Best 2.1 Sound System for Under $400

[rando]

Boo to anyone that suggested anything sold by Best Buy with a special raspberry for Bose.  Much like every other type of specialty store, audio has been replaced with big box stores that offer almost no value to the customer.  My honest thought is you should box up the speakers you bought and take them back immediately.

 

There were some insightful suggestions, but you need to accept where the compromises are going occur at your level of powered speaker.  If you want gaming sound and big boomy bass forget everything I've typed up to this point and keep your current setup.  If, on the other hand, you plan to engage your musical background, which would appear to be the case as this is neither an A/V or gaming forum, nothing from a big box store is going to suffice.  

 

Now, within your budget this is what I would recommend.  

 

- HiVi Swans M10 2.1 speakers from Massdrop.  This is where economy of scale, low cost Asian production,intelligent design, and very importantly a good distribution network all meet.  For $100 shipped to your continental US address you are unlikely to find a more musical set of 3.5mm stereo plug computer speakers.  Bass is well controlled out of the adjustable  5" woofer.  Musical and accurate are the keywords here (compared to others in this category).

 

-  $?  Fancy cables aren't going to make much difference.  A disposable low end DAC is wasted money.  Money spent slowly acquiring a catalog of high quality music downloads (24-192 is a good mix of quality and affordability) and some time spent playing around wtih foobar while you save up for a better system is probably the move.

 

-  Alternately, invest a month or so sussing out and having shipped from mainland China a virtually unknown sub-brand of speaker that meets all of your criteria. 

 

Edit:  Under no circumstances attach yourself to anything else hyped on Massdrop.  Rare is the product worth owning on there.

 

Edit Two:  Since we have moved on to acoustic response.  Speaker placement and the qualities of your room are going to play a massive part in sound quality; large windows bare wood floors, unpadded surfaces, or even just very cramped quarters will all negatively effect sound reproduction.  Given your steady diet of bass heavy material I will note that a sub with both front and rear ports such as I suggested will greatly improve placed 2' or more from the rear wall with a large open area in front of it.  Do some research into maximizing nearfield listening and experiment until you are happy with the results.  

 

Most of all enjoy yourself and don't stress about improving things you can't meaningfully impact.  

[STC]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

 

When I said the longest length is related to the lowest frequency a room will support well, that doesn't mean there is nothing below that frequency.  Only that the room is not adding support at those frequencies

 

 

Great explanation!

 

Let's discuss more about frequency and room length. 

 

The wave lenght of a frequency is not is not a single cycle but continuous for many cycles. 

 

Also, the room lenght is not the only distance that would affect the wavelength, especially for the LF. The ceiling, floor, side wall and rear wall distance are among many things that would reflect the soundwave back to the speakers. 

 

It it is true, smaller room would suffer more with boom than a bigger room but it got nothing to do with the room lenght, IMO. 

 

When the room is smaller the LF would be enhanced because the energy is at the highest level since it is within the first cycle of the wavelength. 

 

Furthermore, room should not support any frequencies. If the room length of 50 is going to support a frequency of 44Hz then it will also support the frequency of 88Hz. However, due to the distance of 50 feet, the energy level of 88Hz would be less since it is the second cycle of the wavelength and therefore the resonance would be less compared to 44Hz. 

 

If you pad your room with 100% absorbent material than the length or width or height would no longer matters as you would hear and measure the sound exactly as in the anechoic chamber. I have pretty flat measurement 20 to 200Hz for my room where the length is 4.42 meter only. 

[Ralf11]

longest dimension of the room will determine resonant modes - i.e. the peak in frequency where the room size affects the amplitude of the sound

 

don't be confused about his use of the word "support" as a short-cut

 

if you want to read more search on "Master Handbook" and you'll find a thread where I stuck in a cite to the that, and also a simpler online explanation

 

Once you get the system, you might want to post a dimensioned drawing of your room and some pics - don't be afraid to spend as much time on your setup as the people with the mega-buck systems do

 

also, if you want to put in some time you can build your own absorbers & diffusors for cheap

[plissken]

2 hours ago, rando said:

 

-  $?  Fancy cables aren't going to make much difference.

 

If any...

2 hours ago, rando said:

A disposable low end DAC is wasted money.  

Agreed. There are a bunch of poorly built $25 and $30 DAC's. He should get the Berhinger UMC204HD for $79. I have one in and the build quality is very good upon pulling it apart and giving it a look over. 

