In the past year I changed over from some cheapish 5.1 Logitech speakers back to even older 2.1 speakers then to an iPod HiFi I purchased a week ago.

The reason for the change was really that I am easily troubled by even the slightest buzz or hiss coming from speakers, and decided to buy the HiFi to be able to use it with my nano separate from the computer as well.

My 5.1 speakers had developed a hiss and buzz, while the 2.1 speakers were a bit staticky and not as crisp as I'd like. I should point out that I have been running my speakers off a 7 or 4 socket Belkin surge board, but I don't have enough power adaptors to run them off their own powerpoint (if that's an issue that contributes to hissing). I can also say that the iPod HiFi, with the auxiliary in connected to my Mac Mini (3.5mm - 3.5mm) has no static...

Anyway, I like the sound coming from the HiFi, but coming from 2.1 and 5.1 setups, having this HiFi half a meter in front of me means that I don't get the aural pleasure of surround sound. At the same time though, I don't want to relegate the HiFi to another part of the house and just buy new speakers for the computer...

What I'm wondering is if I could/should get some small speakers for the computer and keep using the HiFi as a central/subwoofer speaker alongside them. Would it be possible, for instance, to buy two decent computer speakers and a Griffin Firewave, hooking the speakers up to the left/right channels and the HiFi up to the centre channel? Or should I may as well just keep the HiFi or ditch it completely from my computer setup and invest in some new 2.1 or 5.1 speakers (the reason I'm not thinking of going down the 5.1 path again is that my setup is nice and simple at the moment, and all the cabling running to either side of me with speakers behind would get annoying...)?

personally id be using an optical cable for nicer connection...

in your situation i would move the hifi to a central place in the room with an airport express and then use rogue amoeba AirFoil to hijack all system sound to be sent to the HiFi...

Best of all worlds then...

Yes I have wondered the same thing, essentally a speaker is just a speaker so I can't see why you couldn't include one of even five of them as part of a surround sound system. As long a you have separate signals feeding into them from a processor then I imagine that would work. At the ned of the day you would probably have spent enough to have bought a better matched system from an audio specialist...

Thanks for the comments.

The Airfoil idea appeals to me just for the gimmickry of it, if nothing else, but in the end I don't want to have to buy another AirPort Express and the room is a small one - there's really no place for the HiFi at the back of the room, and my chair is pretty much in the middle.

As for the optical cable - well, I'd have to be using an AirPort Express or buy a new external soundcard to try that, because I've got a first gen Mac Mini with no optical out. Would I really notice a difference in quality though anyway?

If I can't find a nice 2.0 system that I could easily use then I might consider going for wireless headphones instead for computer sound. The idea of wires around the place just doesn't appeal to me, but the idea of surround sound does.

if you're after some serious headphones that do "Surround Sound" have a look at the Sennheiser RS 130s.

I work at JB Hi Fi and these headphones appear to be the most popular and best for this purpose, the Shure headphones are the shit but I'm pretty sure they don't support "Surround Sound".

From my understanding there is no way to use the iPod Speaker as part of a 5.1 system but I would not be surprised if Apple develops something along those lines as Apple are readying a new 40" LCD display, which many seem to think may be a precursor to Apple spreading into the LCD TV marketplace much like Acer have.

Peace... Khyam.