Sound Reproduction

So now you know how the systems stack up against each other in terms of power output and noise levels but what about sound quality? There is no doubt that both are quality systems but in head to head comparisons they exhibit different tonal qualities.

Before getting into the specifics of those difference I think its worth a few lines and the chart to the left (click on it for a large version)  to give you an idea of the most important frequencies for sound reproduction. As you can see, the lower bass region is used only by a very few instruments. The lowest note on the organ is 16.4 Hz, while the lowest notes on the piano, harp and contrabassoon are all closer to 32 Hz. While the lowest human voice may be capable of 87 Hz, in opera it is more typical for a bass singer to venture only near 128 Hz. At the high end, the highest fundamental note comes from the piccolo, at 4,186 Hz. However, this is not the upper limit of musical instruments as the important harmonics produced by all non-electrical instruments are of even higher frequencies, as high as 16,000 Hz to 17,000 Hz for violins and cymbals. When it comes to sound reproduction, nature has further complicated matters as our ears are not nearly as sensitive to high or low frequency sounds as they are to the midrange, especially to those frequencies between 1,000 and 2,000 Hz. (source - Advanced speaker systems).

A perfect sound system would reproduce exactly the same sound as the real life source. Such a reproduction is considered to be acoustically flat. Another way you may see this described is sound reproduction without coloration or coloring of the sound. With such a speaker system, its not necessary to change the tonal quality (e.g. using an equalizer or increasing the subwoofer volume) of the sound to get true to life reproduction.

So with that little bit of background information we can move to my head-to-head impressions. Keep in mind that we don’t have extensive testing equipment so I am relying for the most part on my ears for much of the analysis. Its also important to note that that room acoustics have an important role to play in sound so overall personal impressions generated different rooms could actually vary. Its likely that differing room acoustics between my test room and Mikael’s test room account for our somewhat different numbers in sound pressure level testing.

Satellites

As you can discern from the chart and table and text above, the ability of a system to accurately reproduce most sound will depend heavily on the quality of the midrange drivers. You may know from our full reviews that we consider the midrange quality of both the ProMedia and Crossfire to be well above the quality offered by the average multimedia system. However, the ProMedia and Crossfire satellites produce a rather different sounding midrange.

For testing, I am using the Sennheiser HD525 headphones as my reference system and will assume that as high quality headphones, they are delivering what I will treat as a relatively flat frequency response. I also had the advantage of owning several CD of artists that I have heard live and I used these CDs along with CDs by a variety of other artists to do my listening tests.

The results where that I found that the ProMedia satellites offers a midrange reproduction that I would describe as somewhat colored and bright, giving a heightened sense of detail relative to what I heard with the Sennheiser HD525s (speaker tests done with the subwoofer also active). You may note that in the full ProMedia review I don’t make a similar statement. The reason is simple…I lacked another high quality system to compare against as my home unit offers rather subdued tones relative to anything decent. Compared to my home unit or any other multimedia speaker system I had heard up to that point, the ProMedia’s relatively crisp, bright midrange were a joy to my ears and I left it at that until now. In doing my research for this article, I came across a great quote that I will paraphrase to sum this section up - that is "one persons clarity is someone else’s harshness". That is, while there clearly is right and wrong when it come to acoustic accuracy but there is no right and wrong when it comes to taste so keep your personal tastes in mind when you make your decisions and keep in mind that I have been very happy with the ProMedia as my primary system for the past several months. Its also worth mentioning that while the ProMedias are not up to the same acoustic standards as Klipsch’s home and professional lines, the overall Klipsch design philosophy is to create a more forward sound stage (i.e. closer to the front row of a live performance) than many other loud speaker manufacturers while striving for an acoustically flat response..

Having said that, when it comes to these listening tests the Crossfire system (sub and sats) produced a very similar sound to the Sennheiser HD525 headphones, which as noted I am treating as an acoustically flat response. After hours and hours of listening test its very clear to my ears that the Crossfires offer superior midrange reproduction, in fact its the most clear smooth midrange that I have heard on a multimedia system.

When it comes to treble, both are excellent and offer a clarity beyond any other multimedia speaker I have heard to date. Both use dome tweeters with the ProMedia, as noted, sticking to the long standing tradition of Klipsch in using a horn mounted design. According to Klipsch, horns offer high efficiency, low distortion, controlled directivity and flat frequency response, allowing them to more closely reproduce the quality and tonal characteristics of live sound. In the case of the ProMedia the horn is Klipsch’s own MicroTractrix™ Horn. Tractrix is touted as the world's most natural sounding horn, and according to Klipsch there are numerous inherent benefits. The Tractrix Horn shape allows expanding sound waves to be released, unaltered and uncolored, through the wave guide with controlled and focused radiation. Some have criticized the horn loaded design because it creates speakers that sound too bright and perhaps I should attribute some of the reported midrange brightness to the horn mounted tweeter but I really can’t pin-point it. The Crossfire’s tweeters differ from the ProMedia in two regards. First, its not a horn loaded design and second, its a smaller tweeter (10 mm vs. 19 mm) but the Audax technology and Videologic tuning keeps pace with the ProMedias. The bottom line is both are excellent performers and to my ears, its a "you pick em".

Its one thing to look at the relative performance of each of satellite drivers in isolation, but that’s not how we listen. As you can surmise by reading to this point. Tonal differences aside, the total package offered by the Crossfire amplifier and satellites overall outperforms the total package offered by the ProMedia amplifier and satellites. This is a result of the Crossfire’s overall cleaner sound (i.e. lower distortion) which becomes all the more apparent at louder volumes.

Subwoofer:

At normal settings (i.e. aiming for balance sound with no exaggerated bass using the center position for the Crossfire and the "marked" recommend default position for the ProMedia) both subs are excellent performers and well above average. Its really difficult to say one is better than the other and both blend well with their respective satellites with no performance issues through their rated specifications. In my rough sound level testing the ProMedia sub at standard settings falls off somewhat less at the lower frequencies where as the Crossfire sub actually keeps going a little further beyond specs than the ProMedia sub. As a reminder, the ProMedia specs claim bass down to 29 Hz and the Crossfire claims bass down to 35 Hz.

Abit SP50

Altec Lansing ACS 56

Altec Lansing ACS 54

Altec Lansing ADA880 Dolby Digital

Altec Lansing ATP3

Boston Acoustics BA4800

Boston Acoustics BA7500

Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000

Cambridge SoundWorks FPS2000 digital

Cambridge SoundWorks 2.1 Digital

Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT2500

Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT3500

Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks 510D

Diamond Audio Technology ProMedia 3205

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1

Klipsch ProMedia 4.1

Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Initial Review

Labtec APX 4620 Review

Labtec Edge-418 Flat Panel

Labtec's LCS-2514

Logitech SoundMan Xtrusio DSR-100

Logitech Z-560 Initial Review

MidiLand MLi-490

MidiLand S4-7100

MidiLand S4-7100 Plus

Monsoon MM-1000

Monsoon MM-2000

Philips MMS305 4.1 Initial Review

Polk Audio AMR-150

Polk Audio AMR-130

Videologic Sirocco

Videologic Sirocco Pro

Videologic DigiTheatre 5.1

VideoLogic DigiTheatre DTS

Videologic Sirocco Crossfire