 

[esldude]

4 hours ago, plissken said:

If any...

Agreed. There are a bunch of poorly built $25 and $30 DAC's. He should get the Berhinger UMC204HD for $79. I have one in and the build quality is very good upon pulling it apart and giving it a look over. 

 

If you have it apart pics would be nice.  Also which DAC ADC chips did it use?

[plissken]

Two CS 4272-CZZ

[esldude]

1 hour ago, plissken said:

Two CS 4272-CZZ

Thanks for the info. I expected at this price they were using a combined ADC/DAC chip or codec as they are called.  Those are offering pretty good performance these days.  This one has two of each in each chip so I am guessing one chip used balanced for each channel. 

[esldude]

I am going to post some results of the Room Sim in REW.  It isn't perfectly accurate, but I have found it to be pretty well in the ballpark with real results for rectangular rooms.  Other rooms with an L shape or opening into larger spaces are a different thing in terms of simulation.   Listener is near the middle of the room, and the single sub is in the corner.  Moving the listener position or sub position of course effects these things.  So this is a simplified group of examples to illustrate how I think about this and consider it to work. 

 

First up is the response of a subwoofer with a -3 db down point of 5 hz with a xover set to 200 hz in an anechoic environment.  Notice it basically has a flat response at 57 db.

 

 

Next is the same sub in a unrealistic 25 ft square room.  The pink lines show modes. Notice how the level peaks at 22 hz and its multiples.  See how the general level is well above 57 db until you get some cancellation going at 3 octaves higher and above.

 

 

Now we have the same sub in a 10 ft square room.  Notice the general level is lower and response drops way off below the lowest mode at 56 hz.  The small size of the room means spacing of resonant supportive nodes is spread further apart and raises the levels less before the xover cuts response altogether.

 

 

 

Finally the same 10 ft square room if it were sealed.  The Room Sim makes some allowance for leakage and absorption of typical home construction and the parameters are somewhat adjustable.  This graph will be if the room were sealed with some nominal level of absorption.   We see the low response does come back and appears headed toward the 57 db level.  However the partial cancellation of wavelengths means that won't occur until down another couple octaves below the length the room modes support.  And in a real room those frequencies that low are mostly going to leak away.

 

 

Now for a more realistic room, here is the same sub in a room with golden ratio dimensions.  25 ft long, 15.45 ft. wide, and 9.55 ft high.  Pink lines are length modes, green lines are width modes and blue lines are height modes.  You get a more even response.  Peaks are not so high though you still have peaks and dips. 

 

 

 For comparison a golden ratio room with 15.7 ft length, 9.7 ft width. , and a short 6 ft height.   Again nodal support is spread further apart and lowers the overall level in that range due to the smaller size of the room. 

 

 

Hopefully this will make it clear that unless your room has one dimension of 20 ft or more the difference between a sub with response to 25 hz and 30 hz is likely to be effectively non-existent as far as what you could hear of it.

 

[esldude]

As a follow up to the previous post.  Here is the result of a 20 ft long, 14 ft wide, 10 ft high room with a sub with a - 3b point of 25 hz and then same room with a sub having 30 hz -3db response.  Yes they are different.  A couple db below 50 hz.  Also while discussing it especially among cheap subs be careful of specs.  Some quote a -6 db or -10 db response as being the effective limit thinking room gain will help out.  Most often when they do that they just give the low response in hz and don't specify level.  So comparing spec for spec often doesn't tell you much. 

 

25 hz

 

 

 

30 hz

 

 

[plissken]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Thanks for the info. I expected at this price they were using a combined ADC/DAC chip or codec as they are called.  Those are offering pretty good performance these days.  This one has two of each in each chip so I am guessing one chip used balanced for each channel. 

 

It also has an analog devices chip in in also. Not sure what model... Using XMOS of some variety too. 

[STC]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

For comparison a golden ratio room with 15.7 ft length, 9.7 ft width. , and a short 6 ft height.   Again nodal support is spread further apart and lowers the overall level in that range due to the smaller size of the room. 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, esldude said:

Now for a more realistic room, here is the same sub in a room with golden ratio dimensions.  25 ft long, 15.45 ft. wide, and 9.55 ft high.  Pink lines are length modes, green lines are width modes and blue lines are height modes.  You get a more even response.  Peaks are not so high though you still have peaks and dips. 

