Many people don’t know this, but hooking up bookshelf speakers, or just speakers from any old/busted stereo system, to a PC, is possible. It isn’t something that’s overly complicated to pull of or expensive. Sound quality should be much better than on the small PC speakers that most users have connected to their computers. I don’t consider myself an audiophile and I’m rocking this type setup for quite some time. Exact cost for everything varies and it depends on what components you already own. What you’re going to need are speakers (obviously), power supply, cables, amplifier and speaker stands. I had speakers and cables on hand, speaker stand I built myself so all I had to spend money on is the amplifier and the power supply. Let’s dig in and see what exactly is needed.
Selecting the right speakers
Let’s first talk about the speakers. Those of you who already own speakers can skip to the next paragraph. Speakers that I’m using are a pair of trash picked Sony SS-H771’s.
They are 6 Ohm/50W speakers that were originally part of a mini Hi-Fi component system. The system broke down, I’m assuming, and the speakers were thrown out. Speaker cost is 0$.
Now you can buy a new set of bookshelf speakers from Amazon, Ebay or some other online retailer. I would advise against it, since there are so many orphaned bookshelf speakers that can be bought for real cheap. Browse through your local Craiglists or whatever the Craiglist equivalent is in your area. Used electronics stores or thrift stores are also worth checking out. Look for a set of speakers that are in the 4-8 Ohm range. If it’s at all possible, try to test out the speakers before purchasing them, to make sure that they actually work.
Amplifiers, power supply, and cabling
Next step in our quest to upgrade PC audio is to get our hands on an amplifier. Alternatively you could use an audio receiver, but they are much more expensive. Plugging the speakers directly into the PC is not possible, since audio cards supply very small amounts of current. They can’t power speakers hence the need for amplifiers.
So which amplifier should you choose. I went with a cheapo Chinese amplifier off of Ebay that I purchased for an incredible 10$ price tag. Exact model number is Lvpin LP-838.
It’s very cheap, and it does work, but it has an incredibly high noise floor. Noise floor is basically the noise that you hear from the amplifier itself, without any music playing. It varies in type. It can be loud white noise, loud buzzing or you can hear a crackling sound. This cheap Chinese amplifier that I got seems to give a mix of all three. It’s really bad, so I would ADVISE AGAINST BUYING IT.
Do not fret though, I then decided to do a bit of research, which I should have done in the first place and found out that there are much better amplifier brands that can be found for only around 20-30$. Brands that you should be looking at include Breeze, Nobsound or any other class D amplifier that sports the TPA3116 board. Currently all these amplifiers are priced somewhere in the 20-40$ range.
Power supply should be a 12-24v power adapter. Again I had a 12V 2A power adapter at hand that I used at first, pictured above. This isn’t enough to power the aforementioned amplifiers, which why I decided to purchase a switching power supply. They can be bought for around 10-15$ off of Ebay and Aliexpress.
Noise floor was improved a great deal after I switched to the 12V 10A switching power supply from the image above. There was no longer any crackling or humming. All I could hear is a faint white noise in the background.
Last thing that you’ll need are cables. To connect PC to the amplifier you’ll need a 3.5mm to AUX cable. Alternatively you’ll need 3.5mm male to male cable, if the amplifier uses 3.5mm jack for signal input.
Depending on what kind of speakers you buy, they might have cables attached to them, so you won’t need to buy speaker wire. Not unless the speaker wire is too short and you need to extend the cables. If the speakers that you managed to snag only have the red and black connectors on them, then you’ll need to buy speaker wire separately. It’s best that you go for 14 gauge speaker wire, which should be more than enough for crisp sound quality.
Setting up speaker stands
As far as placing the speakers goes it won’t be as easy as placing your standard PC speakers. Since bookshelf speakers are bigger, they need more space. That’s why I decided to build speaker stands which can be seen on the image down below.
How you’re going to arrange your speakers depends on what desk size you have. I myself have Ikeas Linnmon tabletop so there’s plenty of room to have the speakers on the sides of the table. Additionally I managed to create a decent looking speaker stands. They are about 30cm high and I screwed them into the table corners for maximum sturdiness.
If you don’t have any tools or materials to setup speaker stands of your own, you should visit Ikea. There are bookshelves (Ekby) and furniture stands (Capita, Landskrona, Godmorgon) for just a few dollars that are perfect for DIY speaker stands.
Finishing touches
When you have everything setup, amplifier and speakers have their place on the table, all that’s left is to wire everything up. Use the 3.5mm to AUX cable to connect your PC to the amplifier. Next connect the amplifier to the power supply. Be careful not to mix up positive and negative poles, since they matter when talking about DC current. Last thing connect speakers to the amplifier. If everything is setup properly you should be hearing sweet high quality sound coming out of the speakers. Audio quality is much better with this type of setup and it only cost me around 50$ to have everything up and going. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment down below.
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