I actually have two sound cards in my main computer: the builtin Intel something or another, and an old SB Live! that I’ve been dragging around for a while. I use the Live since I know that it works, and I don’t want to bother setting up anything else. It was the sound card, not the speakers, that went out. I plugged into the other jack and I have two channels again. Eh.
My access to the empirical data of the universe is probably more limited than most. Most obviously, I’m nearsighted. I wear spectacles. I’m not sure how strong they are—I’d share my prescription, and I just recently had an eye exam, so it’s accurate, but I honestly can’t read it; For Eyes may have an amusing name, but that optometrist sure does write like a doctor,—but the gist is that I can’t see much without them. My hearing’s not the greatest, either. I had a nasty ear infection as a kid, so, though I can still hear that annoying high-pitched mosquito repelling device (which I don’t think really works) better than my parents, I’ve probably lost some high-end frequencies. My other senses haven’t made up for this: I’m not a supertaster, and I don’t have the relative strength of a spider or anything, so, compared to the average person, I’m stumbling around in a muffled blur. My condition has never really upset me. I’ll never pay $500 for a wooden knob, and I took physics too many times to think of the extreme end of audiophiles as anything but retarded. Regardless of people fooling themselves into believing that the dust on vinyl records makes a better sound, though, I enjoy music, and I enjoy movies. Sight and sound are pretty cool. However, the equipment I use to enjoy these things is, by current standards, pretty lame.
I don’t have cable, so my TV watching is limited to the couple of channels I can pick up on rabbit ears and the DVDs I own. Even though the local TV stations broadcast terrestrial HD signals, I’m far enough away from all but the Christian station transmitters that the occasional TV show I watch on my cheap 20? television with builtin speakers comes through about the same as it would on a high-definition screen with surround sound. DVDs, however, are a different matter. Though most of the discs I own are of movies from the era of Super Panavision and, at best, stereo sound, I do have a handful of movies and shows that use the full extent of the 5.1 channels provided by AAC format and perhaps beyond with DTS. I’ve occasionally thought of buying a surround-sound system, but I’ve never looked heavily into it since I don’t really like spending money. My current thinking is that I’ll probably wait for the new year, after I’ve paid off my Christmas debt, and buy seven or eight speakers on some kind of 0% interest until whenever deal. I don’t really care about video for now. I don’t know where this TV came from, but I don’t watch it very much, so I can’t see myself spending a couple grand just to watch old TV shows that someone converted from old Betamax tapes. A new sound system would greatly improve both my music and movie experiences, so I can justify that.
One other possibility opened by a new sound system is an improvement to the sounds coming from my computer. My computer is where most of my music comes from now; besides having all of the mp3s, it also has my only real CD player. I guess my fancy region-free DVD player can play audio CDs, but it kind of sucks at it. My computer has had the same two-satellite-and-subwoofer setup for about as long as I can recall now, at least since I started college, so it’s at least six or seven years old. It’s a cheap Labtec system, and it’s been pretty alright. I remember paying around $30 for the set, and, though it’s not the greatest, it can make some pretty sweet noise. I made one modification some years ago to the wiring: the original configuration was computer to right speaker (through a potentiometer to control the volume) to subwoofer back to right and left speakers. The first of those wires gave out, so I just took a straight male-to-male 3.5mm wire and bypassed the volume control, and I’ve been living with only software volume control for a few years now. I haven’t thought much about the speakers since then, but today my left speaker decided that it doesn’t much want to speak anymore. I set the balance control to pump everything out of the right speaker for now, but being limited to one aural direction is kind of annoying. I’ve been replaying Grim Fandango (perhaps the last great adventure game) recently, which is where I first noticed the problem, and having two directions of sound really contributes to the immersion into the game world. It’s not the kind of game where things sneak up behind you, so I don’t care about rear speakers. CDs are stereo, and my morning habit of the WREK classics show is in stereo (they probably paid a lot for that stereo exciter), so I’d really kind of like to have my left channel back.
I need more speakers. I’m just not sure how many.