Info request on Logitech's Z-5500

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MrSloppy

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 20, 2006
Messages
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There's a huge sale on Logitech's Z-5500 in TigerDirect.ca, the price was at $279.99 and personally I find it to be a great deal compared to the other retail stores like Future Shop and Best Buy. I'm kind of concerned about why the price is so low though, thus I've started to read around on this forum about this set of speakers.

Can anybody tell me what I should look out for, or anything that's known to be bad with the Z-5500s? The speakers seems to have been made back in 2004. I don't have much time before the sale ends, two days to be exact. Any information on these speakers would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
 
Newegg has it for cheaper and so does buy.com i own a set and they are great, sub is big but you can make the house shake
 
the only con is your neighbors hate you.

but seriously the only con about the set is the highs are not that strong as say, a klipshe(sp) ultra
 
yeah i got mine for 230 after shipping at christmas time so i think newegg is still 220 or so
 
Great speakers and I have had no problems at all. Hope you do not live in an apartment because your neighbors will hate you.
 
Yeah i did that in my dorm room lets say the people up stairs wouldnt stop banging on the floor the whole year ;)
 
You want to make sure that they are a more recent build as I hear some of the older sets do not have standard speaker wire jacks, but have some kind of plug type deal. I've never seen it. Mine I got from ZZF about a month ago for 236 shipped. Working fine so far. One complaint I have is that the optical and coax connections on the control pod are too close together. Larger premium cables from Monster will not fit side by side at the same time. Something to be aware of if you plan to use all inputs.
 
If you get the newer revision everything about them is great and you wont find a better deal in Canada so ignore the people telling you to check ZZF and Newegg because they wont ship to Canada.
 
Great Speakers! Had them for 6 months now, I think all of them now come with speaker wire that you can replace with better wiring or cut it to the length you want it. I think the 1st revisions ofthem came with RCA type wiring that was integrated into the back of the speakers so you couldn't replace them and not as much fidelity.

The only thing I can point out about them is the bass, out of the box, it's too much but my creative THX and surroundsound mixer fixes the problem :D I changed the crossover frequency to 80hz and lowered the bass and upped the treble a little bit.

They are clear and loud! good to rock out to hehe
 
How can I tell if I have the newer revision from the older ones? Is the date that it was made enough for me to figure out if it's a newer revision or not? Can someone also provide me with pictures of what the newer revisions of the Z-5500 speakers should look like. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to audio so I'm a bit confused at what I should be looking for.
 
The only difference between the old and the new ver is the old ver was hardwired means speakers hooked up directly to your receiver with a wired that was solded to the speaker about 22gauge. The newer version has Pug ins so you can plug in your cables just like normal speakers.

Old version
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...ogitech+Z-5500+505+Watts+5.1+Speaker+-+Retail

New version
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-298-3.htm
http://www.thetechlounge.com/view+image/cat-55/files/articles/206/images/24.jpg

I wouldn't worry too much about the old version since they stopped making them almost right away after the introduction of the product so it's almost impossible to get one unless you buy from a non respectable retailer. www.zipzoomfly.com and www.newegg.com sell so many that they don't have any of the old ones. Good luck man.
 
Whew! Thank you all for taking the time to clarify things for me. I took a look at the back of the speakers and it's the same as the one in the picture that you had linked for me.
24.jpg



For a while there I was sweating in panic because when I did a search for RCA connectors on Wiki, I got a picture that looked like this
RCAjacks.jpg
so I thought I goofed and bought the wrong version of the speakers.

Now I just have to figure out how to start putting these speakers into the sweet spots, I'm starting research on that right now. Anyways, thank you all once again for the help that I received here!
 
Tip
#1 Buy 16-14 gauge cable 14 is thicker than 16 gauge so it has more quality.
#2 Make sure you keep the subwoofer at least 2ft from harddrives and crts.

How do you like your speakers so far? I'm stuck between klipsch promedias 5.1 ultra and logitech 5500. Is the subwoofer really boomy?
 
bleh, IMO better cables unless you need longer ones then why not.. are useless......

there won't be a noticeable quality increase at all...
 
aZn_plyR said:
bleh, IMO better cables unless you need longer ones then why not.. are useless......

there won't be a noticeable quality increase at all...
Click to expand...

