No matter what kind of activity you are doing at your computer (whether if you are watching a movie, playing a video game or listening to some music) you will definitely need to have some sound too. And in order to have sound, you need some speakers or a set of headphones.



For today we are going to focus just on the speakers. There are all sorts of speakers that you can use, with different shapes, sizes and features. Usually any new PC comes with some default computer stereo speakers. These are small, and most of the times have a rectangular shape but they don’t sound that good and they are not powerful either.

And that’s why many people choose to buy some new speakers for their computer. and here there are many possibilities. Depending on the number of speakers they have there are three types of audio systems: the 2.0 systems (which are the classical stereo speakers – 2 devices), the 2.1 systems (which have 2 stereo speakers and a subwoofer) and the surround sound systems (which can be 5.1 systems – 6 components, or 7.1 systems – 8 components). A 5.1 system is made of 4 satellite speakers, a center channel and also a subwoofer, while the 7.1 system has 2 more extra satellites.

Depending on their type of power source we can have regular speakers (that are connecting in an audio port from the sound card and which are getting their power from an AC outlet) and USB speakers (that are connecting into an USB port and getting their energy directly from the computer). Depending on the type of connectivity there are wired speakers and also wireless speakers. And depending on the environment you can place them there are indoor or outdoor speakers.

But for today we’ll just discuss about a model of computer stereo speakers. And you can find many other articles, about all the types of speakers we mentioned, in other articles from our site. For today we’ll choose some powerful and also expensive stereo speakers, the M-Audio Studiophile AV 30 Professional Reference Speakers. They come at a price of around 100 dollars, and this may depend on the store where you buy them from. We said they are expensive…but compared to other stereo speakers, which can cost much less than this. They are not very big, but they are not tiny either, with dimensions of 15 x 8.5 x 10 inches and a weight of 11.7 pounds.

Each of the two speakers has  3 inch composite woofers and ¾ ferrofluid cooled silk dome tweeters to bring a full and rich sound, through all of the sound ranges. The power is 15 watt per channel, meaning that the total power is 30 watts RMS. And this is quite ok for some stereo speakers that will sit on the desk in front of you. They are also magnetically shielded so that you can place them close to the monitor without interfering with it. They come from a famous audio producer (M Audio) so you can definitely trust the brand and be sure that they will sound good.

Each speaker will offer you a nice and rich sound for music, video games or movies. And these speakers even have a special “bass boost” function allowing you to enhance the low frequency response. So if you like your music with a more powerful bass, you can turn on this function and enjoy the sound. This was just one example of computer stereo speakers but of course there are so many more others on the market. If you don’t know which one to choose just look at the technical details and search for a good frequency response and a good power in watts RMS. And try to choose some speakers from a famous audio producer, to make sure you will have a good quality. Some examples are: Altec Lansing, Klipsch, Harman Kardon, JBL, Creative, Logitech, Bose, Boston Acoustics, M Audio or others.