Transparent One Encore Plus

Looks phenomenal 👌 and love almost everything about it. I do wonder one thing, and not just with your setup but most ppls setups. I see so much attention to detail in so many incredible setups like yours, but with audio being almost an afterthought. I totally get having to make sacrifices in certain

The audio quality on those should be rather good for the money, for a desktop setup. See e.g. Erin’s and Darko’s reviews (if you haven’t already): EAC review, Darko.Audio YT review. Other options could be powered speakers from Vanatoo or active studio monitors from Kali. Though, looks probably aren’

For a desktop I'd get a pair of Vanatoo Transparent One Encore Plus powered speakers. They are under your budget but sound great and produce a surprising amount of base. Good luck!

You would need to evaluate the sound yourself. We can’t say/tell you if you are going to like the sound or not. Of course the Vanatoo are a powered speaker option. Though, you could go for neutral sounding active studio monitors (kind of like the JBL you mentioned). There’s nothing inherently “more

The Transparent One Encore is better than anything mentioned here. You're welcome. https://vanatoo.com/shop/speakers/transparent-one-encore-plus/

If you can stretch your budget to $1250, then there are the excellent Genelec 8020D. (The smallest Genelec 8010A (ASR review) are in your budget, but the trade off for less low end reach (etc.) is fairly large against the 8020D.) In your budget, you could also look at other active studio monitors li

It's odd; In Windows 11, in the Properties > Advanced tab of the "SteelSeries Arena 9" 'Default format' is greyed out and is stuck on 16-bit 48kHz so I assume that's the limit. The GG software creates virtual sound cards in Windows that max out at 8-channel 24-bit 96kHz, but that won't 'upscale' the