I'll be less interfered by electromagnetic interference (cleaner sound) and I'll sound louder. It's like putting a 500HP engine and leaving the stock transmission.
 
I'm still trying to figure out where to put the two rear speakers at the moment, I haven't done enough research on that. Not sure what exactly would the "sweet" zone sound like either, but I think I'll have this speaker set up in a few days.
 
MrSloppy said:
I'm still trying to figure out where to put the two rear speakers at the moment, I haven't done enough research on that. Not sure what exactly would the "sweet" zone sound like either, but I think I'll have this speaker set up in a few days.
Click to expand...

Try buying rear stands, or if you got a narrow space have the cable running through the ceiling the dropping down at the opposite wall and the put your speakers on some sort of stand.
 
my z-5500's sounded HORRIBLE, static every where when played loud using the normal connections from my Audigey2zs BUT, when connected via fiber optic in Dolby Digital 5.1 Live from my AuzenTech X-Mystique 7.1 the quality is insane i can turn the bars up from the Z-5500 full blast +11 OverBoost with not 1 static noise, crackle or pop not even white noise ! they seriously should put a requirement on the z-5500 to have a DDL card to really hear its full potential you are really missing out if your on a non DDL creative card with the z-5500's
 
Oh wow, has it already been that long? I finally set up my Z-5500 using a diagram that I found online, and I gave it a whirl. It really does sound great, I enjoy the various controls that I have on the settings. I was able to tune the volume on each of speakers with relative ease, though I doubt I've reached the sweet spot yet.

I think the length of wires provided by Logitech was well thoughout. Some wires are definitely longer than others, so there's no worry of running out of wire length when you're trying to connect the furthest speakers to the sides.

So far the audio quality has been crisp, strong and while I didn't have to adjust the subwoofer's settings I think it's alright for music and movies. I did have to turn down the subwoofer when I was gaming though, I didn't want to drive everyone else besides me insane. The wire length for the digital controller isn't as lengthy as I wanted to be, but then again, it wasn't a wise idea for me to have put it too far away as I had initially tried to since it would have been annoying to have to get out of my chair every time I wanted to change the volume.

I do have a few gripes though. Only the center speaker's vertical position can be changed, the other four speakers' height are non-adjustable. Also the volume control isn't as precise as I want it to be. The volume seems to go down and up in static increments, instead of being linear to the amount of turning that I have made. It's something I have to live with in and otherwise remarkable system.

Oh... and be careful when moving the subwoofer around, Logitech wasn't kidding when they warned the user that the subwoofer is heavy. I managed to not dent the subwoofer, while moving that beast around.

If I have anymore updates, I'll post them in here.
 
Just bought these 2 days ago, havent set them up yet though. will do that once I find stands for the speakers.

My question though is how far is the distance from the nearest edge of the sub to the nearest edge of your tower? Given the shape of my desk that distance for me is coming out to be 15" and I hope that isnt gonna be a problem.
 
Logitech recommends keeping all electronic equipment at least 24 inches away from the sub.
 
There was a paper inside my Logitech Z-5500 box that said to keep the subwoofer at least 60 cm away from the computer.
 
thanks man. set it all up yesterday after bit of rearranging. subwoofer is now atleast 75inches from my tower and monitor.

but got another question now. at the moment im using the 6 channel direct connections and was wondering how to make use of the digital coax connection on the back of the control pod to the back of my sound card (audigy2zs).

Can anyone link me to a cable with suitable connectors as I have no idea what the required cable even looks like. if i can see the specs and hopefully pictures i'll be able to shop around here for one. Thanks :)
 
The coax connection will only work as a pass-through for content already encoded in Dolby Digital or DTS (--primarily DVDs--). You'll need to get a card that supports realtime encoding (of either format) if you want to use it for anything else.

For the pass-through, just hook it up to your speakers with the appropriate cable and configure whatever media player you're using to output over the digital connection (if it is not already doing so).


I just picked up the speakers the other day for $250 (CDN). In my listening so far they're proving to be an excellent value. It's also very nice being able to load up my old games and here them in 5.1.

Cheers.
 
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