Speakers for a 12 yr. old

My daughter has a Sansa fuze and I’d like to get her speakers for Christmas. I tried this a couple of years ago and was blown away by all the technicalities. Hoping for an erasier solution in 2010.

Keep in mind she is only 12, not an audiophile and will use them primarily in her bedroom where she does NOT have a computer. We;ve been making do with some cheap ($9.99) battery powered portable speakers from Walmart which are quite acceptable to her except at the louder volume settings required for sleepovers and other “group listening”.

SO what I need are speakers that plug into the wall outlet, not a computer, and have the right jack for plugging into a Sansa fuze. 

(UNLESS they have finally made a docking station with speakers for the fuze!! That would be awesome! )

Thanks so much to anyone who takes the time to respond.

momwithoutaclue

A boom box (can be cheap-ish) with auxiliary input will work very well for your purpose.  You will need a cable for this, but they’re only a couple dollars.

Look at powered pc speakers. They plug into the headphone jack on the player, and come with an AC adapter. There are many choices

Great solution - especially since I found out last night that she also wants it to be portable. I’m lost on the cable tho. Could you describe what would be on each end and where each would plug in?

Tx

PC speakers are great, and inexpensive.  I have a pair mounted in my kitchen and just plug the Fuze right in.  Most speaker sets will have a 3.5 mm male plug and cord coming out of one of the speakers.  You simply plug this into the Fuze as you would earbuds, turn up the volume on the Fuze all the way, and power up the PC speakers. 

With PC stereo speakers, on of the speakers houses the amp and power supply, so that one will ahve the cord with your 3.5 mm plug coming out of it and also will ahve the power cord coming out of it.

The portablility would be an issue thought.  While these things are light, they are really a pain to move around because of all the wires between the speakers and the power cord, etc.  Not convenient at all.

You need something like a small boom box which runs on batteries and wall power (120 v AC) and has a 3.5 mm AUX input.

There must be a million out there; I have never researched this.

There used to be a powered docking station made by Altec Lansing (In Motion) which accepted the Fuze directly- forget the model number right now…but they do not make it anymore.  Even then, that unit was wall power and moving it around, especially for a child, would not be convenient.  The small boom box is the way to go.

One last option I could recommend if your daughter is also a musician:

Roland Micro-Cube guitar amplifier.  These are battery (and wall) powered TINY guitar amplifiers that have 3.5mm AUX input as well as guitar input of course as well as some guitar effects, a tuner and so forth.  it wil not be quite as “hi-fi” as a good boom box but will be louder, and double as a guitar (or keyboard) amplifier of course.  Available in a cool red color. (as wll as white and black).  Just a thought.

good luck.

Thanks to all of you, I was able to go to Walmart and talk to the salesperson without feeling like a total ■■■■■. It was worth getting on the forum just for that!!

I realized that we probably needed 2 separate solutions - a) for times that we need portability, we simply need a higher quality portable speaker than we currently have. b) a “permanent” solution for playing her fuze in her bedroom where there is no computer

For any other “without a clue” parents out there, here’s what I came up with (with the help of those above)

a)For portability, I ordered the Altec Lansing  iMT 237 from walmart.com for abt $30 and free shipping to my home… It’s very small and got great reviews. In fact, it might be good enough that we don’t need solution b. BTW, it’s cheaper elsewhere but I want easy return just in case.

b) for the bedroom, I looked at the powered pc speakers but it so happens, we have a pair of perfectly good speakers from an old computer - it’s just that they’re USB powered. So, with my newfound confidence, I asked the clerk if there was some sort of cable that would accept a USB plug in and then plug into the wall for power. And there is!!!  (a 4 port  USB Home charger)So, we’ll use the speakers we already had (they have a little jack that plugs into the fuze). Mind you, the charger cost $20 - probably as much (even more?) than the powered speakers, buut it allowed me to use some speakers that otherwise would go to waste .

Come Christmas morning, if she doesn’t like a or b, there’s always the boom box option. The salesclerk showed me the cable I would need and now I understand how that would work. (The cable was $9.99).

Thanks again to all who answered and if you see a problrm with what I’ve concocted, please speak up. The clerk swore it would work but it bothers me that the thing is called a charger. Doesn’t sound like it’s meant to be used like I’m going to use it.

momwithoutaclue

mwoac-

USB has two components:

1.  Data

2.  DC power (5 volts)

So when you use USB to get power only, it is not utilizing the data wires, just the 2 power wires.  And it uses only power for charging purposes.  So technically it is a DC power supply utilizing a USB connection.

I’m probably not completely technically accurate in terminology there, but close enough I suppose.

The computer speakers are a great solution because, as you discovered, they are easy to get for free, especially with new computer monitors being supplied with integral speakers.  Cool to set up a pair near your bed, in the laundry room or workshop, screen porch, wherever, and just plug in your Fuze.  Obviously you get FM radio via this system as well.  Pretty cool, and cheap.

What’s nice about  having a charger with 4 ports is that one usb port can be used to charge the fuze, even while it’s playing.