<p>As a nomadic person, starting this fall I will have lived in six different flats in six years - moving in and out every time; not counting summer residences.</p>
<p>I have realised that when moving, the most annoying things beyond furniture that I have to take care of are 1. my CD collection; and 2. my book colection; and 3. my speakers.</p>
<p>Recently, I have pledged to go completely digital with my media. I don't buy physical music anymore. The ease, quality, and grace of iTunes and Amazon's Mp3 store have me convinced that I will never buy another CD again if I can help it. I also own an Amazon Kindle and get about 80-90 percent of all my reading done on this nifty little device.</p>
<p>But I've failed to improve on my Mac's sound system. A maze of wires and a ginormous subwoofer makes it unbearable and unacceptable to keep as I enter the 2nd decade of this millennium.</p>
<p>Can anyone reccomend a set of good sound speakers to hook up to my computer? Ideally, I'd like them to have as few wiring as possible, even better if they're wireLESS. Preferably, it doesn't need it's own adapter to plug in and could just power itself from the computer. Finally, bonus points if it does not contain a chunky subwoofer and still produce decent sound - best case scenario is that it has NO subwoofer.</p>
<p>I am looking for an ideally one or two piece high quality speaker system, with either USB or audio jack input, that contains no subwoofer and no AC (powered through laptop). Any recommendations?</p>
<p>I have never come across anything other than a good set of headphones that will do everything you want. The USB spec limits output power to a couple of watts, which means that USB-only-powered speakers have to sacrifice pretty much every other desirable quality for efficiency. Because of that, they are not going to sound enough better than the little ones that are probably already included in your laptop to make them worth having around.</p>
<p>If you can relax the AC power constraint, I would say check out the M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 speakers. They have three sets of inputs: 1/8" stereo, standard RCA and standard 1/4" TRS, so you can connect them to a number of different things. There is a bass boost switch which is good when using them for movies and games. The down side is that they are neither particularly small nor particularly light.</p>
<p>I don’t like headphones/earphones because I run into trouble if I, for instance, want to listen while lying in bed on my side, or anytime I only want background music.</p>
<p>If you can, listen to them before buying them. Play a few of your favorite mp3 tracks through them and listen to them both nearby as if you were using the computer and from a distance as if you were across the room listening to background music. If you cannot do this, buy them from a place (like Amazon) that will allow you to return them for the cost of shipping. </p>
<p>Personally, I have never heard speakers that small and that underpowered that I would be happy with. Of the three, I would suggest starting with the Logitech because I have my doubts that the other two can generate any stereo separation while maintaining anything like a decent frequency and phase response. Perhaps one solution would be using these for background music / falling asleep to and using a good set of headphones when you are going to pay more attention to the sound. That still represents a big size and weight reduction over what you have been using.</p>
<p>Looking at the Logitech unit a little closer, it appears that it requires AC power. It is rated at 15W which is far more than a USB port will produce, and the package contents on Amazon includes a 6 foot AC power cord. It also weighs as much as a typical laptop.</p>
<p>I think almost any speakers worth listening to will be AC powered, a laptop simply can’t produce enough power. Likewise, most two piece speaker systems aren’t going to produce great bass response. My son has a pair of Bose multimedia speakers (not the ones with the subwoofer, two piece, that cost about 100 bucks) that he seems to like.You don’t have to order them on faith,I bought mine in an electronics store, so I could hear them before buying. Cambridge soundworks and bose both have, on a different level, compact sound systems (Bose calls theirs the wavesystem, Cambridge has a similar unit for a lot less) that can give pretty decent sound from a small unit, that many (including myself) enjoy the sound of (others hate them, like any sound system)</p>
<p>The other option might be to check out one of the ‘sound docks’ they have for Ipods now, some of them have decent sound, and you can plug your mac in the auxiliary port on them. </p>
<p>As far as going wireless, there are speakers that use bluetooth connectivity, or you could get a bluetooth adapter that the speakers mini plug would plug into (the macbooks have bluetooth build in as far as I know), and try to do that so you don’t have the cables. Again, unlikely that any speaker could be powered by a pc, the sound cards or USB don’t produce much output power at all and sound decent.</p>
<p>Regardless of the hardware, MP3 and itunes degrade the sound quality. You will not be able to get the same quality that you get with a wave file.</p>
<p>For the most part, digital recordings in the MP3 format (even at relatively high bit levels) and AAC (the Apple itunes format) are degraded, both of them are what are called “lossy” compression, and because of that compression (to make them fit into smaller spaces, mp3 I seem to recall is typically 16 to 1 compression) it loses clarity. </p>
<p>There are digital formats like wav and flac that are pretty close to as perfect as you can get, but you pay the price in space. However, with the size of hard drives on computers and devices like the Ipod getting huge, that may not be as much of an issue. But then again, CD’s are not perfect either, they are compressed to a certain extent and lose quality as well compared to a straight analog recording (SACD reputedly is as good as analog recordings, going to have to get me son to a place where he can listen to it compared to analog of the same recording and see what he thinks:).</p>
<p>Actually, this brings up the downside of digital recording and people getting used to them. There have been studies done where they had people listen to a direct master of a recording, then the same thing in MP3, and most people preferred the degraded MP3 recording, people have gotten used to the lesser quality and now actually tend to prefer it…</p>
<p>For less than a size of a paperback you can get a hard drive capable of storing wav files. Bose has some good computer speakers. Not that I am particularly knowledgable on such subjects, but that is what my son is using. :)</p>
<p>Ok, if you want something that is wireless, then the speaker itself will have to have some type of power (battery or plug).</p>
<p>Like people have said, the usb and line out connection just don’t have enough power for speakers. Headphones yes, speakers no.</p>
<p>We have the Bose computer speakers (twin speakers without the sub-woofer, they do make a set with the sub-woofer). It was $69 refurbished from Bose. Otherwise they are $99 new. Decent speakers. Audiophiles say Bose to speakers is like McDonalds to dining, and there are better out there for the price. However, they do admit Bose is a great combination of sound and ease of use.</p>
<p>I suspect audiophiles beat up on Bose because it is ‘cool’ to do so in their circles, it is like those into rock who are into these obscure bands 5 people know of and claim ‘that is real music, the rest is schlock’ and so forth. They also beat up on bose because they sell a lot of product and once were the ‘cool’ product that many of them couldn’t afford. </p>
<p>As far as sound reproduction, to my own ears I like the sound, and I have several of their products, and my son, who has an ear most audiophiles probably don’t, says they are pretty decent in how they present sound, and he has heard systems that have speakers that cost way more that he says are inferior <em>shrug</em>. </p>
<p>With an external hard drive, you can do it wirelessly, there are wireless USB based bluetooth adapters that would allow that, and there are now network enabled hard drives that can be connected through a router on a wireless network.</p>
<p>Have had Bose speakers in the past- actually had 8 set up in one room years ago(!), but I woudn’t but their new stuff because, to me, it just doesn’t have the same “quality” as it used to. I heard a nice pair of Klipsch speakers for a computer in one of the “big box” stores the other day and they were under $80, but required A/C to power them.Bang & Olufsen makes great stuff, but the cost is correspondingly high. If there’s a good audio/video store in the vicinity- not one of the “big” places-it’s worth the time to go and listen in their optimized conditions, just to educate your ear and decide what parameters of sound please you the most.</p>
<p>The Logitech Z-5 USB Stereo Speakers for Mac and PC seem to be ok if a bit clunky looking if you are looking for USB powered only. I would buy a cheapish set for now as once USB 3.0 is rolled out (it has finally started) it has a lot more power available for add ons such as speakers so a whole new set of more powerful speakers will become available.</p>