Logitech Z-5500 Digital Soundroom

[Mussels]

Hi,

I've got the Logitech Z-5500 and a creative x-fi fatality. I mostly listen to music and play games with 5.1 sound on them. Its very rare that I will watch a DVD copy of a movie with them, as most of the videos I watch are in Divx format

I was just after some advice on the best way to connect them up to each other. At the moment I just use an analog cable, and it sounds great. Is it worth splashing the cash on an optical cable or another type? What are the benefits and disadvantages of doing this?

Thanks for any help and sorry if its a dumb question!

with an X-fi you are stuck analogue. More or less, you need something in dolby BEFOREhand to have it work over optical/digital - you'll only get 2.0 sound.

The reason Auzentech cards (such as the X-fi prelude) are so popular is that they can encode real-time, turning normal 5.1 audio (analogue, say from a game) into a digital signal (so that speakers such as the awesome Z-5500's) can get surround sound. The key here is ENcoding as opposed to DEcoding (passthrough lets it go straight to speakrs. dolby movie to dolby speakers. DEcoding lets you get dolby over analogue. ENcoding lets everything else go digital)

Stay analogue - you already blew a lot of cash on teh soundcard, so upgrading really is not worth it. (digitals biggest boon is no interference, and less cables)

 

[Black Panther]

What's your preferred music to listen to on the Z-5500? Please also state the genre!

Mine are techno/bass/electronic genre. Basically all of Bass Hunter and Benny Benassi, most of Enigma. What are yours?

Alizee-Benassi Heavy Bass Remix Awesome!

 

[DaedalusHelios]

My new Asus HD-DVD drive came in!(I already have a bluray drive)

I got it for $10.

 

[asb2106]

My new Asus HD-DVD drive came in!(I already have a bluray drive)

I got it for $10.

I hope there is more! I want one!!

 

[Mussels]

looking to get me a set of Z-5500's - any comments? better alternatives?

Got an auzentech X-plosion that does dolby digital encoding, so i figured these old beasts were still the best shot.

 

[DanishDevil]

Mussels, these speakers will literally destroy anything in their path and price range.

I very well may move onto an Auzentech X-Plosion from my X-Fi Fatal1ty, and I'll be coupling it with these babies.

The only speakers that I have ever heard that sound anything close to these are the Klisph 5.1's, and they're a lot more expensive and have a lot less connectivity.

 

[Black Panther]

Mussels, these speakers have got an extremely rich bass and crisp-clear satellites. The volume pwns all pc speakers, and most home cinemas. My sub is under a table, and stuff on the table moves when I have the volume like 3/4 high. Normally having the volume on 1/2 or less is OK for me!

TIP: If you plan to get the Z-5500, make sure that the PID number is R7xx. The older ones with PID numbers R6xx and R5xx there were a lot of them with the problem of having the satellites make a popping sound even when no sound was being played but the volume turned on. The R7xx corrected this problem.
(I was lucky I got a good set because my PID is R649, and I didn't know about this when I bought them!). All the defective R6xx series can get rma'd successfully (if still under warranty) if they exhibit this problem though.

The PID shows the date of manufacture. For example mine R649 is translated into the 49th week of 2006. An R721 would be the 21st week of 2007.

A suggestion to DanishDevil -- I think it's better under the names in the first post to put the PID number together with or instead of the date of purchase?

The PID is easy to find, it's underneath each satellite, and at the bottom of the sub underneath. It should be the same PID number on all speakers.

Btw Danish, for the record I have the 96-24 analog bug too.

 

[twicksisted]

its not a bug though
Its just that the amp is working digitally in 24/96 whatever the input signal

 

[Mussels]

well i think my x-plosion does digital 24/96, so its all good

Buying online so i cant check teh code, its ~$350 online vs $600 locally.

where is the subs bass control? on the remote or the sub?

 

[twicksisted]

well i think my x-plosion does digital 24/96, so its all good

Buying online so i cant check teh code, its ~$350 online vs $600 locally.

where is the subs bass control? on the remote or the sub?

On both the remote control and the head unit

 

[Mussels]

On both the remote control and the head unit

well i think i'll order monday. just cant find anything wrong, except that i'll miss how teh center speaker of my 540's sits on top of the TV. it just looks nice there

 

[twicksisted]

I just slotted mine under my LCD panel...fits perfectly and raising it works better for when I game

 

[asb2106]

I just slotted mine under my LCD panel...fits perfectly and raising it works better for when I game

is that monitor the 245bw?? I have that, and that looks like a great idea!

 

[malware]

Little update, if DanishDevil can update my profile here.
My firmware is 2.1.0, my PID R740, and I have the 96-24 bug too when using analog connection, direct 6ch. ... also I have the +22 boost.
Favorite media: wow they're many I'm a trance/progressive listener, but I like to listen all kind of music as long as it is not some commercial sh1t.

btw if you all want to hear what the Z-5500 sub is capable of please listen to a song called jibbs ft. chamillionaire - king kong at really loud levels ... you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[Black Panther]

its not a bug though
Its just that the amp is working digitally in 24/96 whatever the input signal

It is a bug.... check what Logitech tech support emailed to a guy on the Logitech forums I quoted it here. Anyway, bug or not, it is harmless.

Mussels, you can control Sub also from your card's software as well from the equalizer (well I'm sure you knew that but I pointed it out just in case you missed it) .

In actual fact I have a problem myself here, maybe someone who has a Creative Labs X-Fi can help me out?

On the THX settings (in the help part) it says that if you have a bass speaker you should 'enable bass redirection' and then choose the amount of crossover you get through the satellites.

