Altec Lansing AD880 Speakers

[ladic]

I've had this speakers for almost 5 years now, and they are pretty good.
I believe they are 80watt total power, 10wattx4 for each speaker and 40watt for subwoofer.
But since they are only 4.1, I was thinking of getting something better from 5.1 to 7.1.
So should I buy new speakers? and are there better speakers than this one for not alot of money?
This one came with the dell I bought years ago and to add them it cost me almost $300 I think.
Any advice?

 

[ladic]

This look like a nice ALternative:

Logitech Z-5300 5.1 THX Certified Speaker System $159.99

whatdaya thingk?

 

[ladic]

anyone?

 

[Matt422]

I dunno about Logitech.

I am once of the most discerning consumers out there. I bought the Z-680's about a year ago and the satellites hissed too loud, no matter what was plugged in or no inputs at all. I swear I could hear a single satellite hissing from like 10 feet away. Imagine 5 of them pointing at your head from 3 feet away! I read it may have been a problem with an older revision decoder that they have fixed. I returned them and ate about 80 dollars restocking and shipping. Another reason they sucked is the volume control knob. Even though it's a knob it's not analog. It doesn't have enough preset locations so the volume is often too low or too loud.

So then I bought the Creative Labs THX 650's. I was a bit dissapointed with the quality of the satellites compared to the 3 piece Cambridge soundworks (Creative) that I owned for 5 years previously. The older satellites were heavier and made of metal instead of plastic. The older satellites hissed less and sounded just as good, if not better. The ammount of hiss from the new creative speakers was acceptible and everything worked so I kept them. I will be hesitant to ever buy another Creative Labs product again though because they screwed me on a $75 rebate. The only time in my life a piece of mail I sent was "lost" (according to them). So basically they make cheaper quality speakers than they did 6 years ago and they also have shifty rebate employees.

The best speakers currently on the market according to what people are saying is the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1

How much speakers hiss when they aren't supposed to be making noise at all is very important to me.

If you ever go to "Best Buy" or any other big store, you absolutely can not tell the level of hiss that they generate. Those stores have so much white noise that you can practically stick your ear in the fan hole of a running computer and hear nothing.

 

[uther100]

Look into the Altec-Lansing 640 set. Also call the company. I had the atp5 set and they got burned out by lightning. I called the company to see if I could get a new central unit and they sold me the 640's at cost. It was like 70% off plus free shipping.