Logitech Z-680 Dolby 5.1 PC Speakers Reviewed

PhatBass writes "PC Speakers certainly have come a long way from the little buzzers we used to listen to before the days of SoundBlaster. Remember the 'Windows Speaker Driver' that gave you more than beeps and buzzing through the little cone in your case? Well now we have full Dolby Surround Sound setups, THX Certified, the works, for Gaming, DVD and Multimedia bliss. Take a look at the sweet Z-680 setup from Logitech that is reviewed here, they sport 1000 Watts of Peak Power, a hardware Dolby Pro Logic II 5.1 Decoder, Digital Inputs and serious style."

Comments

Nice but...

[natron 2.0]

For the price of most PC Surround sound speakers and cards you could buy a nice Surround Sound stereo system and run your PC audio through it, and it usually sounds alot better. I have seen it done mayof times and the sound quality is superb.

1000 Watts?

[hcdejong]

When will speaker manufacturers stop quoting meaningless figures?

• You can't add power figures for separate speakers.
• 'peak power' is equal to 'pick any number that takes your fancy'. It has no bearing on reality.
• RMS power figures don't mean much, either. You need to specify the distortion that occurs at this power level.
• power figures say nothing about how loud the system is. You need the speaker efficiency for that.
• The power rating says nothing about sound quality, so it has no place as 'the most prominent feature' of a speaker set.

Re:1000 Watts?

[BinaryCodedDecimal]

When will speaker manufacturers stop quoting meaningless figures?

When those meaningless figures stop selling speakers.

Remember that a lot of people don't understand or even care what those figures actually mean. All they see are the numbers, and bigger is better.

Re:Hi-fi audio coming of age on the PC

[PerryMason]

Not if you plan to power it with your on-board chip or internal audiocard.

Its not the speakers so much as the soundcard (and the placement of its ad/da converters) that makes a PC worthy of an audiophiles interest. As long as the converters are sitting on a PCI card, or worse yet, on-board, interference is bound to turn the average audiophile away.

There exist solutions for getting the converters outside the PC case (breakout boxes) that certainly help, and if you keep it digital all the way from PC to your sound-system (no i dont mean a cheapy set of speakers from Logitech) things can get even cleaner. The Hammerfall and DIGI cards from RME for instance are a nice option in this case.

But then if you're talking true audiophile, they'd laugh at even thinking about having a PC anywhere near where they plan to listen to music. The fans on pretty much any moderm PC lift your ambient sound-floor to somewhere in the -60db range regardless of the quality of your output chain.

So the answer is no. If an audiophile is going to spend $10,000 to buy a set of headphones, they dont want a PC. But then there are audiophiles and there are audiophiles.