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November 10, 2005
Multimedia PC - Audio
I've made some modifications to the workstation in my home office. Prior to the storm, I had this neat set of speakers that came with a PC I bought years ago. It was a set from Boston Acoustics that consisted of a powered subwoofer and a pair of midrange/tweeter speakers. The subwoofer had a 50-watt amp, which was more than enough power to put out quality sound in the office. When I was in the process of replacing computer stuff, I noticed a subwoofer/speaker combo from Logitech at CompUSA for $80 that looked like the perfect replacement.
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Rather than just pick up that unit, I decided to shop a bit. Looking around on mail order websites, I found a wide range of speaker systems, going from the basic two-speaker combos you usually find with a home PC to some very sophisticated home theater systems. The Logitech X-530 looked like a good choice in the $50-$100 price range. It was also only $53 from TigerDirect, so I ordered it.
When it arrived, I discovered some interesting things about PC audio that I had failed to factor into my decision. I'm not a gamer, so I don't follow the pc-audio and video markets closely. The X-530 speaker system is designed for 6-channel operation. Its five speakers are to be used for front, rear, and center, left and right. (The fifth speaker handles both left and right for the center channel.) The Compaq Presario I bought as a post-storm replacement had a lot of RAM and a big hard drive, but I didn't add anything extra in the way of sound. Two channels have always been good enough for me.
The problem was that the X-530 isn't set up to use the four main speakers on standard left-and-right; if all you have are two channels, all you get is two speakers. I didn't buy this unit to use half of it, so back to the web I went in search of better sound cards. The variety was amazing, running from $10 for a basic card to over $100 for the more sophisticated models. The X-530 speakers are currently the only stereo system operating in the house, so I passed on mail order and picked up a generic card from CompUSA for $15.
Installing expansion cards hasn't really changed in twenty years, but this Presario chassis had a buch of wires blocking the PCI slots. With so much stuff built into the motherboard, jumpers are needed to connect tne on-bord stuff to the rest of the system. It took some manipulation, but I got the card in. Hookup was straightforward, it's all color-coded, one wire for front, one for rear, one for center. I didn't want to go to $30 for a six-channel card, so I'll skip using the center speaker. Initial tests have been a success, well at least the sheetrock crew appreciated the tunes.