UNDERWHELMED BY THE LOGITECH Z5500 SPEAKERS

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Hey man, don't complain. I have my Logitech system hooked up to my laptop, my crappy old HP laptop. There is only a mic in and stereo out on it, so the only wire I can run into the laptop from my system is the green one.

Get real. Audiophile = irritating the hell outta me.
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Well, its like a birthday. Its just an arbitrary number, but in this day and age anything that gets me excited is worth having. Post count gets me excited.

Jeez, the one star rating thing is mean...
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anything apart from the x-fi extreme music is a good x-fi card, they are worth it, i have a set of creative s750 speakers (yes, i am a creative fanboy, but with good reason, since they are the only company that makes a decent sound card), they sound much better on the x-fi than on integrated, also, 128kbps is pretty good, but since storage space and bandwidth generally isn't a problem for most people i don't see why not go for 320kbps, it's worth the minor effort.
 
I own an X-fi extreme music and the z5500, they sound great together

you should definately get a sound card, the onboard ac97 stuff is crap.

oh and i personally dont listen to compressed music at any less than 256kbps

incidently i also use the z5500 on my dvd player for dd 5.1 via coax. its fantastic. Saving Private Ryan sounds better than ever and no distortion
 
Sound IS important. I always watch movies on my laptop with the 15 inch screen instead of the TV because of the beast sound system hooked up to it.

It seriously does make it better. Master and Commander is insane, and is driving my hall mates crazy.
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I think its obviously the lack of a sound card. Onboard is always decent, but personally I think the sound offered by a decent sound card is way beyond what onboard can give you. I went through a m-audio revolution, audigy 2 zs, and a X-fi extreme music, all 3 sounded a little different for music. The M-audio was the best for music, but its not very good for games, so I went to a audigy 2 zs. then when X-fi finally came out i got one shortly after. It's better for music than the ZS, but still not as good as my M-audio was I don't think, but never did any side by side comparison.

Also, I would try some much higher bitrate stuff and see if it sounds better. Even on my crappy old 35$ 4.1 speakers I could hear the difference between cd audio and 320kbs MP3s. On better speakers the difference becomes even more noticeable. If you just listen to music I'd go with some cmedia or m-audio card. I can't personally recommend the cmedia cards, but I've heard they're good. Also, don't bother trading them for Klipsch, or especially Bose. I had the 5.1 Pro media Klipsch set before I got the Logitech Z5500's. Let me just say that their PC speakers are not as good as their other lines. I went through 2 sets of them where the amp blew out in a week, and got the Z5500's instead. Not only have I not had any problems with them, I think they sound much bette than the Klipsh set. I've never tried Bose, but I would never pay the ridiculous amount they ask for their speakers.
 
I have the Klipsch 5.1 promedia system and it's great. I've had mine for about 3 years after my first one went bad after about a year. The newer models seem to be holding up better (at least for me). There's nothing bad about the Klipsch, just that their satellites are a little under-powered in my opinion and you HAVE to use better speaker wires. The stock wires are crap and dont carry signals too well, especially when you're trying to wire across a large room.
Last year, I decided to hook up my Yorkville studio monitors into my front speakers on my system and now it's ON!
 
Thanks Vash and purplepusher lots of good information. Does anyone think any of the manufacturers will be coming out with a completely Vista compatible card with an SPDIF optical port in the near future?

The Creative support site has a lot of mumbo jumbo about why EAX and such can never be compatible with Vista. Presumably, Creative has to come out with a card that is, eventually, or perhaps this is the killer app that Turtle Beach or some other has been waiting for to scoop Creative.
 
I'd like to stress that, the reason why all these sound cards sound different with the same speakers is because of the quality of the Digital -----> Analog converters and vice versa. Hence why a cheap, onboard sound card sounds like crap with good speakers. A lot of quality is lost in the digital to analog conversion if the d/a is cheap. That's why one poster said his M-Audio box sounded the best. It has industry standard D/A converters for recording, so they have to be very high quality. I have an EMU 1820M which has the same D/A converters as the ProTools systems have, and I can make crappy speakers sound good on this (well, it helps to have all kinds of onboard DSP eq's and such)

Anyways, upgrade your soundcard, you will notice the difference. My guess is at high volumes, you are overdriving the chipset, which is clipping the signal ( sounds very nasty and harsh) and that's what you're hearing. Good luck man, let us know how it pans out!
 
