Want speakers? DON'T buy Altec 5100s!

FriedSpam

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Sep 15, 2002
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OK. I wanted some speakers I could take to university with me. Some speakers that were small and stylish and could play surround from DVDs but also play music at good quality.

I bought Altec Lansing's 5100s. They look good and sound ok, though with a little too much bass and not enough midrange for my tastes... but that can be adjusted.

Problem was, sometimes when the volume was adjusted with the remote, the sound would cut out unexplainedly and could only be got back with repeated button pushing/volume control adjusting/turning off and on. Well, this didn't happen too often, so I suppose I could live with it.

Two weeks later, the speakers failed to work totally for no reason what-so-ever... having worked just a few hours before (the fuse was fine, by the way :) ).

So I sent them back, got a refund..... and bought some more (though from a different sellor this time). OK, maybe a little stupid, I know, but it could have been a faulty set and I really did quite like the way they looked.

Same problems and now they've just stopped working again....

Anyone else have these problems? Know what I'm doing wrong.if there's a solution/if this is common with Altec's stuff?

Suggest any other 5.1/6.1/7.1 speakers for me (that go well with a Game Theatre XP 6.1)?
 

HolyShiznit

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If you have not already, try posting this same thread in the 'sound card' forum. There is more traffic there.

I've heard that Klitsch speakers are awesome.

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lhgpoobaa

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Dec 31, 2007
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Regarding your comment about lack of midrange, thats unfortunately very common with PC speaker sets.

You typically have a good subwoofer that handles the low frequencies, and small sattelites that do well with high frequencies, but the mid range almost allways suffers to a lesser or greater extent, even with the expensive speakers.

Thus getting a quality hifi unit as your audio output is a better (but far more expensive way to go)

regarding the sound cutting out, you wernt pushing the speakers were you? 'normal' volumes?

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FriedSpam

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No, I wasn't pushing them too hard...

Well, I've got an RMA on them but have been told that they'll only replace them with the same speakers. I'll let you know when they break again...

.... or maybe third time lucky? We'll see :~
 
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Try Klipsch, very good speakers.......

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FriedSpam

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Holy digging up old threads batman!

er... my last post was a year ago but thanks anyway! Still using the Altecs. The third set haven't died on me (yet) but they still don't sound as good as I would have hoped. With the midrange boosted to normalish levels, they tend to distort.

As for Klipsch, I really would love to get a set but they seem to sell them everywhere but the UK which is a problem for me...

... be quite expensive to send back if they did go wrong.

(to any people from Klipsch... sell them in England, dammit!)

-maybe I'll order some from Belgium or somewhere someday?