I called in an airstrike on my own audio position by “upgrading” from a 10.5-year Windows 10 PC to a brand-new Windows 11 machine with 100% pimp ASUS ProArt Creator motherboard. If I’d spent half as much on a motherboard from ASR the machine would have had an optical S/PDIF audio output compatible with my old Nuforce Dia amp (mighty 18 watts) and Audioengine P4 passive speakers (both purchased in 2012 and worked without failures for 13 years). The cheap ASUS motherboards seem to have a header for S/PDIF even if there is no connector.
I decided to give the P4 speakers a vacation and purchased an Audioengine HD4 Bluetooth speaker system. They’re about the same size as the P4 speakers so I put them on the same stands. The result is less desktop clutter because the Nuforce Dia is gone. The Nuforce Dia’s power supply is gone (the HD4’s power supply is internal). One of two speaker wires is gone (the powered HD4 on the left still needs a speaker wire, included (with banana plugs!), to send the output of its power amp to its passive brother/sister/binary-resister on the right). The cable connecting the PC to the amp is gone. (Note that if you’re a serious audio nerd you might nonetheless need to reintroduce a USC-C cable from the PC to the Audioengine HD4; the digital-to-analog converter in the HD4 is capable of handling 96 kHZ/24 bits, but Bluetooth aptX HD is limited to 44 kHz/24 bits. One thing that is painful about my ASUS motherboard is that it doesn’t have any standard connector for a Bluetooth antenna. It has a proprietary pair of connectors for a combined WiFi/Bluetooth antenna that is huge and connected by a long ugly cable to the back of the PC. Given that my PC is hard-wired to the switch via a Cat 5 wire that the 2003 builder of this house thoughtfully included, I just need a small Bluetooth antenna that will live on the back of the motherboard. This apparently does not exist in the ASUS universe.
Setup took about 2 minutes. I powered the HD4 off and then on after 5 seconds to simulate a brief power failure. The Windows 11 machine reconnected automatically. Sound quality seems similar to what I was enjoying before. So… my stupidity in assuming that every modern motherboard would have an S/PDIF optical audio output resulted in the recovery of a bit of desktop space at a $329 cost (on sale from the usual $429 price).
Unlike Sonos, Texas-based Audioengine suggests via its photos that white people may purchase and use its products. Here’s a person at serious risk of “tech neck” unless the AI revolution renders the job obsolete.
The one thing that I don’t love about the speakers aesthetically, compared to the P4, is the metal strip across the front. I guess it would be pretty tough to design a wooden volume knob and a wooden headphone jack!
This photo shows the speakers with the Bluetooth antenna pointing up, which was completely unnecessary in my setup. It also shows the old-school RCA inputs and outputs. The RCA output can be used for a subwoofer. I don’t think that the HD4 has a crossover network and, therefore, the HD4 would keep getting driven at full range even with a subwoofer hooked up. Audioengine seems to include a low-pass filter in their subwoofers so that maybe it all works out, but I’m not gaming in the home office nor watching Hollywood action movies so I don’t think I will be trying out the subwoofer config.
Conclusion: this thing works, but it probably would have been smarter to buy a motherboard with S/PDIF optical out! Also probably smarter to buy a motherboard with a standard antenna connector to which a short Bluetooth antenna could be attached.
@philg
What case did you end up buying for the new PC?
BtS: I like to do everything as incompetently as possible. My old case is a Fractal Define 7. It is absurdly huge even though it isn’t the “XL” model. I decided to get the Fractal Define 7 COMPACT. It isn’t really big enough for the motherboard. There is a huge chunky USB 19-pin connector from the front panel that wouldn’t conceivably work with any motherboard in which the 19-pin connector is anywhere near the graphics card. ASUS puts this connector on the edge, but the Fractal Define 7 Compact case doesn’t have enough clearance all the way around the motherboard to allow it to be used. I’m trying to get it to work with a dongle, but so far no success.
Maybe the answer is that one needs to buy a full-sized case for any PC or risk various forms of pain and suffering. You’d think that this would be where the Mac zealots have it made, but the Mac Pro, despite not having room for even a single 3.5″ HDD, is an enormous 21″ high x 18″ deep x 8.6″ wide. Gemini says that my Define 7 Compact is about 18.7″ high x 16.9″ deep x 8.3″ wide. The Mac, in other words, is about as big as a standard PC case. That’s not a great example of packaging genius!