Well, if I enable bass reduction, even if I select sub-woofer gain +15dB and play around with the crossover slider, I get inferior quality for the whole sound in general. I mean I tested it out by keeping my hand partially covering the 4" side-hole of the sub. If I enable bass reduction and put sub gain +15dB and even increase a tad the sub through the equalizer of the x-fi, I feel little 'wind' blowing through my fingers. With bass reduction and +15dB bass boost my sub is like half muted, and the satellites sound somewhat dead and empty.

Whereas if I do away with bass reduction I get crisp clear sound from the satellites (with SVM enabled) and the side-hole of the sub blows nice wind through my fingers, and there's definitely more vibe and boom in the room which I like.

I wonder why the instructions on the x-fi's driver kinda conflict? Either that or my ears have a problem


Another question I had -- if the max bitrate of my x-fi is 96 does that mean that whether I play music with 96 bitrate or 320 bit it would be sounding just the same and hence anything over 96 would be overkill for me?

 

[twicksisted]

is that monitor the 245bw?? I have that, and that looks like a great idea!

yeah thats the Samsung SM245B... the centre speaker fits under the panel on the black foot of the LCD screen...

 

[malware]

Bass redirect feature is for speakers without internal crossover, in the case of Z-5500 they have an internal crossover at 120Hz.
Once you put the bass redirect through the Creative drivers and set it to 80Hz for example (the THX freq) all frequencies from 80 to the internal crossover 120Hz will be gone .... your sub will sound muted and will lack punch. Unfortunately because of the crappy Creative drivers even when set at 120Hz the bass redirect feature makes the sub go somewhat muted too.
I strongly recommend leaving this option, use it only with speakers without internal crossover.
Also the speaker size mean a lot ... make sure you use "small" because if you go "large" the satellites will try to do the low freqs that're only for the sub. Setting the speakers to "large" is only for receivers and floorstanding speakers with large 8-10-12" drivers in them.

 

[twicksisted]

Another question I had -- if the max bitrate of my x-fi is 96 does that mean that whether I play music with 96 bitrate or 320 bit it would be sounding just the same and hence anything over 96 would be overkill for me?

The amp wont accept a signal digitally over 24/96... though if you were to feed it an analogue signal thats been processed on a soundcard at 24/192 or something it would work.

You talking about a 320kbps MP3 file as a signal into the amp / speakers... its properties are 320kbps which is 16bit audio.
The Z5500 headunit / amp works at 24bit 96khz internally and processes and mixes / upmixes the signals at that bitrate internally no matter what the input signal. this is why I said that its not a bug for it to display the 24/96 logo.

Playing a WAV (also 16bit), or 320kbps MP3 file makes no difference to what bitrate the amp will internally process at.

The higher the bitrate, the higher the resolution so "theoretically" the better it will sound even if its a lower bitrate signal... This works better though for mixing different signals together (or DSP where it adds to the sound).

to think of it differently, think about colour as they work the same...
Think of it like setting your graphics settings to 16bit colour instead of 32bit colour... theres more colours in 32bit, but if you were to use photoshop and a 16bit image it would still look the same... now if you were to mix two or more 16 bit images together in 32bit it would be better as you'd lose less as they blend and possibly gain resolution as they morph into something different.

heres a pic of a 24bit waveform (note how smooth it is):

Heres a pic of a 16bit waveform of the same thing (look how rough it is):

An analogue signal would be completely smooth and arguably better albeit for the noise the signal would contain... now you can see why if you were to mix two 16 bit signals in 24bit it would allow for higher resolution and why they would use 24bit processing for the DSP chips inside the amp

 

[DanishDevil]

I'm unpacking all my stuff @ home, so I'll update this as soon as I'm settled in.

 

[Mussels]

after what everyones said, i'm making the order tomorrow. looks like my TV is tall enough that the speaker can sit in front of it without blocking view of the screen (somewhere around 5-7", but the couch is lower than the TV so theres a height difference)

looks like i'll be haunting this thread with questions once i get them

 

[DanishDevil]

We can't wait for your questions

 

[Master_of_Time]

Hi, this is my first post at TPU. I bought the speakers 5 months ago and everybody hates me now. So, here are the answers that you want:
1. Only the PC, the soundcard is SupremeFXII, the one that came with the Asus SIIF
2. Firmware - v2.1.0
3. M/N: xxxxxx
4. Speaker Wire
5. Yes, I have Boost 22, but I've only tried these monsters at Boost 7...
6. I do use 96/24 in analog.
7. I got them for my birthday - 03.12.2007.
8. I watch HD movies,a lot of games with surround and metal ranging from Black Sabbath to really hardcore stuff. (That's why everybody hates me )
P.S. Sorry, I don't have anything decent to shoot a few pics, just my dad's crappy gsm camera and that's it.
EDIT: I forgot - my real name is Victor, I live in Sofia, Bulgaria.
EDIT 2: I've got some crappy pics. Sorry, they're really crappy, but that's all I've got for now. If I get some better pics I'll change them. Oh, yes and the pics are a little old, i have a different monitor and case now.

 

[gerrynicol]

1. PC, through optical on an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude
2. ??
3. subs under a set of drawers
4. speaker wire
5. I have boost, don't need to use it lol
6. Yup
7. 3 months ago
8. Metal, hip hop stuff. movies.

 

[asb2106]

Hey Guys!! Just around around to taking some snapshots of the computer corner of mine

I have a 5 foot by 4 foot little hole that I get for my computer and the junk that goes with it(including the Z5500), so heres the pics!!

Sorry bout the computer being in somewhat of peices

It is under water cooling construction. I am adding a radiator, 10 new fans, another pump, and Im rewiring the whole case! So there is wires and shit everywhere

 

[Master_of_Time]

Umm... I'm just asking, but when is the soundroom page going to get updated? I've joined and gerrynicol too. I'm really sorry if you're having work or something - I'm just asking.