Z5500's getting closer :o)

[Greco101]

Waiting for this damn laptop to sell so I can order them.

Anyways, I'm going to be prepping a little before they get here and I had a couple questions.

Anyone know how long the wires are? I'd imagine close to the lengths of the 5300's.

Should I keep the stock wires? Or use cat 6 (I believe that's what I read, "being better than monster cables.")

Should I use speaker spikes for the subs? I've seen two main sizes... do spike sizes make a difference? Long (http://cgi.ebay.com/2-SETS-8-SLENDER-CONES-SPEAKER-SPIKES-FLOOR-STANDS_W0QQitemZ280154155766QQihZ018QQcategoryZ149 97QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)
Short (http://cgi.ebay.com/Small-Audio-Cones-Speaker-Spikes-Floor-Stands-Stand_W0QQitemZ280153767641QQihZ018QQcategoryZ1499 7QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)

[Indybird]

In terms of wires it comes with 3x 15' wires and 2x 25' wires. The Cat5e wires apparently a little better. If you want the absolute best out of these speakers, I'd go for it.

I don't get the point of spikes, I just like the woofer and its rubber right against the floor.

By the way, nice speaker pick. You will not be disappointed.

-Indybird

[Luke122]

Cat5 wire works just fine, 5e is what I use. You wont need to braid the wires either, the power output isnt high enough to need multiple strands.

I would use a single strand of cat5(or 5e) to each speaker. Separate all the pairs, and join all the solid colors to be the +, and all the striped wires to make the -.

Spikes are not needed for a sub, so I would save your money on those.

[Greco101]

Which would be best? 5e or 5? What's the difference?

Best deal I've found so far... (http://cgi.ebay.com/100-FT-Black-Cat5e-Cat-5-5e-Patch-Cable-Snagless-B_W0QQitemZ140159918962QQihZ004QQcategoryZ73317QQs sPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)

[Luke122]

The forums on DIYAudio have been debating this for quite awhile.. check this thread. (http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108029&highlight=cat5)

[Crimson Sky]

why are you using Cat5 cable instead of twisted pair wire? I have had the Z5500 Digital for a couple years now running coaxial from my HTPC. They are OK speakers, nothing uber.

[dgrmkrp]

Z5500: nice speakers :)

Errm.. Sorry to ask in this thread, but for those that may have tested it: how does thick, pure copper, PA type, speaker wire sound compared to the monster or the home-made cables?

I mean, I don't listen to music at high volumes, but when I play music at parties, I usually send close to 200W per output/cable.. cables aren't getting hotter or anything, so they don't seem to have much energy loss

(for those that are new to this: at higher frequencies a cable or conductor with a small outer area/section has its resistance going up up and away because.. an effect I'm not quite sure what it is called in English.. but that's why you use more wires, to have more conduction area, the actual current flow only appearing only superficially, not in all the volume of the wire.. the fact that it is twisted helps a bit with noise rejection, because amplifiers should have differential input, so they only amplify the differences from one wire to the other, in a pair.. no signal appearing on both, like the electrical buzz of the mains should end in your speakers.. usually)

What I'm curious is if it has a difference at low power levels as well as when I go up.. and 200W is not a high power level.. it would be interesting to know if I can get a cleaner sound, at least while people are sober :)

[Greco101]

why are you using Cat5 cable instead of twisted pair wire? I have had the Z5500 Digital for a couple years now running coaxial from my HTPC. They are OK speakers, nothing uber.

I read somewhere that cat5 was some of the best wire you could use. What gauge twisted wire do you suggest? 16? 12? Would going to big take away from performance? or would it just kind of cap?

I'm still trying to find where i'm going to put the two rears without my gf bitching about them since behind me on the other side of the room would be the T.V.

[Crimson Sky]

Professional home/studio audio installers will only use twisted pair wire--not really sure where Cat5 came into the picture. I hid all the wires inside a plastic raceway (http://cableorganizer.com/wire-cover/), the kind with sleeve, cover, self stick adhesive. Looks nice and neat.