 

 

Please state the location of subwoofer and listener. Thanks.

[GUTB]

On 5/20/2017 at 2:53 PM, Nobear said:

Hi everyone,

 

This is my first post here. I hope computeraudiophile.com are the best forums for my questions. If not, please recommend forum(s) where I should go.

 

Background: I've been using a Monsoon MM-700 (originally $150, no longer sold) flat panel 2.1 system for years. I let my sister borrow it and someone probably tripped on the cable, because the 3.5mm jack on the subwoofer got bent, and now I experience unacceptable distortion no matter how I adjust the cable. If I buy a new system, my total budget is $400, which includes any DACs, filters, cables, etc. that would optimize my listening experience for my budget. I have some ideas, but I'd like to ask openly first, before biasing with specific products I'm considering. There are a few questions that would help me make a decision:

 

1) Do you think it's worth it to try to fix the jack on my current system, or pay to get it fixed, or am I better off just buying a new system?

 

2) If I buy a quality 2.1 3.5mm system for my budget, how big a difference will an external DAC make, versus connecting it straight to a mid-2014 MacBook Pro?

 

3) How big a difference will a USB filter make at this level?

 

4) How big a difference will quality cables make at this level?

 

5) How likely am I to be able to tell the difference between CD-quality and higher resolution audio at this level (again, sub-$400 total)?

 

6) What is the best combination of gear for me, and for my budget?

 

If it helps, here is my background in music: I have good relative pitch, I played the violin for 4 years, and I've sung in high school and community college choirs, as well as a semiprofessional group of 4-8 singers specializing in Renaissance madrigals. Years ago, I tested my perception of MP3 compression quality in iTunes. With the Monsoon MM-700 plugged straight into a Mac, I detected a difference up to 160 kbps, but honestly not higher. I don't know if I was limited by my setup.

 

As far as tastes, I listen to many genres, from classical to trance. I appreciate quality, but I also like to feel the bass. A pipe organ can go down to 16 Hz, which is lower than the listed response of any sound system I'm aware of in my budget. That said, I am interested in ability to reproduce frequencies down to 16 Hz, even if the response curve falls off and I only hear/feel a portion of the impact of the lowest pipes on a pipe organ.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

You won't get anything of quality for that price range. You're very best bet is to hit up China for the best possible value. Check out Queenway Store on AliExpress, China-Hifi, Hifi EXQUiS and Shenzhen Audio.

[esldude]

1 hour ago, STC said:

 

 

 

Please state the location of subwoofer and listener. Thanks.

Middle of the room for listener.  Sub in the corner.

[STC]

Strange, I couldn't simulate the same graph as yours with the said settings.

[esldude]

Here is the full screenshot so you can confirm the settings.

 

I did have gain down to -18 db just to place the curves in a middle portion of the chart.

 

[STC]

Thanx. Now mine matches. I thought you added no absorption and the width is 9.25 ft. If you do the measurement again with same absorption and the distance of "listener" to be approximately same as the distance in the 25 ft room. You will notice the LF is still at the same level like in the 25ft length room.

[STC]

To illustrate my point that the room dimension is no barrier to reproduce the lowest frequency, I moved the listener closer to the wall and move the subwoofer to be approximately the same distance in the two rooms you mentioned.

 

You can see that even in the small room, with the same settings; you still achieve the 57 or 58dB at 20Hz. You can even achieve relatively flat response all the way up by adding adequate absorption.

 

IMO, room dimension is not related in any way to limit the lowest frequency of a subwoofer. Of course, positioning and treatment would play a big role.

 

[esldude]

26 minutes ago, STC said:

To illustrate my point that the room dimension is no barrier to reproduce the lowest frequency, I moved the listener closer to the wall and move the subwoofer to be approximately the same distance in the two rooms you mentioned.

 

You can see that even in the small room, with the same settings; you still achieve the 57 or 58dB at 20Hz. You can even achieve relatively flat response all the way up by adding adequate absorption.

 

IMO, room dimension is not related in any way to limit the lowest frequency of a subwoofer. Of course, positioning and treatment would play a big role.

 

You have selected sealed for your subwoofer, I had ported selected.  Of course moving speaker and listening area around is part of getting a smooth response.  The peaks of resonance and spacing which can interfere still tend to crop up related to the longest dimensions. 

