[Erukian]

I'll be blunt. Logitech maks ****** speakers, they sound muddy and dull. They lack tweeters or anything dedicated to upper/high frequency so female voices sound screwed up.

Also, the build quality is ****. Ive read the comments here, people here have had dying amps, people i know have dying amps, and guess what, "I" had a dying amp! Wow, if this happened in the headphone world, NOBODY would buy from that company.


I would suggest if you want "musical" speakers (ie. flattest freq response) but you want 5.1's you get either the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Ultra's, or the Creative Gigaworks S700 or S750 (7.1 system). Both sound great (compared to creative's lower end products and the whole logitech line) and both have home theatre class subwoofers.

If you want just 2 channel. Klipsch Ultra 2.0's are the best you can do.

If you want to exit the PC speaker world and go to something like Monitors or bookshelves, then that's where I'm at.

Currently I own these for my stereo.
http://www.klipsch.com/product/produ...id=658&s=specs
This for my sub.
http://www.hsustore.com/stf2.html
And this is my stereo receiver.
http://www.harmankardon.com/product_...203480&sType=C
Alltogether after buying cables/speaker wire cost me a good 900 USD. Tack on my new $100 E-mu 0404 and well..

Upgrading speaker wire on multimedia products (pc speakers) IS POINTLESS. You only notice it on speakers made for music, not speakers made to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" (ie boom box for games/movies/music).

I would have to say, the Promedia 2.0 ultra's from Klipsch IS THE BEST SOUND you can get for a musical pc speakers. But stepping up to hi-fi speakers is going to cost you a lot, but will pay off with the sound.. And for 99 bucks the price is hard to beat.

 

[PinchyCM]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erukian I'll be blunt. Logitech maks ****** speakers, they sound muddy and dull. They lack tweeters or anything dedicated to upper/high frequency so female voices sound screwed up. Also, the build quality is ****. Ive read the comments here, people here have had dying amps, people i know have dying amps, and guess what, "I" had a dying amp! Wow, if this happened in the headphone world, NOBODY would buy from that company. I would suggest if you want "musical" speakers (ie. flattest freq response) but you want 5.1's you get either the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Ultra's, or the Creative Gigaworks S700 or S750 (7.1 system). Both sound great (compared to creative's lower end products and the whole logitech line) and both have home theatre class subwoofers. If you want just 2 channel. Klipsch Ultra 2.0's are the best you can do. If you want to exit the PC speaker world and go to something like Monitors or bookshelves, then that's where I'm at. Currently I own these for my stereo. http://www.klipsch.com/product/produ...id=658&s=specs This for my sub. http://www.hsustore.com/stf2.html And this is my stereo receiver. http://www.harmankardon.com/product_...203480&sType=C Alltogether after buying cables/speaker wire cost me a good 900 USD. Tack on my new $100 E-mu 0404 and well.. Upgrading speaker wire on multimedia products (pc speakers) IS POINTLESS. You only notice it on speakers made for music, not speakers made to be a "jack of all trades, master of none" (ie boom box for games/movies/music). I would have to say, the Promedia 2.0 ultra's from Klipsch IS THE BEST SOUND you can get for a musical pc speakers. But stepping up to hi-fi speakers is going to cost you a lot, but will pay off with the sound.. And for 99 bucks the price is hard to beat.

agreed. if you're looking for a 2.1 MM setup, try the altec lanscing mx5021s.

 

[tiberian]

my discontinued altec lansing AD627s sound very nice for the money.

 

[AdamWill]

erukian: nope, I'm still not getting the point. You recommend Klipsch Promedia Ultra ($350) or Creative Gigaworks ($338) instead of Logitech - either z-5500 ($270) or z-680 ($200). I'd hope they'd be better, for that kind of price difference. Let alone your home system, $900 for stereo....

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamWill erukian: nope, I'm still not getting the point. You recommend Klipsch Promedia Ultra ($350) or Creative Gigaworks ($338) instead of Logitech - either z-5500 ($270) or z-680 ($200). I'd hope they'd be better, for that kind of price difference. Let alone your home system, $900 for stereo....

Welcome to head-fi, this isn't a PC audio forum, this is about headphones & hi-fi components in general. PCs are now becoming viable as decent sources, so we have this great forum now. this forum is not about toy speakers for pcs.

So, really, any mention of pc speakers are bound to be put down, even the klipsch offerings are not very good compared to any entry level component system. Spending $900, and more frequently, much more is the norm around here

 

[Imyourzero]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daroid Nothing wrong with the speakers - it's just Logitech has no clue whatsoever what good sound is and they managed to ruin o.k. speaker elements completely with a mismatched sub, too high crossover, bad speaker enclosure and lousy quality (many units have died and still do - they develop much heat since they are very inefficient but low-cost amps). Not even the price is good when you consider that you get far worser sound than what the speakers are capable of.

