On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 01:16:21PM +0200, Leslie P. Polzer wrote: > the quality, too). 400 EUR is the **hard** upper limit for me. > Do I really need an amp? Yes, unless you get active speakers. > Doesn't the signal level of the sound card suffice? No. Typical consumer soundcards can drive a pair of headphones, but that's all. If you end up going with passive speakers, I think one of the best bargains around is the PSB Alpha B. I have a pair in my living room and I love them. The sound is well balanced and pretty neutral. You can get flatter speakers, but probably not without spending a lot more. It'll handle everything you mentioned just fine. In europe I think they go for about 250 EUR. They have dealers all over the place: http://www.psbspeakers.com/distributors But you'd also need to buy an amp, of course, so keep that in mind when comparing active speakers to passive. I'm still using an ancient home-stereo amp that works OK but is nothing special. The standard recommendation from rec.audio.pro for a new low-cost amp used to be Hafler, but they're not made any more. Nobody on that board had much good to say about Samson, Behringer, or Alesis amps. Last time I went monitor-shopping (5 years ago?), I checked out a bunch of actives but I didn't really like anything cheaper than the Mackie HR624 (900 USD for a pair, active). I thought the Event powered monitors were OK, but not really any better than the PSB so I opted to stick with the PSB until I really feel the need for something significantly better. -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
