I decided since im planning on moving in with my brother in a few years, he has a job now, and is preparing for the next gen with the PS5 (though currently he is using a PS3, though getting a switch), i wondered what kind of 2 channel speaker setup would be useful for what he is planning on doing gaming and listening.
he almost always plays RPGs and “Action adventure” games a la fire emblem, kingdom hearts, persona, final fantasy, and zelda. and he says that he often listens to older 70s-90s music in the background, often alt rock or prog. and we are hoping for a full setup under 500 dollars altogether (he also wants to get some headphones too though so that might be difficult)
i’m pretty sure we would not have the space for tower speakers, so bookshelf is our best bet
i’ll ask him about if he’d want passive or powered, he doesn’t know a LOT about speakers because he is a newcomer to higher end audio and was mostly using simple tv speakers most of his life… i have a hunch he would probably prefer powered but if we can get the space for an amp and enough money we could do a passive
I suspect powered would be best as well. get a DAC with headphone amp that has pre-out that you put to the speakers that lets you also use headphones when someone wants to play and the roomy needs quiet time, etc.
I know the Kanto YU6 are probably out of budget, but they are SOLID!
that seems incredibly useful… especially the dac with preamp thing since my bro also wants to try headphones as well. kinda a mix of both (i probably will just give him those yamahas with the ZMF pads zeos likes). anything youd recommend that has a line in headphone out for that
also the only other hard part about the kanto pair beyond finding a preamp is how to connect it to everything from at least 3 to 4 game consoles… with audio streaming it has bluetooth (which hopefully they are fine with Iphones since he uses a Xr), but most of the consoles use HDMI now so connecting them and making audio go through the speakers will be difficult
Which consoles are we talking about here? I believe the Nintendo Switch can accept certain USB DACs, while the XBOX and PS4 have optical out. Or you can get a HDMI audio extractor.
Nintendo Switch, a Wii for its gamecube backwards compatibility and brawl and zelda, he currently has a used PS3 that will probably stay until we see the PS5’s backwards compatibility system, and a PS5/PS4 for more modern content (also was mostly reffering to connecting all 4 of those consoles to a single speaker)
PS3 - Optical
Nintendo Switch - USB* (Need to check compatibility) OR HDMI audio extractor to Optical
Wii - RCA? I think? Using that AV cable?
PS5 - No idea it’s not even out yet lmao
So I guess the “all-in-one” solution would be to get active speakers with two optical inputs and RCA?
Otherwise a separate DAC with headphone amp hooked up to speakers works fine too.
take a look at the Edifier options. very good for the money. and there will be bass if you are near field…buy better speakers rather than getting a sub at the same time. put the cost of a sub into the speakers.
you’ll also need some sort of simple switcher to jump between your consoles. you would connect the pre-out’s form the amp to it and then to the consoles.
so basically get an HDMI switcher like a monoprice blackbird and connect the preout on the amplifier/preamp to the speakers (hopefully there is an HDMI port for that… its a lot easier for the wii though since that just is going to be using component)… its a little confusing since neither of us know a lot about speakers
also tbh if i was able to get an audio extractor that could do analog RCA for the sound i could do a schiit sys to have a fairly cheap preamp
also i think for my bros headphone set up all he knows is he doesn’t want a TON of bass so im thinking something like maybe a fostex mod like the T60 or Argon since those are great for gaming and movie watching for that stuff
The Argons have a lot of bass. And the T50/T60 are known to require a ton of power on top of being pretty expensive. I’d probably go for something cheaper
i just need something good for casual gaming a la something like an RPG soundtrack (the most hardcore game he’d play is the witcher or fallout) that is closed back and doesn’t need a lot of power (that could at least be fine with a magni)
