Getting ready to build - parts picked

If you're worry about the bass, you can always turn them down. You have total volume control over every speaker. Front, rear, center, and sub. Just turn down the sub volume so people won't be pounding on your door to turn it down.
 
Ahh ok... Well thats good to know.. So does everything plug in to the sub? And how are the length of all the wires.. i probably want to mount the rear speakers on the ceiling so I want to make sure the speaker cables are long enough. Ive also noticed these speakeres come with digital coaxial and digital optical out. Which sound cards have these??
 
From what I can see now, yes, everything is plugged into the sub. The device with the LCD (it's how you interface with the speaker functions--you can use the remote for that) is also plugged into the back of the sub. Cables, yes, they are all extremely long for me, especially the rear speakers. I still have slack in which I had to tie it some of it back up. Cable length shouldn't be a problem if you are in a regular bedroom type environment. Living room, well, it can be big and the cables may not be long enough for that part of the house.

The best placement of your subwoofer should be in the middle top front of the room against the wall. That way, you have equal length cables going to left and right and to the rear. But yes, the cables are pretty long. Those digital and optical outputs are for high end sound cards like the X-Fi Platinum cards for home theater sounds or any sound for that matter. If you look at the pictures on Newegg for the X-Fi Platinum, it comes with a device you install into the drive bay also. That's where it goes into.

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Lol.... that only happens at massively high levels. If budget isn't an issue, then, by all means, as trd will second me, the z5500s are a way better choice. The sound quality difference between the two is amazing. The bass is big... lol... but as long as your room isn't the size of a broom stick shed, you can always adjust volume, settings, etc.
 
Ahh ok I just need to figure out where I would put the sub then. I am going to have some other electronics such as a guitar amp in the same room so I dont want it to be any where near that just as a precaution. Soo now I think I just have to decide on which sound card and what I am going to do for the monitor. But does everything else look good then?
 
Yeah, don't think of this like a Kenwood or a Yamaha system or anything like that. Among "computer" speakers, this one is up there. I'm aiming strictly for home theater setup so I'm getting the X-Fi Platinum or Fatal1ty. EX-Fi Elite Pro cost wayyy tooo much for a computer use. If you like music, the XtremeMusic version looks good for you. I just saw Newegg bump up the price on that one. Remember how it was like $118? Now it's $121.99, lol.
 
Well is the xtrememusic version good for gaming too? I think I am going with that one! Looks sweet. I found out what the outputs are and why there isnt as many as say the audigy 2. This is taken from creative labs website...

X-fi Xtreme Music

Connectivity


  • FlexiJack (Performing a 3-in-1 function, Digital I/O1 / Line In / Microphone) via 3.50mm mini jack
  • Line level out (Front / Rear / Side / Center / Subwoofer) via 3.50mm mini jacks
  • AUX_IN line-level analog input via 4-pin Molex connector on card
  • One AD_Link (26 pin) connector for linking to the X-Fi I/O Console (upgrade option)
Audigy 2 ZS

Sound Blaster® Audigy™ 2 ZS On-Board Connectors


  • [*]Line level out (Front / Rear / Center / Subwoofer / Rear Center)
    [*]Digital Out for 5.1 support(6-channel SPDIF output to Creative digital speakers
    [*]Line in
    [*]Microphone in
    [*]FireWire® (IEEE® 1394)
    [*]Telephone Answering Device in
    [*]Analog / Digital CD Audio in
    [*]15-pin MIDI / Joystick port extension header
    [*]Internal IEEE® 1394 header to Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Internal Drive (Upgrade Option)
    [*]AD_EXT extension header to the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Internal Drive (Upgrade Option)
So X-fi it is!
 
Now I am just going to play the waiting game for a bit longer too see if prices go down. You dont even want to know the total with taxes and everything including monitor and the z5500s.
 
Good info. I've also been deciding what I want too. And why would I be upgrading already when I have the Audigy2 ZS Gamer and with a kick ass speaker system?

I went to my friend's house last night (came home around 3am by the way). She's got one of those brand new 10-speaker Bose system!!!!! OMG, that thing is REAL home theater. Not that I'm saying the Z-5500 is bad, but if you ever compare Bose to anything, Bose will generally come out on top. The bass, OMG, it's like an airplane coming in for a landing, it's like a train going through your house, it's like the sound of an earthquake right underneath you. I have never heard that kind of response from ANY home theater that I previously owned (Pioneer, Yamaha, and Sony, let alone computer speakers) do that kind of sound. I was watching Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihaltion on it. Whoa...

That kind of sound has encouraged me to beef up my own computer sound system. I have been debating with going for the X-Fi Fatal1ty or X-Fi Elite Pro (more extreme, more power). Audigy2 ZS is just 'ok' when compared to the X-Fi spec for spec.

The X-Fi has a new feature called the X-RAM which will hopefully be utilized soon. New technology and good stuff. Video cards have been using onboard buffers for a long time, so it's no surprise that we're seeing more SDRAM on sound cards as our demand for more detailed audio increases. The idea is the same as that on graphics hardware - you gain better performance (lower latency) by swapping information between the onboard cache rather than going across the PCI bus. Also with the onboard RAM you can support much more in-game audio sources (more voices or effects like on a Battlefield 2 and UnrealTournament 2004 game as an example) or uncompressed audio (requires less processing) thanks to the buffer.

The completely redesigned Sound Processing Unit (SPU) is immensely powerful and produces the highest quality music and sound effects for any sound card to date. However there's a catch: not all software may be designed to take advantage of X-RAM. Much like RAM on a video card, developers need to specifically program support for X-RAM, so how useful X-RAM will be is entirely up to the game and software developers. As cool as X-RAM may appear to be, it will not benefit those who prefer using their hardware for music or media playback. X-RAM is purely for media developers and gamers at the moment. Not to bring a downer to this technology, but with any new technology, it always starts out this way. People doubt 64-bit CPUs, but here we are. The same will be true for X-RAM.

Now I've heard that the X-Fi XtremeMusic or the X-Fi Platinum version doesn't have X-RAM support. I'll see what I can find on that. Ok, never mind. The XtremeMusic and Platinum comes with only 2MB of X-RAM while the Fatal1ty and the Elite Pro comes wit 64 whopping MB of X-RAM. Drool.
 
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