> I like to do everything as incompetently as possible.
Humble bragger, although I’ll bet there isn’t even one structural ahegao sticker on yours:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shittypcbuilds/comments/1ggcl86/how_bad_is_it_really/
You could improve your builds by reading the PC Master Race group:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1p3a74x/tell_me_what_you_think_of_this_vw_bus_i_know_the/
As for sound, I bought one of these Bluetooth transceivers to connect Bluetooth and non-Bluetooth gear, very versatile:
https://soomfon.com/products/2-in-1-bluetooth-5-2-transmitter-receiver-aptx-low-latency
I hooked my Bluetooth PC up to an old Carver amp/Klipsch speakers I had laying around. Soomfon are quite progressive Chinese folks, and aren’t afraid to depict attractive white people using their product (you and your SO can listen to the same program on Bluetooth headphones!) To be fair, the Muslim gamer grrl in the HD4 Amazon link is kinda hot, too, in her Daisy Duke shorts.
I don’t think I’m being humble. The cable routing on this PC that I built (without any supervision by a teenage gamer, which would have been very welcome!) looks like it was done by an ape or maybe by one of those Minnesota-based bureaucrats who paid out $300+ million in taxpayer funds to al-Shabaab (see https://nypost.com/2025/11/20/us-news/somali-terror-group-al-shabaab-taking-a-cut-of-stolen-minnesota-taxpayer-money/ )
What does Dr. Greenspun think of Wirecutter recommendations as far electronics are concerned?
PF: I guess Wirecutter has some value. Let’s look at https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bookshelf-speakers/
They do some listening tests, which is good. But they also value flat frequency response, which doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that most seats in a concert hall have good sound even though the frequency response is quite different from seat to seat. If one were doing objective testing it would make more sense to look at how accurately a speaker reproduced an impulse, e.g., did it calm down immediately or ring afterwards (a common flaw of horn drivers, such as from Klipsch, at least in the old days), especially since if you don’t like the frequency response of a speaker you can tweak it electronically with a tone control.
For televisions, they say they like the LG C5 OLED for price/performance (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-oled-tv/ ), but that’s kind of an obvious choice.
For monitors, they don’t even bother to test the monster 57″ Samsung that I’m curious about (see https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-ultrawide-monitors/ ).
Let’s check out https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-high-end-ranges/ regarding an area where I did some research. They say the same thing as Consumer Reports about the Monogram (“excellent baking”), but incorrectly said that the Monogram “performs like other high-end ranges” (the burners are much more powerful than Wolf’s; Wirecutter incorrectly says that Monogram burners are only 18,000 BTUs each; the Monogram web site says that their dual fuel models have at least one 23,000 BTU burner and that our all-gas 36″ Monogram has two of these 23,000 BTU monsters). About the Miele they say “Some models even include a steam function in the oven, which can be useful for bread bakers” (hate speech! A steam oven is super useful for turkey and in lots of other situations)
Anyway, I think it is fair to say that the Wirecutter is far more useful than the average NYT article!
Thanks for the detailed comment, Dr. Greenspun. I see that you refer to WC and CR in addition to your own research. I haven’t used CR because it needs membership. One more question:
If say you got 30 mins do decide what TV you should buy, where all would you look?
I ask this because, I find doing too much “research” painful and kind of masturbatory, and tend do just buy WC’s recommendation for ‘Budget Pick’.
@PhilG Fan
If you have a library card, many public libraries have Consumer Reports available. I don’t find steam ovens especially sexy, but to each his own.
“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” – Steve Jobs
L: That’s very funny! LOL! I do have a membership in the library, I will check out Wayback Machine as well.
I know SouthPark has a negative vibe due to the recent events, but your comment reminded me that I haven’t seen anything that makes fun of “doing extreme research for products”, thing. The closest I can recall is “Crème Fraîche”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A8me_Fra%C3%AEche_(South_Park)
You giving away the old $250 beaters to 1 lucky blog commenter? The lion kingdom still uses some 25 year old junk speakers from a $400 home theater system. The 6 channel sound craze was in the good old days.
A friend who has recently escaped from Maskachusetts is giving us about 5 Sonos S1 AMPs that he salvaged from his old house and had U-Boxed to his new home here in Palm Beach County. I think these speakers will enjoy being driven by a 15-year-old Class D amp in a kid’s room almost as much as they enjoyed being driven by the 13-year-old Class D amp on my desktop.