just (on a whim) purchased a pair of bx5as and i want to know the best (cheap) option for volume...

A used home stereo style preamp from ebay or craigslist or goodwill or wherever you can find one.

A SM Pro Audio NanoPatch+ for a passive option.

Any regular home audio style preamp with RCA inputs and outputs will work.  Find one that has the features and quality you want.  Some preamps do color the sound so know what you're getting.

The neat thing about using a preamp is that most preamps can handle multiple sources.  So you could do things like hook up a home CD player or your iPod to the preamp as additional sources.  You may even get a phono input as part of the deal and be able to hook up a turntable.

Want a really, really cheap option?  I set the dials on both speakers to like 3 notches in, hook the speakers to the laptop, and the speakers' power wires to a dedicated power cord.  So you end up controlling the sound from your laptop and you can turn off both speakers with a flick on the power chord button. 

The bx5a's are wasted out of a laptop soundcard, just get a cheap dac eith volume control, the fiio E7 or u-dac 2.

The fiio E7 and u-dac , both use high-end chips and are quite cheap so for the low price range you probley won't find anything else better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JRG1990 

The fiio E7 and u-dac , both use high-end chips and are quite cheap so for the low price range you probley won't find anything else better.

You make a valid point and I guess I'm in the same boat then as gabjuasfijwee, but do you think there is a 100$ difference between the SQ on a Itouch 4th gen and what you would get from a u-dac?  Because if I'm ever craving SQ I don't mind plugging the speakers into my itouch's headphone out if it means not getting a dedicated piece that has the same SQ, you know?

Saying the BX5a are wasted if used with onboard sound is quite a bit of hyperbole.  Onboard sound isn't always that bad and the M-Audio BX5a and BX8a aren't that good of an audiophile quality monitor.  The BX monitors are fine and good for listening, but when you start getting audiophile with them they show that they're not playing in any big leagues.  They're not spectacular in audiophile qualities like width and depth of soundstage, clarity and detail and things like that.  So frankly, playing them with onboard sound isn't hurting them that much compared to if you were playing some really good audiophile speakers with onboard audio.

I have onboard sound from a ReakTek as one of my sources (it's my default audio device so gets used for things like YouTube).  My BX8a sound fine when used with the onboard.

So play them with whatever source you want.  They'll sound fine.  They're reasonably forgiving for a monitor style speaker.  There are certainly monitor speakers that are much more brutal and unforgiving and audiophile than the M-Audio monitors.

Play them from the headphone out of a portable MP3 player.  That's no different than the folks who plug in quality portable headphone amps to the headphone out of a DAP.  The headphone out will give you volume control.  Just make sure you have the volume on the DAP down low when you first plug in the speakers.

I believe the RCA outputs on the UDAC-2 are variable (controlled by the volume knob).  If that's the case then you could plug the BX5a directly to the back of a UDAC-2.  That would save you buying a separate volume knob and then a separate DAC later on.  Should work.  I've never used or even listened to a UDAC-2 so can't comment on sound or usability or suitability for the task.

Be sure you don't have any extra sound processing going on when using the onboard audio.  The audio drivers for onboard sound and sound cards will often have options for things like headphone processing, environment effects (hall sound, underwater sound, etc), bass boost, virtual subwoofer, EQ, stereo widening, processing to make it sound "better" on small laptop speakers, and things like that.  Things that really mess up the sound.  So make sure that all options like that are disabled.  Generally there shouldn't be that drastic of an obvious night and day difference with onboard sound.  Though some onboard sound is noticeably worse than others.  It is possible that the onboard sound on your laptop is doing a spectacularly poor job.

I never really see any mention of my onboard audio, soudmax integrated digital hd audio, but it definitely doesn't sound that great unless I use srs iwow audio sandbox, software that manipulates the sound.  Maybe it doesn't keep the music true to the source, but from a relatively less critical listening perspective it sounds 2x more musical to my ears.  Not quite at the level of the itouch 4th, but it covers a lot of ground. But gabjuasfijwee if you do move up to the udac-2 let me know how it compares to your portable media player's SQ

And Ham Sandwich I understand that the bx5a are barely entry level studio monitors so they wouldn't compare to the m-audio's cx series or similarly priced products, but if we're just listening to already released music, not mixing or producing, my understanding was tracks would more likely sound 'musical' from a listener's perspective by using less expensive studio speakers?