UNDERWHELMED BY THE LOGITECH Z5500 SPEAKERS

[davidinsarasota]

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

 

[rammedstein]

creative x-fi soundcards are like sex for your ears, no matter how shitty or good your speakers are you will notice a huge gain, i recommend this.

 

[Guest]

creative x-fi soundcards are like sex for your ears, no matter how shitty or good your speakers are you will notice a huge gain, i recommend this.

Me, too... Onboard sound just isn't the same.

 

[exarrkun]

what music do you listen to?
i personally have the z5300 and they play my hardstyle (very bass intensive) a lot better than my heavy metal music, so it depends on the kind of music you play i think.

 

[davidinsarasota]

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?[/quote]

 

[exarrkun]

i mostly play my music at mp3 320kbps, but also have some wma 128kbps tracks
they sound the same for me
perhaps i'm going to frequently to parties, my poor ears 8)

 

[aoe]

I have the Z5450 speakers, and they sound great.

I would have to agree with most of the other posters though - install a decent sound card and you will notice the difference.

I'm running with an X-Fi Music, and it does make a difference.

After spending good money on a set of quality speakers, it's really worth investing in a decent sound card.

 

[aoe]

128kbps can sound poor.

192kbps and above should sound great.

 

[davidinsarasota]

Ok, good to know on the X-fi card.

This one?
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102007

Sorry bout that worky now

 

[aoe]

Linky no worky...

I cound't find mine on Newegg (X-Fi XtremeMusic), but I think it cost me around €130 when I bought it.

 

[davidinsarasota]

Ok, good to know on the X-fi card.

This one?
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102007

Sorry bout that worky now

 

[aoe]

Checking that link, the reviews weren't so good.

This one looks better based on the reviews, but I'm not really an expert in this area.

I would suggest checking some reviews to get an idea of what the community considers good/bad.

Maybe someone with more experience would be willing to suggest something.

 

[slim142]

but I'm going to buy an x-fi sound card down the road anyways

Somebody is saving money now eh

 

[capnbfg]

One thing I have found that may help you out a bit deals with the device that Winamp uses to output the sound. By default, a generic DirectSound driver is used, which tends to have poor quality on the trailing edge of high tones, especially when mixed with bass tones. It annoyed me for a long time, and the Creative Media Source player didn't have this problem, so I finally went through the Winamp settings and found what was wrong.

If you go into Winamp, go to Options, Preferences. Near the bottum, under plugins, click on Output. You should see that DirectSound is selected. Click the Configure button. On the Device tab, change the dropdown box from "01: Primary Sound Driver" to "02: XXXXXXXXX" where the Xs are the name of your devices. For people who have an X-Fi, it will be "02: SB X-Fi Audio [AC00]". From what I can gather, it seems that this switches Winamp from using generic DirectSound driver calls to using hardware specific ones, which improves the sound quality if your sound card is better than Microsoft's reference.

This may not fix your immediate problem, but it's something to keep in mind if/when you get a better card.

 

[slim142]

sup man, but for me, down the road means about a year or so, you know I've been saving up my money forever. Now that I have $260 from Iranian new year, I'm deciding between getting a new monitor, or saving it for a k10 cpu upgrade with a raptor in July when my birthday comes, knowing amd, they are going to release some cheap k10 dual (hoping a cheap quad for only a few hundred, otherwise I'll wait more) for am2+ and just pop that in my my crosshair, otherwise I need a new monitor because my current $5 20" is dying on me (really disappointed too, this is the best monitor I have owned, yet I bought it for $5), so it's a tossup between that, and raptor.


