How to Play Digital Music in Your Home

If you are planning to listen to digital audio stored on your computer, the first thing you will need is a decent set of speakers, ordinary computer speakers will not cut it. There are an enormous number of possibilities and a correspondingly wide range of prices, so shopping around will be a necessity. Ideally, you should bring a CD of music that you enjoy into a shop so that you can hear how it sounds though a set of speakers before you buy them.

If space is at a premium, make sure the speakers you purchase are shielded, this means the magnetic field produced by the speakers is dampened so that you can place them near a monitor without causing visual distortion on the screen.

A subwoofer is a nice addition to boost bass sounds, but make sure your sound card supports it. Many digital file formats do support surround sound, as do many sound cards, so this is an option if you are interested. The most common 5.1 surround system includes two sets of right and left speakers for front and side, a front-center speaker, and a subwoofer for low frequencies-the ".1" refers to the subwoofer, A 4.1 system omits the front-center speaker. A 6.1 system is the same as 5.1, but with an additional rear-center speaker, and a 7.1 system has left and right rear speakers. You should buy your entire set together so that each speaker's dynamic range complements the others.

The subwoofer should be placed on the floor, anywhere is fine, as bass sound is non directional and your main right and left speakers should be at ear level. If your room has many flat, hard surfaces, this can make your music sound tinny. Curtains, carpeting, soft furniture and pillows can help to mellow it.

If you have a roommate or a spouse who does not share your taste for glitch core or experimental free jazz, you may want to invest in a quality set of headphones. Headphone pads that press against your ears are not very comfortable for prolonged listening, so it is a good idea to invest in a decent pair of headphones with pads that fit around your ears preferably with noise cancelling ability. This will prevent you from having to turn up the volume to unsafe levels just to drown out background sounds.

To hear music through your speakers, the digital data in an audio file must be converted to an analog signal. The accuracy with which this signal is converted depends on the quality of your sound card, so you should take the trouble to purchase a decent model. Sound cards are no longer as expensive as they used to be, good quality consumer cards with remote controls specifically made for music lovers can purchased easily. If you are on a laptop, there are still plenty of terrific USB based sound cards available, and most of these feature Line-In jacks. If you own a turntable, be sure to look for a card with a turntable preamp built in.

Many companies boast about their cards' support for 24 bit sound with frequencies of up to 192kHz, but as the consumer standard is still CD quality audio (16-bit sample depth at 44.1kHz), this is overkill, it cannot increase the quality of your audio in any way. However, as it is becoming difficult to find cards that do not support 24-bit audio, you might just have to consider it an investment in the future.