that came with a prebuilt 20 years ago. So I have absolutely no idea what near-field speakers are supposed to sound like.
So I’m looking for active speakers in the £150-350 a pair range but I have an annoying requirement. My desk can’t be placed against a wall so rear-ported speakers are pretty much out, ruling out some speakers I really wanted (Swan OS10, Kanto Ora4). If you can think of a way I can use those, please let me know.
I’d like something which has depth and imaging moreso than necessarily soundstage, maybe that’s already what you do with near-field, I don’t know. I’m also not a basshead, I don’t like lots of bass but I do like tight bass and I do like subbass, I’ve noticed most bookshelf speakers need a subwoofer to go below ~40Hz. I’m not opposed to buying one provided the speakers send all the bass to the sub, I know some don’t. Maybe that would allow me to buy rear-ported speakers?
I have a Zen Dac V2 on my desk which I assume is fine but I’ll probably be replacing it next year anyway and I don’t mind using USB input directly anyway.
I have used cheap Logitech desktop computer speakers for decades. I have tried cheap Soundblaster desktop speakers which had plastic cabinets. All garbage but usable. I purchased the Edifier R1700BT in December 2018 with the intent of using them on my desktop, but they were a bit too large for my desk. The R1700BT sounded so good that they replaced my Logitech Z323 speakers which had a separate mini 4” subwoofer. I think that the R1700BT sounds better than inexpensive soundbars. I currently am using the Edifier MR4 speakers on my desktop simply because they fit in a very limited space, but I do not recommend them. I wish that the R1700BT speakers would fit in my very limited desktop space since I really like the sound for its price. I am sure that others will have better recommendations since I haven’t been paying attention to amplified desktop speakers in quite a while. I am curious about what other people will suggest.
Just saw the review of these and was more than a little bit intrigued:
… though the FR isn’t as flat as I’d like.
With your budget I think you can go all the way to the iLoud Micro Monitors (non-pro), which should be way flatter than the Adam. Oops, I was looking at a price listed per-piece, not per-pair, so iLouds are out.
Yeah, if you need better stuff than these new Adams, you probably need to think of the larger options, which for the longest time has meant you’d look at Edifier models for price/performance, as mentioned above.
Oops, I was looking at a price listed per-piece, not per-pair, so iLouds are out.
Yeah I’ve done that a few times. I have been looking at the D3Vs and they definitely seem like a good option. Just a shame they don’t have a sub out. I am using pipewire though, so running a sub through a dac/amp with a high/low-pass filter for each is probably not that hard.