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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."
I use my Yamaha AX6620 amp and Wharfedale diamond 8 5.1 setup with separate subwoofer for my PC's sound.
Using a not-designed-for-pc sound system has its disadvantages, like the speakers are supposed to be shielded but aren't completely, but it's more than made up for by the sound quality.
I used to use a creative 4.1 surround system for the pc, but it used to piss me off because it kept auto turning itself off at low sound levels and there was nowhere to plug headphones in (My main multimedia setup is separated by a thin wall from next door's bedroom so I use headphones after about 10pm).
graspee
Let me see, my desk is against the wall, which puts me less than half a metre from the front three speakers. Unless I place the rear speakers in the way in the middle of the room behind me, I'm going to have put some major delay and volume adjustments in to the setup. 5.1 DD on a computer just sounds like a silly idea to me. 5.1 DD coming out of my XBox in the living room does work though ;)
Oh, and as for that Windows speaker driver. It was a pain in the arse: the whole system would pause for playback of even the most simple sounds.
I don't trust that the spec values reported by Logitech would have much to do with those spec values that would be get if such setup would be measured according to normal audiophile standards. If you want to have some real high fidelity, give a try to monitor speakers by, for example, them (but do not expect them to be too cheap).
Can any sound engineer types out there give a brief overview of the sound quality differentials between this standard of speaker with a good sound card and the sort of kit you can fork out a shed load of cash for at your local hifi dealer?.
I know judgement of sound quality can be a very subjective thing but I am curious when I can get a PC sound system very reasonably but can (assuming I had the cash) pay thousands of dollars/euro in a store for hifi equipment. Is the price difference reflected in the sound quality ?
For that matter how do I know my hearing is good enough to distinguish the difference ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
What the hell does peak power have to do with sound quality? My 75W speakers produce much nicer music than many 300W powerhouses. While I can see the "cool factor" of having enough power to bring down the house and ruin your hearing, I dont see much use for it. How many people do really find real use for this? What good reasons can you come up with to justify owning these?
Oh, and "it scares the terrorists" is not good enough.
I'd like to ask a simple and possibly silly question:
Why not just go to a normal stereo store, and buy a normal stereo?
More PC speaker sets are designed to be small enough to not dominate your desk, as the idea is that your PC is not your primary music/movie station. This monster will require you to definitely change your layout for maximum effect.
So if I am going to make my PC be my media hub, why not just buy a normal stereo system, and be done with it?
Sure, a system like this might make sense if you are in a space limited environment like an apartment in a city, or a dorm.
www.eFax.com are spammers
They are posting articles that correspond to OSDN affiliation elsewhere, and posting the URLs under related links.
/. for doing this, just thought i'd point it out incase anybody hadn't noticed.
I'm not getting at
The PC speaker driver used pulse-width modulation to simulate audio waveforms. That is why it sounded so crunchy. It also CRUSHED your system while it was playing a sound because (I think) it was toggling an interrupt for each pulse. Did you notice how everything else stopped during playback?
Somebody rolled the driver out to about 10 Win NT 4 boxen at my old office as an "upgrade". When we upgraded to Win 2000, the driver remained in place, and still worked. Gack.
Now for the rant.
Nothing exposes how poor MP3 (or even CDs) sound like owning a real quality pair of speakers connected to a clean amp. I have a Nakamichi AV-10 driving B&W DM-603 speakers. I connect the Nakamichi to the digital output of my Turtle Beach Montego soundcard, and it works well enough. Unfortunately, the fidelity of the system makes MP3 files almost unbearable for serious listening.
So do yourselves a favor. If you listen to MP3, buy crappy PC speakers and let your imagination fill in the gaps.
At the risk of being downvoted, I don't like speakers at all. Headphones are the way to go. Not those awful one-dollar piezoelectric crystal widgets that go into your ears and break after a week because the wire was too thin. I'm talking about those massive black headphones that totally cover your ears, muffle external sound and sound better than most cheesy OEM speakers. Good for hearing the direction of your opponents' footsteps in Counterstrike, too. I remember first trying a set of these headphones out on the glass-house demolition test map of Red Faction... mmm...
1000 watts peak is pure fiction.
It is similar to a measurement on a car, where you rev up the engine to max and suddenly let go of the clutch. I'm sure most car engines will "measure" more than 5 times the sustained max power for a few milliseconds.
A 1960 VW Beetle 1100 cc engine has 150 horsepowers if you measure that way.
-- From Denmark
Thats really funny, but its starting to become a problem. For owners of a Creative Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy system, the new DRM enabled drivers will actually mute the digital channel output upon playing certain DRM equipped files. That $600 digital decoder based 5.1 DD system is useless when you want to listen to a DRM encoded WMA song.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
"RMS". No, not Stallman. "Root Mean Squared"
An interesting aside is that Stallman, one time when he went to Japan, had a `hanko' made for himself (a hanko is a little name stamp that Japanese use instead of a signature). What's on his hanko? The formula for root-mean-squared!
We live, as we dream -- alone....
If you want good sound, you want to get some professional "nearfield monitors." These are designed to be used with computers and sound excellent. Go to your local pro audio store, they will have many models ranging from a few hundred bucks for passive ones to many thousands of dollars for very powerful ones with active crossovers. Good brands include Genelec, Tannoy, Hafler, and even Mackie.
It is very highly recommended that you get ones with digital inputs or get a seperate digital>analog converter. At that point the weakness will be your room. You can build "Helmholtz Resistors" (boxes with a specific volume of confined air) to absorb bass frequencies centered around your major room mode.
burris
Just like everything else that has the words "computer" on it related to audio.
If you want really good computer speakers to listen to music on or as a good audio refrence... go to your local guitar center and buy a set of studio monitors and a studio amp... they're over in the mixer section...
For the same amount of cash as these overpriced and horribly overrated junk you can get something real.
I found the most entertaining the 1000 watt rating.. Yeah right. in low-end car audio ratings... I have a Crown stereo amp here that is only 25 watts and cost $400.00 and will kick the crap out of anyone's home stereo that cost around $400.00
a watt rating is 100% useless... tell me the watt rating RMS at a distortion level. anything higher than 0.05% THD is junk.