 

An approach some have taken (I think Dallas Justice is doing this now), is to have a pair along the front wall, a matching pair along the rear wall and delay the rear pair so the initial wave gets thru the room and then gets mostly cancelled.  So resonances are reduced, dips are reduced, response gets more even, I suppose it would reduce the effect of room dimensions.  Making this useful for small rooms.  Of course small rooms don't need four big subs.  So maybe using 8 inchers that reach low would be a good thing for this kind of arrangement. 

 

I once had a long narrow listening room which had a short wall that opened into the kitchen.  I found using panels there was a bass build up in front of that short wall when you sat down.  Spacing my Quads adroitly off the front wall and sitting in front of that short wall put me in a zone where the Quads worked well all the way down to a nice firm 40 hz with no woofer help. 

[Nobear]

First, I want to say I find this discussion of room acoustics very interesting, and I looked up the REW software and see that it's free and looks awesome!

 

So it seems that, all else equal, a room with different dimensions for length, width, and height is preferable to a cubic room of similar volume, for creating as smooth a LF response curve as possible. Also, I'm guessing room size or dimensions don't matter so much for mid or high frequencies, since any real bedroom or listening room will be longer in all dimensions than those wavelengths. But what about the tradeoff that a bigger room will require more power to fill in general, at all frequencies?

 

I see golden ratio dimensions mentioned. Is there something special about these ratios that provide optimal acoustics, or have other ratios since been found that outperform golden ratios? What about room shapes other than rectangular cuboids?

 

I'm going to measure my bedroom shortly, but I can tell you first that its rectangular cuboid shape is interrupted by my closet, which has three faces. It was also made out of the house's garage before we moved in (it's a lower middle class home I suppose), if that provides any insight into its likely construction and acoustical properties.

[Nobear]

Also (and I intentionally put this in a separate post), there is one question I have that remains unanswered, and is of most immediate importance to me: what should I do with the unopened gear my sister got me a birthday or two ago? Should I try to sell it and upgrade, or open it and use it?

 

What she got me is an AKG P120 condenser mic, and the first version of this M-Audio M-Track interface. I actually don't know the difference between the first version and version II. It looks the same, and they are both limited to 24bit/48kHz recording. I can't find the output resolution, but the thing does have outputs, and so doubles to offer the same basic DAC functionality as the Behringer that people recommend here.

 

How does the quality compare between the M-Track I have and the recommended Behringer? And am I likely to notice a difference in practice, with either my ProMedia or any of the speakers that people have recommended here for my budget?

 

What about for recording? Will there be a noticeable difference in quality between the two interfaces using a P120 mic? Should I be recording in high resolution (even if I don't have the gear to hear the difference myself), or would I need more expensive components and/or a better studio environment for high resolution recording to make a meaningful difference given the right playback gear?

[GUTB]

47 minutes ago, Nobear said:

First, I want to say I find this discussion of room acoustics very interesting, and I looked up the REW software and see that it's free and looks awesome!

 

So it seems that, all else equal, a room with different dimensions for length, width, and height is preferable to a cubic room of similar volume, for creating as smooth a LF response curve as possible. Also, I'm guessing room size or dimensions don't matter so much for mid or high frequencies, since any real bedroom or listening room will be longer in all dimensions than those wavelengths. But what about the tradeoff that a bigger room will require more power to fill in general, at all frequencies?

 

I see golden ratio dimensions mentioned. Is there something special about these ratios that provide optimal acoustics, or have other ratios since been found that outperform golden ratios? What about room shapes other than rectangular cuboids?

 

I'm going to measure my bedroom shortly, but I can tell you first that its rectangular cuboid shape is interrupted by my closet, which has three faces. It was also made out of the house's garage before we moved in (it's a lower middle class home I suppose), if that provides any insight into its likely construction and acoustical properties.

 

Be careful, there's a lot of lies and bad information on this topic. Ultimately I ended up having to buy a measurement mic, interface (Focusrite Solo for iPad connectivity) and a mic boom and do my own experimentation with placement and treatments. One of the key lies is the inability of a smaller room to control bass -- you put bass traps right inbetween the side and back walls from the speaker, use a high pass filter to slope off the low frequencies so that they peak below the rest of the band. EQ down the low-mid / upper bass bump and you will achieve a frequency response +/- 2dB. You will just have to live without deep bass.