Went to Radio Shack and bought 100' feet "speaker wire" boom, its done. Its not a high end system that needs expensive wire. The satellite speakers don't draw that much power, and the woofer has its own heavy cable included.

[Greco101]

Thanks for the link man. I was planing on running the rear speakers under the carpet but that will be great for the center speaker which is what I was mostly worried about visible wire wise.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/BlackS3ven/roomlayout.jpg

Just for reference to show how the rear speakers will be a problem with the tv.

[Luke122]

why are you using Cat5 cable instead of twisted pair wire? I have had the Z5500 Digital for a couple years now running coaxial from my HTPC. They are OK speakers, nothing uber.

The twisted pairs in the cat5(e) work great in lower power applications. All I did was seperate about 4 inches of the ends of the cables, and split the solid colors and the stripes into + and -. This way, there are 4 twisted pairs in each cable. :)

[Crimson Sky]

The twisted pairs in the cat5(e) work great in lower power applications. All I did was seperate about 4 inches of the ends of the cables, and split the solid colors and the stripes into + and -. This way, there are 4 twisted pairs in each cable. :)


Yeah but how far away are the sattelite speakers from eachother? So you had to splt the sheath on the Cat5 the same distance as the spread between any two satellites?

Your speakers are 4" apart? Do explain...

[Luke122]

I'm using a seperate run of cat5 to each speaker. :) 4 solid colors to the + terminal, and 4 striped colors to the - terminal, on each speaker.

[Crimson Sky]

Sooo...you have twice the ammount of wire you need for each speaker...tell me where that makes sense.

[Luke122]

I have 4 times the number of twists in the wire / foot then regular twisted pair speaker wire, and cat5 is 12c/foot for me to buy, vs however much monster cable would cost.

Plus, having tested the cat5e vs monster cable speaker wire on my setup, the cat5e cables sounded much better. :)

[Crimson Sky]

That don't make no sense! (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/misc/no_sense.wav)

[XcOM]

im with crimson with this one, my bro has them speakers, he's just using standard speaker wire, it does the trick.

Whats with you using networking cable for speaker wire?

[dgrmkrp]

It's using more parallel conduits for the current to pass.. If each wire has a certain resistance, then 4 of them in parallel have a muuuch lower resistance. Or, because current is conducted only superficially, the wider area means more place for the current to pass, freely. A normal wire would have a filter behavior: high frequencies meet higher resistance and the lower end can't get that much power in a small wire, so it meets resistance too. That's the idea I think behind using multiple cables/wires... I think..

My question still holds, as I have taken a small LAN cable apart: it is made of 8 single copper conductors, less than a millimeter thick.. but the cables I'm using are made of dozens of copper wires, thinner of course, but they amount to a thick, close to 4 mm wire.. Can I get a close-up of the cat 5e? And if anybody has a monster cable.. cut.. a pic of that too?

[Luke122]

..also, I have tons of cable that I've salvaged from a few locations.

Here's some details.. (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9518&highlight=cat5)

[Greco101]

I went to walmart, bestbuy, sears and frys... NO 5500s!!

The guy at frys didn't seem to know wtf he was talking about but he mentioned "maybe they are being phased out or logitech is coming out with a new set to replace it." but that doesn't make sense. He said frys did ______ with all of them (I forget which word he used but basically meaning they sent them all back.)

Any ideas wth is going on? or was the guy just a moron?

[.Maleficus.]

Why don't you just buy them from Newegg? It'll be cheaper anyways.

[Indybird]

Get them from dell. They're cheapest there. Heres (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0405790) the link.

Its strange because I picked mine up at tigerdirect over a year ago for $240. The price just keeps going up...

It makes me wonder if/when logitech is going to replace them. If they do make a new one then I am willing to bet it will be one kickass, feature-packed, high wattage, fine tuned piece of sound outputting equipment.

-Indybird

[XcOM]

why not use the wire provided, logitech have spent loads of time devolping these, the wire they provide is the best you can get uinless you start using high end cales designed for PA systems or GIG's that really need to handel the load.

the wire provided has a low resistance raiting anyway, Becides if thay cost £200 there not going to provide some cheap ass cales that will compimise the quality of the sound.

