Sometimes I hear musing when using the computer. During many years I have been
trying to use many different speakers. The JBL futuristic ones (they have
surprisingly awful sound - these looking that one big and two small blobs),
several cheap types (Genius ones were the best) and finally I have used a small
passive Sony ones.
But I used no external speakers in the beginning: when I first have got a SGI
Indy then I used it's internal speaker. It's a mono speaker, of course. But
it's far better than most available external speakers. Then I have been using
the O2's internal speaker. It's a little worse but still OK. But there has been
a problem with sound volume - the minimal volume step (which is allowed by the
computer's hardware) is too loud in some situations. So I have started to use
external speakers with a better volume range. Well, no I decided to use the
O2's speaker itself and to accept the minimal volume problem. Just because the
sound is better than any available speakers (to be honest, I have modern Harman
Kardon Nova speakers in the living room - they sounds great but they are too
big to be used on my computer desk...).
Today I have tried to play some music on my SGI Indigo. It's a machine with the
MIPS R3000 processor at 33 MHz. It's comparable with a 486 in performance
(probably it's somewhat better than the fastest 486). So it's not the best
machine for MP3 playback (and I actually haven't find any MP3 player for this
machine). But it can play other sound files very well (WAV or AU ones). And
once more, there is no reason to mess with external speakers! ;-)
P.S. Of course this post was written on the SSilicon Graphics IRIX Indigo
during testiong of the music playback.
