Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners M22s as PC speakers

Greetings all. I've been lurking around the forum for the last couple hours enjoying everyone's opinions and advice. I'm looking to build my first ever HT system and I'm thinking of two M22s paired with a good sub for 2.1 stereo. I'm wondering though, could the M22s also double as PC speakers?

I have a small apartment (main living area is about 1600 cu. ft.) with a single desk that serves as my PC desk, my music station, and my entertainment center. Ideally, I want to be able to listen to music while I'm in the kitchen (about 15 feet away), watch movies (about 8 feet away), and use the computer (which if I place the speakers as far back as possible, will put me about 4 feet away).

Since my PC speakers are dying (and I don't really want two pairs of speakers on my desk), I thought it would be cool to get a single set of speakers that can do all three things for me.

My question is, has anyone ever tried using their speakers this way? Is this even a feasible idea, or is it just plain unrealistic to expect a good sound when you're only sitting a couple feet away (even if you can get an equilateral triangle between you and the speakers)?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give.

You can use them as PC speakers but you will need to use a Recevier/amplifier of some sort to power them otherwise your idea is good. If you can wait a little longer Axiom is going to release a set of amplified computer speakers with sub which might suit your needs even better.

Hi Jason, thanks for the reply. A couple other questions pop into mind:

1) Has anyone tried using running the audio from a Vista system into their receiver? I'm curious because MS rewrote the Vista sound stack and completely changed the way that sound works in Windows. Now all sound (even if you have a sound card) gets re-sampled by the OS before being output.

No doubt this is unnoticeable when using generic PC speakers. But I was wondering if one of you Axiom owners have actually tried comparing (for example) a CD played directly through your receiver versus playing the CD in Vista and outputting the PC audio to the receiver. Of course, MS claims there should be no noticeable distortion, but I'm wondering if this is really true since you won't have a true bit-perfect signal anymore.

2) Does connecting your PC up to a receiver cause any issues with noise? PCs are notoriously big sources for noise since they have so many high-frequency clocks, and I have on-board audio which will probably be more noise-sensitive than a sound card. Presumably sticking to an optical cable will eliminate any potential noise issues?

Thanks again.

Right, space; using an optical or other digital connection(I use the digital output from the USB port)to your receiver bypasses the noisiness of the computer environment.

Holy crap! I never even noticed that I had an optical out on my mb. I think I may have a new plan for my M3s!