To be fair (and this has nothing to do with sound quality), Klipsch had some quality issues as well. The original ProMedia v2-400's had the scratchy volume pot (my set experienced this as well), and the later 5.1's had issues with the amps dying as well. I was on the Klipsch message board and there were quite a few people with ProMedia 5.1's that died. Luckily, Klipsch seems to have decent customer service as long as the product is still under warranty, so I think they were replacing the defective units without much hassle...but that's to be expected when your product is covered under warranty.

I'm not a "fanboy" of either side and have owned PC speaker sets from both companies, but in the midst of all this Logitech bashing I wanted to remind some of you that Klipsch has definitely had its share of problems too...

 

[Erukian]

I'm gonna try to do some compare/contrasting in this post, hopefully you guys can learn something from MY experiences. I'm sure some people have had no problems and think the logitech's sound great, but maybe their ears arent trained for good sound?

I'm not a fan of logitech for speakers (i love their mice/keybaords) because:
A) 3/5 people i know who do own logitech systems have had problems with them.
B) I read about people here having problems, people on the logitech.com boards having problems, people on the 3DSS-Forums having problems, and finally
C) I had a Z-680 over a year ago, the sub's amp rattled at certian frequencies, i called them, they said "Oh we'll replace it". I could of voided the warranty, put some weather seal in there and fixed the rattle but with all the problems from A and B listed above, i decided to send it in, they then sent me back a refurbished set, suffice to say i didnt like the fact that my "new" replacement had a bunch of dings all over the satts, so i sent it back to logitech, and they then decided to give me a refund instead of replace the unit again. (What?).

So I decided - fine, whatever. Time to move on, I then bought a set of Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Ultra's (considerably more expensive) and this set taught me what bass is. The klipsch promedia sub today is still the king of all PC multimedia speaker systems when it comes to digging deep. This of course depends on placement in a room (the sub is sometimes too big even to be under some desks). When i say taught me what bass was, is that I thought my Grado SR-80's sounded "good" but not bassy. I was used to logitech bass. Where Bass = my pant leg moving and my insides shaking from the blasting sound effects in movies. Not a pretty flat frequency response.

For those people still used to logitech's bass, i'll give you a few examples, drums in music is NOT bass, on the klipsch ultra's or the creative gigaworks it's all handeled on the sattelites. Bass guitar's are mostly sattelite work, not sub work. Just because the new Z-5500's from logitech use a 10" sub driver DOES NOT mean it's musical, just because some radioshack headphones might have the same size drivers as a pair of senn cans, doesnt mean they sound the same - at all. Unfortunately people not in the know buy speakers rated by sub sizes, wattage and looks. Not effiency (sensitivity), frequency response, soundstage and imaging. All the Ultra/gigaworks subs add is really pretty much everything below 130. Cut out everything below 130 and what you'll lose in these system's is warmth - not boom boom. These two sets vs logitech's sound much much closer to a pair of good cans. Logitech's sattelites surprised me by not utilizing a tweeter, but I gave their phase technology the benefit of the doubt and gave em a demo. Recessed high's and the xover set too high on the sub to make up for the lack of lower midrange. It's like logitech went for a driver that tries to act as two. It saves costs but when it comes down to music - it just doesnt work.

And please, no headphone vs speaker comments, its borderline trolling since it's so one sided in here.

edit: added a word - clarity.

 

[Erukian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imyourzero To be fair (and this has nothing to do with sound quality), Klipsch had some quality issues as well. The original ProMedia v2-400's had the scratchy volume pot (my set experienced this as well), and the later 5.1's had issues with the amps dying as well. I was on the Klipsch message board and there were quite a few people with ProMedia 5.1's that died. Luckily, Klipsch seems to have decent customer service as long as the product is still under warranty, so I think they were replacing the defective units without much hassle...but that's to be expected when your product is covered under warranty. I'm not a "fanboy" of either side and have owned PC speaker sets from both companies, but in the midst of all this Logitech bashing I wanted to remind some of you that Klipsch has definitely had its share of problems too...

Right on, they have had issues. The volume pot's did flake out on the PM 4.1's and some of the fuses did blow on the 5.1 Promedias.

Klipsch is known for having some of the best customer service though, I know some people who just call them wanting to ask a technical question but end up talking about the weather or whatever cause their service girls are NICE. Anyhoo, I called them before i got my 5.1 Ultra's and I asked about the problem, they said 98% of all Promedia THX 5.1's (not the ultra's) sold have had no issues. If you did have a blown fuse, what they would do is not only take your 5.1 Promedia's, but replace them with the Ultra's for free.

