laptop amplifier

[naughtyboy]

finally made it into 2oth century and laptop to use in workshop.
kids have shown me how to put my cds on it, but sound level is rubbish.
if im playing creedance or thin lizzy want it at decent volume.
can i get amp for it that fits headphone socket then onto speakers?

cheers

 

[Titus A Duxass]

Just get some active speakers.
I use Bose companions and for the small size they put out good sound.

 

[gavuk]

In my workshop,I use a headphone to 2x phono plugs ,into the aux input on a full size amp and speakers,received from free cycle.....works great ,and can use mp3,laptop,dab radio or phone as a source....great for a fixed install

 

[brewdexta]

How about a min hi-fi amp and some small hi-fi speakers

Both get good reports, I also like Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, funny design but sound great.

 

[brewdexta]

In my workshop,I use a headphone to 2x phono plugs ,into the aux input on a full size amp and speakers,received from free cycle.....works great ,and can use mp3,laptop,dab radio or phone as a source....great for a fixed install

+1!

 

[rtbcomp]

I feed mine into a guitar amp, 2.5mm to 1/4 in adaptors available from Maplin CPC &c&c.

 

[jinjahbiscuit]

You can use a mini jack to mini jack (3.5mm headphone size) cable from the headphone output on your laptop pc to a mini jack input on any device; active speakers, amp, ghetto blaster and so on. Or as stated previously a mini jack to 2x phono cable for phono inputs.
If you've got your wifi or an internet connection in your garage you can blast out 'lizzy and such like and watch them on youtube at the same time. Neat.
Might not get much welding done though.

 

[Robotstar5]

A lot of the ipod docking stations have 3.5mm inputs so get one and you're future proofed for when the kids get you an ipod!

 

[octo0072000]

speakers

just use a pair of pc speakers these are mains powered
try these
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TRUST-165...?pt=UK_Computing_Speakers&hash=item1c30c6910d

 

[normspanners]

Of coarse we all have a PPL licences in our workshops just in case a customer walks in !!

 

[rikrobson]

I have a 70's Rotel amp into two huge speakers and a Dab on the input.

 

[Seano]

Jeez.....how big are these workshops lads...? and even more t't point how close are the neighbours....

 

[naughtyboy]

neighbours aint that far away, but never moan as its often stuff for them im doing.

 

[Seano]

neighbours aint that far away, but never moan as its often stuff for them im doing.

Nice one

 

[brewdexta]

mines about 40yds from the house and about 150yds from nearest neighbour so no problems.

I've got a TEAC mini hifi with DAB but the CD player is goosed, not an issue as I've linked it to the workshop PC and have all my CDs ripped onto a NAS (network drive)

Would be great to have an amp with DNLA so I can go straight to the NAS without the PC, but a bit of a luxury. If cost was no option I would buy one of these but then I would have to buy some better speakers and a quieter hammer!

 

[JoelC]

I've been using a makita job site radio with an aux in. Really nice piece of kit, and the sound is good.

 

[gavuk]

Its surprising how many people chuck quality systems because 1 component doesn't work or to replace with a mini or micro system or even a dock!
In the workshop I have a kenwood full size set up with pioneer speakers ,in the spare room we have onkyo with b&w speakers ,and in the dining room we have some cambridge 2.1 with sub which has a great sound, i use my phone/laptop or dab with all of them

If room is tight ,i'd have a 2.1 system,but I like the old school separates for drowning out the angle grinder or compressor....

 

[brewdexta]

I'd been putting it off for ages but eventually got around to sorting out my network attached storage (NAS) that has most of our music ripped to it yesterday. I bought a server a couple of years ago and 4 x 2TB disks and used some free software called FreeNAS. I also us it for all our pictures and videos of the kids and all our home documents etc. and it sits on the home network in the barn. It backs up nightly to another Netgear NAS in the house then I take the occasional snapshot of mainly photos and vital stuff and stick it on DVD or USB and put it in a different location.

Anyway its been stuttering for a while, freezing and needing a reboot mainly when using samba (for sharing files). The last upgrade had bugs then the project split into two different teams (Freenas 8 and Nas4free) and it was no longer a simple upgrade exercise. With an impending wedding and SWMBO making playlists for the reception and ripping the rest of our music collection I bought 4 new 1TB disk which after disk redundancy gives about 2TB of space. It boots from a USB pen drive so all the disk space is usuable for storage and I use a thing called ZFS which is far better than RAID, doesnt take about a week to sync the disks after a power failure. (I feel a UPS coming next). I went for NAS4free in the end as it was similar to the old FreeNAS 0.7 in terms of look and feel. It's now much faster than before and so far is not stuttering and its cheaper than buying a commercial product.

So the bottom line for non techies now bored with this post is now any apple, linux or windoze machine and also the DVD player, the radio in the kitchen and the new telly can now get to our music collection or photos etc. which are all in one place so much easier to sort out.

I can also bore the tits off of unwelcome visitors with holiday videos more easily