Also I'm hoping to get a high dx10 card, but that's for 2008, where I'm hoping I can get an 8900gtx/r600 for just $350 8)

I suggest you start saving now

 

[slim142]

Don't worry, I've been saving up since my birthday in July, I haven't spent any money of my own yet (my parents bought me that keyboard since they owed me something like 4 months of allowence, so I made a deal with them)

I'm just deciding which I survive longer without, a new monitor to replace the dying one (which I must say, this cheap sceptre is really looking quite appealing now, it supports 1080p, has hd glare-whatever that is, but it's cheap, cheaper than most 1", and tons of good reviews on it), or a new cpu in July when k10 is released and I get birthday money
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824112003

Taco, Im so pissed that Sceptre canceled that LCD that I wanted so much. Remember the 24" one? with HDCP 2xHDMI and everything else youcould imagine? Well is canceled

Looking for another LCD like that one, I found an even better one, but pretty expensive But at least this guarantees 1080P. I saw some pics in VR-Zone forums and its just amazing with a PS3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824014124

 

[slim142]

Yeah, I know, instead they came up with a Komodo crap...

 

[rickkipp]

DFX. You could also try this for free. You have to download the right dfx for whichever media player your using.
I just started using it, and it really seem to have helped. Try first for awhile then you can still get a soundard.

http://www.fxsound.com/dfx/index.php?vendor=0&subvendor=0&plus=0&refer=0

Here are the creative audigy cards, very inexpensive and I've seen reviews that these aren't bad for music.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=creative+audigy

 

[astrallite]

Dbl Post

 

[astrallite]

If you think it could be the source, try to see if higher quality sources like CD/320kbps Mp3/FLAC are significantly better.

If you think it could be the sound card, hook up your speakers to a CD player (or DVD player) or another external source and test to see if you hear a significant difference.

If all of these things fail to meet up to your standards, then you know for sure it's the Z-5500s that are underwhelming. The good thing is, it's not very hard to find stuff that can be significantly better. The bad thing is, for the money you spent on your Z-5500, you can probably only get a very good stereo setup (which is perfect for music). But if you find a surround setup necessary, getting a surround setup that will also perform much better, will obviously, cost quite a bit more.

 

[lordslashstab]

Go Klipsch! or Bose. Logitech is good for mice, keyboards & steering wheel.

 

[halcyon]

The Z-5500's are adequate for personal surround, and can sound somewhat entertaining when used with a card like the X-Fi, but if you want to be truly satisfied you'll find Astrallite's advice dead on...you'll need to spend a bit more. The Z-5500's have dispersion problems and sloppy loose bass but that's a popular sound...just not accurate. ...good for killing bacteria but questionable for true listening enjoyment.

...recommend at least getting a reasonable sound card (the X-Fi's sound fine with the Z-5XXX's, their DAC is smoother sounding to me than the Z-5500's) and you'll be fine until you want something your ears can truly appreciate.

 

[astrallite]

Not all cd players have good amps in them though, I know the ipod's is pathetic, this set of wireless headphones that have built in amps have far better sound quality than most headphones on the ipod because of it's crappy amps

I suggested to hook an external device to the speakers instead of the onboard soundcard, because onboard sound cards sometimes suffer from very poor EMI shielding. The other stuff is usually satisfactory.

Not all cd players have good amps in them though

Terminology wise, CD players do not have amps. Neither do sound cards. They are pre-pro devices that tweak the voltage of a continuous power source (either battery or AC power) for gain modification.

I know the ipod's is pathetic, this set of wireless headphones that have built in amps have far better sound quality than most headphones on the ipod because of it's crappy amps

External amps (devices that boost power) are sometimes necessary because the base gain of the electronic device adjusted too high (usually because, for an ipod or cd player, it is necessary for decent output), resulting in distortion of the source. that is audible.

All one has to do is--if the gain is adjusted too high by default--to merely turn down the volume of the electronic device and raise the volume on your amplifier, which in this case, would be the speakers.

So essentially, your advice can be applied to this problem by merely adjusting the CD player's gain.

 

[astrallite]

Yeah, but if you get a better sound card, you wouldn't need to turn down the volume of the system

And if you had a better mp3 player you wouldn't need an external amp?

 

[astrallite]

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