No, not high volumes or clicking just poor separation, low fidelity.

Since Creative has not come forward with dedicated Vista drivers and none of thier cards have the square SPDIF optical port, I have been looking into Auzentech sound cards. I like what I see. They have a new card coming out soon and I may wait for that. I have an email in to their tech support, just to see if they respond. Reviews have been up and down on their support, and as a less known mfg of cards they need to have good support.
 
Exarrkun,

Wide variety. Strangely the music tracks that I accidentally ripped from my GTR2 game sound the best. Most of my tracks have been encoded at WMA128kbps and WMA192kbps, but the GTR2 tracks are WMA320kbps.

I was told that the diff was negligable. Anyone have experience with these bitrates?
Click to expand...
[/quote]

The speakers are apparently good enough that you're hearing the difference in bit rates on your mp3s. You just said so yourself.

Edit - WMAs not MP3s - ehh same difference, sounds worse than a cd.
 
My X-Fi works perfectly fine in Vista, but I jsut pass out analog with it. Like someone else said, ounds card have better DAC's than OB usually has. Something else I forgot, if your software for your sound is using any kind of surround creating crap or something like that. In creative's software they automatically enable their surround stuff, which sounds like crap. If you pass digital to your speakers they'll just be converted there, and I don't know if that sounds better than passing analog from a good sound card. Anyway I forgot most of the stuff fromt his thread...but I hope what I posted helps with something lol.
 
I did my homework, waited for Newegg to get it back in stock, and dropped a good chunk of $ in it, but the Z5500, with my current set up anyway, sounds very dull. Less so with Winamp than WMP. Attempting to get better dynamic range by tweaking the EQ results in base or treble distortion.

It could be my lack of a sound card, but the onboard audio Realtek 7.1 on my BADAXE Mobo is supposed to be pretty decent, and from what I read here a sound card might or might not make much of a difference.

Any suggestions? Does anyone think an SPDIF optical cable would improve fidelity?

C2D E6600 2.4
Intel BDX2D2
eVga GTS 8800 640
2G Corsair 6400
Seagate 320G X3 RAID 0
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Honestly, what did you expect from a very budget 5.1 system?
I spend that much on 1 skeaker.
 
$219/pair (going for a 2nd soon.)

I spent about ~$700 on my subwoofer. $200 on my reciever. Looking into a reciever upgrade too.

And not to brag any... But I spend ~$1500 on my monitor 8)
 
Not to brag either, but, just as an example of what "really" good research can do, but for around $240 ($100 for the speakers, $120 for the T-amps +the AC power supply [or a cheap receiver], $20 for speaker wire) you can set up a 5.1 system with Insignia NSB-2111s and three Sonic T-amps. Those bookshelves have 1" silk tweeters and 6.5" kevlar mids.

That's ~630% more surface radiating area than the Logitech Z-5500s and significantly better driver materials and enclosure material. Large room dispersion, bass extension, transient response will improve. Distortion will drop considerably--instead of a 3" driver handling 20-20,000Hz, you have a 6.5" driver handling 20-2,200hz, and a 1" tweeter handling 2,200hz - 20,000hz; a smaller driver that can handle resonating at higher cycles better than a 3" driver can.

Logitech sells decent stuff, but it's still mass-market goods.

Photo linky from Firingsquad review of the Insignia's:

01.jpg
 
Generally people only link a photo when they are linking it to say a review, or a place to buy it. I was expecting the review that ou were talking about
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Well generally speaking I don't share your semantics.

But if its that hard to google "firingsquad insignia", then I have done so for you:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/insignia_ns_b-2111_review/

Not that I expect you to read it, as generally people who are interested in something will find a way to type in the google text box to find what they want.
 
I agree with Asrallite. I have a pair of those. Great sound for the money. No way I could pass it up!

Also, there is a $50 crossover upgrade that someone is selling on the net. Its also worth its weight in gold :)
 
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