"Neil" wrote in message
om...
" MS" wrote in message
...
Are there any decent portable powered speakers available today, good for
music?

Budget?

Undecided.

For what purpose?

I'm an elementary school music teacher. Unfortunately (since the district
only funds one music teacher per five schools), I teach at five different
schools. At some there is a decent stereo I can use. Others not, or not yet.

I am putting more music these days on my PDA and laptop computer, so I think
it might be a good idea to have a decent pair of powered speakers in my car,
that I could use when need be. Therefore, the size should be fairly small,
as I often have a LOT of stuff to carry around, therefore no more than 2
speakers (no subwoofer or anything).

How big is your audience?

Where will you use the speakers?

How loud do you need?

Sometimes in a large hall, a school auditorium. Sometimes with school
choruses, with which I have MIDI accompaniments on my laptop, as many as 60
children or more.

Therefore there has to be a balance between size and power. Often a large
hall with a lot of kids, for which more power would be good, on the other
hand something I can carry around with a lot of other stuff as well. So of
course not as small as the tiny "travel speakers" to carry in your suitcase,
but still fairly small and portable.


If you just want to entertain yourself, I suggest headphones.

I have many headphones, thank you. No, I don't "just want to entertain
myself". (Actually, that was a strange statement. Did it sound like I was
looking for headphones?)


Some of the Cambridge SoundWorks speakers are portable and can run
from batteries, as shown below. I haven't heard these:


http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/s...t&t ype=store

http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/s...gory=port_spkr


http://www.cambridgesoundworks.com/s...y=mul_speakers

Thanks for the tip. Has anyone reading actually heard these?

Frankly, I don't know if one can judge from brand name, without hearing the
speakers. Among those junky-sounding ones in the computer section, there are
speakers made by well-known speaker manufacturers (or at least wearing their
brand name) such as JBL, Altec-Lansing, etc. They try to market these to
people by using fancy names, by the looks, and by the quantity of speakers
(7.1, etc.), etc. (Frankly, one decent speaker is worth a million times more
than 8 junky ones.)

(Now I looked at your CSW links above, and none of the systems on those
pages fit the criteria I described. There are the tiny "travel speakers",
such as those by Creative Labs., which would offer the utmost in portablity,
but not put out enough power for my needs. Then there are these new popular
"multimedia" systems with "subwoofers", etc. As I wrote, two good speakers
are enough for me, I don't want three, six, eight, 17, or 100.1. ;-)

I'm guessing Radio Shack and Sony might be other possibilities. There
might also be some bigger powered speakers available through music and
PA stores.

Sony sells some very small ones, again more in the realm of "travel
speakers", for listening to music in your hotel room, not to use with a lot
of people in a a large auditorium.

Yes, there are many powered speakers available these days, probably more
than ever. My question was regarding whether people had heard any that they
thought really sounded good for music reproduction.


Also:


http://search.ebay.com/search/search...ttery+speakers


http://search-desc.ebay.com/ws/searc...akers&from=R10

I don't think I would buy speakers I hadn't heard from Ebay. You usually
cannot return products bought on Ebay.

Whatever you're interested, if you can't try before you buy, search
Google.com for newsgroup and web info on the speakers.

I have done that. The problem with doing such searches (on web sites, at
least) these days, is one comes up with hundreds of hits, 999999% of them
being sales sites, price comparison sites, etc. (Even when the title on the
Google hit says "reviews", when one clicks on that link, there are usually
no reviews, just sales ads, and often not including the product you did the
search on.) Serious unbiased reviews are hard to find.

Also try web
sites that have customer opinions, such as (all dot coms) epinions,
amazon, and circuitcity.

See above. Epinions is more of a sales site than anything else.