 

Golden ratios and online guides for speaker placement are absolute BULL. Speakers facing dead ahead for best stage. Equilateral triangle with speakers is good. You can also try 75-85% distance between speakers vs distance to listening position. Treating early reflection points is NOT OPTIONAL. Basically, treatments are required. Foam works, diffusers are better. Bass traps MUST be purpose designed as bass traps; behind speaker on rear wall and beside speaker next to side wall are prime locations. Front wall corners are secondary. Rear walls are trinary. Diffuser on front wall. Deep pile carpet. No desks, tables, no NOTHING between you and speakers. NO to high back chairs.

[STC]

On 5/23/2017 at 2:10 PM, esldude said:

The lowest frequency a room will support well is related to its longest dimension.  You need something like 18 feet to get near 30 hz.  So don't get hung up over one being spec'd a few hz lower. ....

 

2 hours ago, esldude said:

You have selected sealed for your subwoofer, I had ported selected.  Of course moving speaker and listening area around is part of getting a smooth response.  The peaks of resonance and spacing which can interfere still tend to crop up related to the longest dimensions. 

 

An approach some have taken (I think Dallas Justice is doing this now), is to have a pair along the front wall, a matching pair along the rear wall and delay the rear pair so the initial wave gets thru the room and then gets mostly cancelled.  So resonances are reduced, dips are reduced, response gets more even, I suppose it would reduce the effect of room dimensions.  Making this useful for small rooms.  Of course small rooms don't need four big subs.  So maybe using 8 inchers that reach low would be a good thing for this kind of arrangement. 

 

I once had a long narrow listening room which had a short wall that opened into the kitchen.  I found using panels there was a bass build up in front of that short wall when you sat down.  Spacing my Quads adroitly off the front wall and sitting in front of that short wall put me in a zone where the Quads worked well all the way down to a nice firm 40 hz with no woofer help. 

 

 

Positioning and treatment is part of room acoustics. I am only addressing to the myth that small room or even a cubic room cannot reproduce the lowest frequency as your mentioned in your earlier post. Room dimension got nothing to do with the ability of subwoofer to produce the lowest frequencies according to their specification. 

 

 

 

Here is another chart of a perfect cube shaped room. As you can see the lowest frequency will be produced by the subwoofer but in a smaller room the resonance would interfere at other frequencies. If you treat your room adequately than that shouldn't be a problem.

 

 

@GUTB, I am not sure if golden ratio is bull or not but my room is room in room with golden ratio dimension. I know very little about acoustics and when this room was built I just wanted to have the golden ratio and two walls to act as bass trap. It worked out to be perfect where I do not have any resonance problem although the sound was too dead which I addressed later. Do you mind pointing out which part of room acoustics in this thread you consider as lies and misinformation?

 

I do agree there could some misinformation or simply we do not understand the message about room acoustics in audiophile forums. One thing I learned is a flat room response is no good. 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Nobear said:

Also (and I intentionally put this in a separate post), there is one question I have that remains unanswered, and is of most immediate importance to me: what should I do with the unopened gear my sister got me a birthday or two ago? Should I try to sell it and upgrade, or open it and use it?

 

What she got me is an AKG P120 condenser mic, and the first version of this M-Audio M-Track interface. I actually don't know the difference between the first version and version II. It looks the same, and they are both limited to 24bit/48kHz recording. I can't find the output resolution, but the thing does have outputs, and so doubles to offer the same basic DAC functionality as the Behringer that people recommend here.

 

How does the quality compare between the M-Track I have and the recommended Behringer? And am I likely to notice a difference in practice, with either my ProMedia or any of the speakers that people have recommended here for my budget?

 

What about for recording? Will there be a noticeable difference in quality between the two interfaces using a P120 mic? Should I be recording in high resolution (even if I don't have the gear to hear the difference myself), or would I need more expensive components and/or a better studio environment for high resolution recording to make a meaningful difference given the right playback gear?

Maudio is fine.  The Behringer might be a little better, but likely not a huge difference maybe even none. 

 

The Maudio would be just dandy.  There is very little gained, I mean tiny little difference, at rates higher than 48 khz.  It has not ever been shown conclusively that people can hear a difference of 48 khz vs higher rates despite all the hoopla. 

