Help Please! Computer Audio in Boardroom

"Should I just run a long run of premium RCA cables and use and RCA to mini phono adapter? "

That would be the best route to go. Probably overkill though, which is never a bad thing usually if you can fit larger cabling there, slightly greater cost etc.

The built-in speakers may not give you enough volume for a 25 ft board room, when it's full of people. Make sure you test it. If it's not sufficient, I would recommend going with a pair of Mackie HR 624 or a pair of Genelec 8020 powered speakers. They will have better sound quality than the built-ins, and because they have the amp built-in, you just plug your signal straight into them (with an XLR adapter).

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No offense, but what kind of ghetto boardroom install is this? Are they going to be doing video/audio conferencing (hard to believe not in this day-and-age)? Using the speakers in the LCD display is a terrible solution to audio in a room that size. How is the display being controlled?

A room that size should have at a minimum, a basic control system, and an overhead distributed audio system. One would also presume a video or at least an audio conferencing system.


You're kidding right? An expensive pair of self-powered studio monitors for a boardroom? As noted above, a boardroom that size will almost always be better served by an overhead distributed audio system.

Small businesses without a lot of money can't have conference rooms...?

Perhaps the OP just used nonstandard terminology, but there is an implied level of performance difference between the term "boardroom" and "conference room". And I don't think a smaller business without money is going to be constructing a 25-feet deep "boardroom"...

Of course smaller businesses can have simpler conference rooms, nothing wrong with that. However, a proper audio system doesn't really cost that much...hell, in the example above, you could get by with six or eight ceiling cans and a cheap receiver if need be. It would be much better than listening to the tinny built-in speakers distorting and blowing away the people sitting at that end of the table.

Personally, I work for a company with 68 employees, and our board room (where the board, and leadership team, meet, as well as customer demos are done) is an oval table with 10 office chairs, a 1024x768 low-cost Dell projector, and a pair of Altec-Lansing computer monitors. We also have whiteboards, and a Polycom phone with two external microphones. End frills.

Meanwhile, some large companies we work with have significantly more elaborate systems, even for just regular conference rooms. And if you've ever visited a "spook" type government agency, they've got some really nice widgets in some set-ups.

But, it's all a matter of cost vs benefit. When you're a start-up, installing HALO conferencing systems just doesn't fit in the budget.


Depends on what you want. Given that they wanted to use LCD TV speakers, I assumed that stereo imaging was important. If it's all for conferencing, clearly a conferencing system is better. Personally, I find that powered studio monitors are easier to integrate (no amp to worry about) and give high quality sound for a reasonable price. For applications where computer speakers are the competition, they are much preferred.