[Greco101]

Ya, I was planning on going through Dell. Sooo much cheaper and free shipping. I really hope I don't buy them and then logitech comes out with the new system a month later...

I was just trying to find a display to see what they are like in person... The z5300's were huge so I'd imagine somewhere are there.

Also, I probably will end up just using stock cables... I was just thinking I might go for a step up if I needed more length but they should be long enough for the arrangement I want.

[Greco101]

The laptop sold and I only got 761... so 100 or so dollars than I expected.

Are the z5500s REALLY worth the money? Or should I go with the z5300's?

Dell SAID free shipping but when I tried ordering, shipping was 103 dollars!!!!!!!

The cheapest I found new z5500's for is 300 shipped... or 100 bucks for z5300's. Any other suggestions for bigger bang for the buck in a 5.1 or 7.1 system?

[xRyokenx]

Don't take that guff, go ahead and send them a message about how they said it was free and when you went to order them it wanted to charge you $100... take a screenshot and send them proof. They should pull their **** together and probably even give you a discount for the inconvenience... if not, I'll not buy anything from them, and big businesses like to keep their customers fairly happy so they don't go bankrupt and all that.

[XcOM]

yea, the z5500 are worth it, much nice/loader than the 5300's, the sub could annoy a deaf man!

[Greco101]

Damn fedex and their not-shipping-on-sundays ways... Gotta wait until Monday :o(

[Greco101]

Just finished hooking them up... I know I have an optical cable somewhere around here... Does it go with, or replace the other cords going to the sound card?

[Luke122]

If your soundcard has an optical out, use that instead of the other connections.

[Greco101]

Awesome. Thanks man... I almost hooked up both because I didn't see how one cable could replace them all.

[Greco101]

The one cable isn't doin' it. No sound.

I said **** it to the optical cable for now... so I plugged back in the normal cords and now I can't get my video card to read the speakers right when I do the tests for it to read off the speakers.

EDIT: got it back to normal, but still it was a no-go with the optical... are you supposed to use both?

[Indybird]

Did you have optical set to the default device in your sound card control panel? If you can't get optical to work, you can always try Coaxial digital (which only requires a RCA cable). It works the same but looses a little tiny bit of quality compared to optical.

By the way, you only need the optical connected, that is how it works.

Hope that helps,
Indybird

[Greco101]

I believe so... but still no sound.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/Diphosgene/1.jpg

When I click the optical setting on the speaker controller it says "Input: Optical - No Digital Data"

[Luke122]

The SPDIF output is the optical one.. make sure that's enabled. If you are using an onboard soundcard, you *might* have to enable the SPDIF output in the bios.

[Greco101]

It's a Omega Claro (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829271003&ATT=29-271-003&CMP=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Sound+Card-_-HT+Omega-_-29271003)

I can't figure out where to enable it. Maybe a bad cable? I'm using the one the card came with as seen in the pictures.

[Indybird]

I believe so... but still no sound.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/Diphosgene/1.jpg

When I click the optical setting on the speaker controller it says "Input: Optical - No Digital Data"
In that picture you have S/PDIF set to "in", make sure it is set to out. I doubt the cable is bad, but it could be a possibility.

-Indybird

[Greco101]

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5315/80273591kw2.th.jpg (http://img67.imageshack.us/my.php?image=80273591kw2.jpg)

These are my only options?

[Luke122]

It depends on what the speakers support for output, but I would hazard a guess that the dolby or dts settings should work just fine. If not, 44.1 would be the one to test next.

...you could just try them all.. ;)

[Indybird]

Set it to "Digital Audio - 96Hz" or "DTS Interactive", I have mine set to the first, and it offers the best sound. The Z-5500 can't do 192Hz. If you're doing things like 5.1 Gaming (DirectSound) or watching 5.1 DVD movies then you might want to set it to Dolby Digital Live.

If that doesnt work then there is most likely a problem with your cable.

Hope that helps,
Indybird