 

The P120 is a not bad inexpensive condenser mike.  It probably isn't good for measurements though using for that might tell you some useful things.  For any music or voice recordings your Maudio and P120 will do fine.  For playing back music it will do fine.  If you have some higher rate music tracks they can be downsampled to 48 khz.  I suggest using Foobar for playback if on Windows.  Your Maudio should have come with Ableton Lite DAW software.

 

You can hear it in use here:

 

 

 

 

[esldude]

13 minutes ago, STC said:

 

 

 

Positioning and treatment is part of room acoustics. I am only addressing to the myth that small room or even a cubic room cannot reproduce the lowest frequency as your mentioned in your earlier post. Room dimension got nothing to do with the ability of subwoofer to produce the lowest frequencies according to their specification. 

 

 

 

Here is another chart of a perfect cube shaped room. As you can see the lowest frequency will be produced by the subwoofer but in a smaller room the resonance would interfere at other frequencies. If you treat your room adequately than that shouldn't be a problem.

 

 

@GUTB, I am not sure if golden ratio is bull or not but my room is room in room with golden ratio dimension. I know very little about acoustics and when this room was built I just wanted to have the golden ratio and two walls to act as bass trap. It worked out to be perfect where I do not have any resonance problem although the sound was too dead which I addressed later. Do you mind pointing out which part of room acoustics in this thread you consider as lies and misinformation?

 

I do agree there could some misinformation or simply we do not understand the message about room acoustics in audiophile forums. One thing I learned is a flat room response is no good. 

Well if you had perfect absorption there are no reflections and it will be an anechoic chamber or outdoors.  I can't see in the screenshots what you have the absorption set on.  I used a nominal 10% for illustrative purposes.  In my own room two walls I guessed were about .30 (double gypsum on 2x4 walls), and two were about .25 (gypsum backed by brick).  I ended up adjusting that a few hundredths to get the best match to my actual measurements.  The match is reasonably close. 

 

Here is a list of different materials absorption at different frequencies.

https://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/acoustic_IOI/101_13.htm

 

That is what this comes down to.  If you don't have much absorption the size will heavily influence response that causes standing waves from repeatedly reflected waves building at given frequencies and cancelling at others.  Absorption is good and helps. Otherwise the size will effect heavily the result.  To reiterate when I said support I was thinking in terms of support or augement sound at those lengths.  Not that sound couldn't occur at lower frequencies.  However the room won't aid those lower frequencies in forming without cancellation effects or tremendous absorption which gets difficult at lower frequencies.  Since this thread is about a $400 total system, I don't think suggesting several hundred dollars of bass absorbers is warranted.  Though our discussion got away from thinking of system cost in the interim. 

[Nobear]

6 minutes ago, esldude said:

Maudio is fine.  The Behringer might be a little better, but likely not a huge difference maybe even none. 

 

The Maudio would be just dandy.  There is very little gained, I mean tiny little difference, at rates higher than 48 khz.  It has not ever been shown conclusively that people can hear a difference of 48 khz vs higher rates despite all the hoopla. 

 

The P120 is a not bad inexpensive condenser mike.  It probably isn't good for measurements though using for that might tell you some useful things.  For any music or voice recordings your Maudio and P120 will do fine.  For playing back music it will do fine.  If you have some higher rate music tracks they can be downsampled to 48 khz.  I suggest using Foobar for playback if on Windows.  Your Maudio should have come with Ableton Lite DAW software.

 

Thank you once again. I have a mid-2014 13" MacBook Pro. I'm going to go ahead and open my birthday presents like a year or two late haha. It's almost my birthday again, but I'm not going to ask my sister for anything. I think we will both be happy when I get this stuff out and start playing with it.

 

To me, it has always seemed odd that 44.1 kHz doesn't sound worse than it does. I mean, any adult who hasn't had very severe hearing loss can easily hear 11 kHz, which would only be sampled 4 times per cycle. That seems on paper like horrible resolution to me. How could you distinguish between a sine wave, square wave, and sawtooth wave with only four key points per cycle?

 

Meanwhile, 16 bits seems like a comparatively good figure on paper. That means each speaker driver can travel to any of 65,536 distinct positions within an inch or less of space. Has it been shown conclusively that people can distinguish between 16 and 24 bits?

 

I think I'm going to start by checking out the Sibelius trial, and at some point I'll check if I'm eligible for a student discount on it. Then I'll check out DAWs and my recording gear.