Forum

stereo speakers for my Mac at dorm

marchoffmann

#1 · 2026-07-19 14:09

Hi
So in august, I'll be moving to the school dorm. My plan is to take my piano with me, using it as midi, using virtual instruments on mac for it and wanting to jam with others together. Like, someone could maybe bring a guitar and stuff, so I'm pretty hyped. The thing is though, right now I can only do that by plugging the piano into the mac, muting it's sound, then plugging headphones into the mac and receiving the sound of the virtual instrument, in my case Noire, that way. I obviously wanna play together with some folks though, so I've been wondering if there are any good stereo, cable speakers that have a nice sound and arn't very expensive? I would take studio monitors, but then again it's just a dorm room and I don't even have an audio interface which seems to be required for it.
If anyone has some tips on this, I'd love to hear'em.
Also, audio demos are welcome xd.

Jonathan

#2 · 2026-07-19 14:25

Edited

IK Multimedia iLoud Micro Monitors, the originals, not pro. 240€ or something around that for them, and they have a cable packed by which ends in 3.5mm/aux. Even have Bluetooth if you're bored and wanna listen with phone or sth, but not like the base slaps extremely or something, so if you'll eventualy wanna pump hardstyle on them or sth a sub would not be wrong, but wellp, that's something different for later. But I've been researching on this for quite a while recently and those are a pretty good bet for this price range and size too.

Jonathan

#3 · 2026-07-19 14:27

Can demo when I get back home later.

marchoffmann

#4 · 2026-07-19 15:25

O you own these? Yeah that'd be cool to check out. Thanks for the suggestion for now, I'll have a look at this later.

marchoffmann

#5 · 2026-07-19 15:25

Edited

I don't think I need a lot of boomy bass, you know the stuff I'm doing so I think that should be fine.

marchoffmann

#6 · 2026-07-21 12:31

Are you able to send some recording of it maybe today? It's hard to find a good review that actually has sound preview in it as well, and if they do then they're recorded with mono mics.

Jonathan

#7 · 2026-07-21 12:38

1 likes

Yeah, can do. Was a bit lazy recently, but I agree there are really no good reviews sadly.

Jonathan

#8 · 2026-07-21 16:12

Transcription

I just figured out that the first demo I was making of these sounded completely awful because I didn't put on the windshield of the recorder because I thought it would maybe sound better Spoiler! You can hear my breathing all over the place So no, it doesn't. I have to do this again

Jonathan

#9 · 2026-07-21 16:33

There is quite a bit yapping at the start explaining the devices and such, and also I realised I might've hold the recorder a bit above the speakers, but it should be ok for an idea. It does not represent them amazingly though, I'll say that. But I think it gives an idea of how they sound pretty well.
ofc to big for Elten because I wanted good quallity, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tx9xq2q0vpcnf23pk9xd5/240928-222453.WAV?rlkey=n83kuh9rsdumhcn7m71ioz9ib&dl=1

Jonathan

#10 · 2026-07-21 16:39

Edited

I actually also enjoy these for listening to audio dramas. What do I know, I have no comparison to them so might be I'm just praising them to high for nothing, but for this price range, taking into consideration what reviews I read about them, they're pretty great.

Jonathan

#11 · 2026-07-21 16:40

Edited

Hope it helps, lmk your thoughts.

marchoffmann

#12 · 2026-07-21 16:46

Transcription

know when i talk about speakers and think about them it's always like yeah um headphones are great for music and speakers barely represent that especially mono speakers i was showing off you know one of my ableton projects to someone months ago and of course it was a mono speaker and it sounded awful well headphones it sounds absolutely wonderful so uh there is some amazing anyways uh it's nice because i think it's pretty good example uh they are really detailed uh because it's not just like some boomy basin but you actually can hear um the clearness of the high end or maybe like treble in a sense so it could be nice like i gotta think through i think this theory is like a piano coming out of but i could see it like i could really see it it's it's crazy because they seem to be pretty small for what it's worth and yeah i mean since it has bluetooth maybe i'm going to use it for you know playing music as well and stuff like that they sound really nice they will do um i guess it just depends on the cable um but like i suppose you could set them apart as much as you want because i just realized you know the if they're standing on the desk um i'm of course not gonna hear the sound to both sides like if i have this piano standing there and then the desk is to i don't know it's left or it's right uh of course i'm gonna hear like only from one side so i guess i mean it would probably be possible to put it onto both sides of the piano and then like have a cable to the macbook like i guess it's just about connectivity but like the cable length yeah i don't know i'm just thinking a lot because if you have a midi keyboard you could probably just sit on your desk chair and like have it on your lap but since i don't but um they sound great they sound really great like nice to hear that this is that good like i was kind of wondering like the youtube demos really sucked they really sucked they absolutely suck they're very very bad i don't know that's something else but i'm probably going to consider these because yeah and i see the things i heard even if they're standing on the desk what you can do is like flip some switch and you have this equalizer thing which is supposed to help uh filter out the desk noise i don't know how correct it is or is that just a pro thing but it shouldn't be a pro thing because the title didn't say it was the pro model um so that's nice so i don't think i'm gonna have too much of an issue like the bass boost thing per se which a lot of speakers have so yeah they seem really nice so thank you for you know sending little clip nice song by the way nice

Jonathan

#13 · 2026-07-21 16:50

I mean, the cable is like a meter I think, bit more probably. Not sure if you can seperately purchase it in a longer length, it's sadly no standard as far as I know. And you have to consider the left speaker has to go into your Mac somehow, but yeah. And of course they sound best when placed around the area in front of your ears. Like as I said in the recording, they're a bit in front below my ears, on the edges of a shelf which is 80 cm.

Jonathan

#14 · 2026-07-21 16:53

Thinking loudly is good.
And yeah, there are these 3 switches which sort of filter the sound, I just did it by ear so can't tell you which one did which, but they're pretty uncomplicated indeed.

marchoffmann

#15 · 2026-07-21 16:57

Good to know. It's good you brought that up because which sides do have a lot to say there, will determen the placement of desk and piano.
I mean it does have this thing included which helps it face a bit more towards you I think, but I can't be too precise either. I just want it to sound good enough to have others enjoy the sound too while jamming lol.

marchoffmann

#16 · 2026-07-21 17:00

Transcription

i don't know if it's just my audios but i just listened to the transcription if anyone reads this i'm sorry i'm truly sorry like this is terrible this is terrible rambly's transcriptions they're absolutely great this one is garbage man yeah don't read this audio just listen to it man these suck but yeah that's kind of off topic i'm sorry

Jonathan

#17 · 2026-07-21 17:03

1 likes

um um om um ouh. Well, it's still understandable. Gives vibes of these dictation blindies, this transcription software still needs to learn proper sentence structure and punktuation, but it's ok imo.