Does anyone know of speakers designed for computers that have wires long enough to work as a remote listening device. I simply want to use my hard drive as my cd player and be able to listen to it throughout my apartment. Is this possible?
I don’t know that this is the best solution, but it does work and is pretty cheap:
- Buy length of speaker wire.
- Cut the speaker wire that comes with the speaker near the plug (don’t throw plug away)
- Strip wire and connect it to bought length.
- Place speakers, run wire as indiscreetly as possible to computer.
- Connect length to stripped wire coming from plug.
- Plug in plug, cover all connections, and enjoy.
I have done this countless times. Again, probably not the best solution, but it works.
Brendon Small
I haven’t gone looking for computer speakers in a while, so I can’t help you there, but if you’ve got wifi at home I can heartily recommend the Squeezebox, which will be a lot more versatile than running wires everywhere. It basically streams music off your computer over the wifi connection, so you don’t have to be wandering back to your computer to change what’s playing all the time (for that matter, you can have one thing playing on the computer in one room, and another on the Squeezebox elsewhere). The white version’s really pretty, too, and not in an “I really want to be an iPod” kind of way. 
'Course if your apartment’s not that big it’s probably overkill…
Thanks for the suggestions, I don’t have wi-fi, so I will give brendon’s suggestion a try.
Computer speakers are designed to sound best when you’re up very close, so unless you’re going to sit at a desk or table somewhere, you’d probably be better off using regular hi-fi speakers.
Other companies also make similar wireless things. I don’t have wi-fi either, how much would a USB 1 or Firewire-based wifi transmitter cost for a Mac?
PS: there’s an Airport hub (I think) for Macs, for $130, that has an analog audio out and a digital out and works with Itunes. Stereophile reviewed it and didn’t quite like the analog out, but that’s probably not relevant to someone using cheap speakers.
Do the speaker wires have to be shielded? I know they advertise computer speakers as shielded, and just now I assumed the wires had to be. Please fight my ignorance.
IMO, that’s your best bet.
Find yourself a cheap/used receiver, some speaker wire and respectable speakers and then run a line out from your computer to the receiver’s line in and you should be set–it’ll do a much better job of filling an apartment with sound than sprinkling PC speakers all over the place.
The speakers themselves are sheilded so the magnetic (both the permanent magnet and the electromagnetic coil) force doesn’t leak out and damage things that would typically be near computer speakers. Disks, hard drives etc…
As for the wires being sheilded, other then interference, I don’t think it would make a difference.
Have you not thought of wireless speakers? There are loads available. Just do a Google search on “wireless speakers.”
Or even wireless headphones.