There's two ways you can go for cheap-ish nice speakers: self-powered speakers or passive speakers. Self-powered speakers have amplifiers built into the cabinet so they require no external amp; you hook them up to your sound card's line out and it's ready to go. Speakers typically use RCA cables...

Since this seems to be the place where you guys talk about speakers, I'd like to ask: TheAudioInsider is selling a $250 pair of passive bookshelves with planar magnetic tweeters and some interesting woofer technology and I am very intrigued. Has anyone listened to these speakers? I'm looking to...

I miss the old gold cups. I wish Grado would do a throwback series of SR-325is with the bling turned back on

7/10 people who I've let listen to my Alessandro MS-1s have said that they sound "a bit better" (but not $100 better) and the last 3/10 say they sound barely better than what they listen to - that is, SkullCandy and iBuds. I think my friends are deaf.