Can your laptop replace your stereo equipment? As with so many other questions, the answer lies in the details.
According to Thomas Rau from German magazine PC Welt, 15 to 17 inch laptops with integrated speakers offer “decent sound” for your average user. “Integrated speakers aren’t worth our time,” says Peter Knaak from the German consumer testing organization Stiftung Warentest.
The quality of the sound ultimately depends on several factors. The first is how severely the music has been compressed. “If you listen to music in MP3 form, then you don’t need a high-quality stereo set,” Rau says.
Songs that have been compressed into compact digital files are not going to produce a rich sound no matter how they’re played. Knaak sees this differently, though: music digitized into 192 kilobit per second (kbit/s) or 256 kbit/s format is “hardly distinguishable from CD quality” in terms of sound.
Bernhard Rietschel, hardware expert at Audio magazine, recommends clicking on the “lossless” option when ripping CDs. While recording in lossless format requires more storage space for each song, the advantage is that albums can be played back in full CD quality.
In the end, though, speakers are responsible for 90 percent of the sound. Amplifiers are also key components. If you don’t have room for a separate amplification unit, then be sure to use active speakers with an integrated amplifier. Speaker size is determined by volume, frequency, and size of the space they need to fill with sound. A 20-square-meter room requires speakers at least 30 centimeters high, for example.
Opinions diverge when it comes to subwoofers as well. They are especially crucial for people who want their bass to rattle the windows. Knaak strongly recommends 2.1 systems with a subwoofer and two satellite speakers each equipped with a tweeter and woofer. The satellites should be at least as…