I’m so excited. I don’t have a truly 3D sound setup yet. But I bought a Soundcore speaker that can be linked with a plethora of other speakers. So while the sound won’t be 3-dimensional, it will still “surround” players.
The sound quality of Syrinscape’s libraries with Soundcore’s bass is magical.
I’d be curious though – can someone recommend a low-end 3D setup that will give awesome directional stuff? I’m new to the whole sound setup thing.
I have a 5.1 setup, just using a regular surround sound system through an Amplifier. Speakers arranged around the room, with four from roughly the corners of the table, a subwoofer under a desk (doesn’t matter where you put that, as the human ear can’t really identify where it’s coming from), and a center speaker that is alongside one edge of the table.
The layout is decent enough. The amp had a balancing system built in, where you put a mic at the center of the table, and it plays a bunch of sounds, then adjusts the volume to compensate for different distances.
Works fantastically with the Syrinscape Fantasy etc players. You get real directionality, which has led players to turning around to see where a door is creaking or whatever. A storm seems to be all around. Fantastic.
I can’t get it to work through the online player though as browsers seem to only output stereo these days. Would love a solution to that, but it’s a browser limitation, not Syrinscape.
Brendan
Apologies – I’m incredibly ignorant about all things audio.
Would you be able to provide me with a list of specific components I will need? I’m just running Syrinscape off of a cheap laptop.
Yep! Depends whether you’re looking for room-filling 5.1, or can make do with decent stereo.
If you go for stereo or 2.1, just use some active[2] computer speakers. Go to Best Buy, get some decent sized speakers (the usual tiny ones are just for a desk and so they won’t have any bass and won’t fill a room!). Plug 'em in, done. You might want to start with this approach. Could even find a cheap set of computer speakers in a thrift store, and invest more later if you want to. You’ll have wires running from your laptop to each speaker, which for stereo is fine, just put it on the table and point them in opposite directions from your laptop.
If you want to fill the room with 5.1, for truly directional soundscapes, you can get pretty much any 5.1 amp + speakers package. They sell them for computers (Logitech has a good set) but note these don’t go particularly loud, and they’re all wired together (sometimes with quite short wires).
The more professional/impressive route involves an amp. This is about to get more complicated, but you should know going in that most hi-fi systems are actually pretty standard and it’s hard to truly go wrong here.
You need to check your laptop can output 5.1 and what sound output options you have. You’ll need HDMI or Optical out, the usual headphones jack won’t cut it. Then buy an amplifier/receiver[1] that can receive 5.1 via that connection (most decent ones will take HDMI these days). Then buy 5.1 speakers. 5.1 means 5 speakers (the “5”) and a subwoofer (the “.1”) .
Get four regular passive[2] speakers, a center passive speaker, and an active sub-woofer. You could skip the center speaker. Then you’d be running 4.1. For a square/rectangular tabletop layout, that probably makes more sense anyway, because you’d have a speaker for each corner. A center speaker is intended for use when there’s a “front” (like when you’re watching a movie on a TV). You’ll just have one fewer “direction” for the audio to come from.
You can get all this stuff bundled together from Best Buy, though you may end up paying quite a lot. Or you can do what I did and assemble it on the cheap from Amazon Resale (search for “Amazon resale” on Amazon - most of the stuff is new but open boxed, and the marked conditions on there have been really reliably accurate in my experience).
While Syrinscape makes beautiful sounds, you’re not listening to opera… no need to get super expensive speakers. Just something that has the wattage to fill the room. I got 4 x Polk Audio T15 100 Watt Bookshelf Speakers. Looks like they were about $50/speaker from Amazon Resale. Subwoofer was $130, center speaker was $75. That’s mid-to-upper range equipment at a pretty good price (though if you’re in the US, prices are probably going to go up a lot, due to tariffs). Almost any shelf speaker with a decent wattage will work. Ideally get all the same brand and model, but it’s not essential (just try to get the same wattage, and expect to need to balance the volumes). You could find some from thrift stores or Facebook marketplace.
Buy some audio cabling for the distance you’ll need to cover. Wire them all together (which is easy - strip one end off the wire, shove it in the terminal, connect the other end to speaker, x 5). Then go through whatever process of balancing the amp supports (this will, for example, lower the volume on a speaker that is further away, so it all stays even). Plug in your laptop. Check your OS audio settings are kicking out 5.1 . Change the audio in the Syrinscape app to output 5.1 . Test. Hopefully, you’re done.
Some potential things to know:
If you made it this far, you’ve probably realized 5.1 isn’t trivial. It took me weeks to work it all out, and cost a bunch, though it was kinda fun and I love the results. Go the stereo route if you’re in doubt… it’s cheap, it’ll take you 20mins to set up, and you can always upgrade it later.
Hope this helps,
Brendan
[1] A receiver is just an amplifier that has a tuner to pick up radio and sometimes stuff like bluetooth.
[2] Active means it’s plugged into power, while passive draws power from the wires from the amp.
Thanks for this @brendan.dodds, a really helpful post!
We used Logitech speakers at show and personally for me at home as well. The exact model that we used is now discontinued, but as Brendan said above they do make several others which are fairly reasonably priced and have great quality.