I know i'm sounding like a fanboy, but call klipsch customer support for yourself if you dont believe me. People on the klipsch forums had their 5.1 THX's die after the warranty, and if they just called cust. supp. they would get em replaced with ultras, because klipsch has standards with it's customers. They are a pretty high end brand but in the high-hi-fi crowd, their reguarded as more mid-high-fi. I'd say their customer support rivals nextel's, if any of you have heard about their cust. support.

About the volume pot's, that issue only happened when you changed volumes, it didnt pop or crackle while playing back (at least my friends crackling pot didnt) music, so i dont see this as a serious defect, but it's worth nothing nevertheless.

 

[Aman]

I would also like to point out that I have never had a good experience with their mice or keyboards either. Somebody else said that they didn't "suck at making keyboards and mice".

Very untrue. Their wireless mice suck beyond meaning, and mine died slightly more than a year after purchase - new batteries, reconfiguration - nothing helped it. Their keyboard keys are too soft for typing, and are incredible cheap-feeling. Want a good keyboard? Get an IBM or a Keytronics.

 

[SDA]

Odd.. their wireless mice have gotten mostly good reviews, and their wired mice have gotten excellent reviews across the board. I'd say you had an abnormal experience with your mouse. (No personal interest in saying this, though; I don't bother with wireless mice, I have a bungee.)

Agree with you on keyboards, though. I'd take my Model M over a Logitech or MS keyboard any day.

On an on-topic note, I mostly agree with Erukian's impressions of Logitech's speakers. I will say, though, that I've never heard Klipsch's computer speaker systems for extended periods of time, so I can only say that the Z-680s suck compared to hi-fi speakers and decent headphones (even some of Koss's low-end headphones).

 

[Duncan]

I don't think that neccesarily ALL computer speakers suck...

I heard a pair of Harmon Kardon SoundStick IIs the other day, and was very impressed... It had the "rude boy" bass for if you wanted that, or else could be very dignified with the bass the other end of the scale...

Apart from those, the CSW 'Digital' speakers I had were pretty good too when the sub was tuned correctly, albeit they had a slightly hollow midrange, but for the money they cost, you couldn't complain

 

[Ferbose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asmo Welcome to head-fi, this isn't a PC audio forum, this is about headphones & hi-fi components in general. PCs are now becoming viable as decent sources, so we have this great forum now. this forum is not about toy speakers for pcs.

I thought this particular sub-forum is also for speakers. PC speakers are speakers, too. For me, PC speakers should be designed to provide good sound without taking up too much space. Audiophiles can also run into situations where they need good sound from small speakers. Hey, if I know which dirt cheap PC speaker sounds good, at least I can give them out as Christmas gifts to impress my friends.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asmo So, really, any mention of pc speakers are bound to be put down, even the klipsch offerings are not very good compared to any entry level component system. Spending $900, and more frequently, much more is the norm around here

With all due respect, I have to disagree. We even have "out" forums to discuss things not realted to audio at all. PC speakers have every right to be discussed as those Wilson Audio speakers. And I see cheap components getting in-depth discussions here just like super expensive ones.
Hack, some people compared $5000 tube preamp+$1800 tube amp with a $30 class-T toy amplifier to drive $700 K1000 headphones. Guess what--$30 amp came out on top. So I read that and went out and bought the $30 amp, and now it replaces a $350 hybrid amp to drive my main speakers.
And this $30 amp is actually designed to drive cheap computer speakers. So, if there is a good $50-$80 computer speaker out there I would like to know, becuase now there is a great amp to drive them.

 

[Snake]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpr703 I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it though, even some relatively cheap monster cable will improve the sound.

Isn't that, like, an oxymoron??

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpr703 All computer speakers suck more or less. If you really want to try for halfway decent sound, check out a set from Klipsch or Swan.

The Swans got great reviews. The top of the line Creative stuff isn't that bad but you'll have to spend for a 5.1 / 6.1 / 7.1 system to get it, unless you want to buy similar product under the Cambridge SoundWorks label (there, you can get 2.1 systems but end up paying the same money as carefully shopping the Creative 5.1 system).

 

[aliasfox]

I have a pair of Monsoon MM-1000 speakers, and a buddy of mine has a Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 set. For those of you that appreciate Sennheiser sound, the Monsoon wins, hands down. The bass isn't quite as tight or as deep as the Klipsch setup, and because the crossover is higher, bass localization occurs earlier, but the sound coming out of the satellites (as long as it's not pushed too loud) is positively amazing for the price (I paid $165). Yes, I paid less than 1/3 for my HD497s, which are better balanced at the lower end of the spectrum (extend deeper, tighter, no localization), but the soundstage and clarity of the satellites is (to my ears) unmatched by even my other friend's PSB Alpha setup (forget the amp).

 

[necropimp]

computer speakers IMO aren't really intended for audiophiles or really music... they serve their purpose best with games and movies... anything where **** blows up... i won't lie i have a $50 set of creative speakers... i never listen to music through them but they are great for shooting little guys with big rockets