Customer Reviews

Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 PC Speaker System- Black

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

These are 2.0 multimedia speakers in the hundred dollar range. Which means you will not get the subsonics (sound you feel more then hear) that you get from a subwoofer nor will you get "audiophile" quality of sound, which requires a lot more money and separate speakers and amplifier. That being said, these speakers are a great value in terms of sound quality for your money. The sound is clean, clear and well balanced. Also, I found them to be well put together.

The bass on these is far better then I expected, strong and tight. The midrange is strong and clear as is the treble. There is more then enough volume to overwhelm the person sitting in front of the computer and can easily fill a bedroom size room. Do they distort at very high volumes? I don't know, I have'nt felt the need to take them that loud.

For music these are hard to beat in this price range. The only limitation is the lack of a subwoofer. These are excellent for accoustic music, classical, jazz etc. However, if you are into rap or are a rocker who needs to feel the bass, you need a subwoofer.

For DVD's you get a suprisingly emersive experience. explosions rumble very nicely, sound separation is excellent for a 2 way system, and voices are clear and distinct. But, if watching DVD's is your primary concern and you want the surrond sound theater experience you'll want at least a 5.1 system.

If games are your big priority you'll want a 5.1 system or at least a 2.1 even it means a sacrifice in sound quality.

So if you want the best sound for the price and don't need surround sound or subsonics these are an excellent choice. They are also excellent for those with space limitations or who live in an apartment and want to avoid annoying the neighbors but still want good sound.

A final note, Klipsch is promoting theses as "portable". Portable is a relative term, usually relative to your needs. These are not small (10.5" H x 3.25" W x 6.5" D) as multimedia speakers go, you have the two speakers, the power brick, and wires to deal with and you need to plug them in somewhere. Portable enough for prsentations where you have to bring your own sound system, but not something with which you can just grab and go.

Individuals looking for a small desktop speaker (for laptops or workstations) will find these speakers to suit their needs. The audio is fairly rich for such a compact form factor; bass does not drown out the mids or highs, and the highs do not pierce your eardrums.

However, in my opinion, these speakers have a lot of issues which should have been thought of before being released on the market.

1) External AC power adapter -- the size of a large baseball, although square (not rectangular) in shape. It's huge, weighs a lot, and gets quite hot. It's one of those "inline" power bricks, where it sits between the AC outlet and the speakers themselves. Anyone familiar with these power bricks knows how irritating they can be when it comes to finding a place to put them. I prefer the AC adapter be put inside the speaker enclosure.

2) Speaker hiss -- this is a well-known problem with most Klipsch speakers released sometime after the 2nd revision of the ProMedia 2.1 series. The speakers, when turned on at lowest volume (and without anything plugged into them as an input device), emit a very loud hissing noise. This haunts the GMX series as well. The problem is caused by Klipsch increasing the internal gain (amplification) of the speakers (thus making them louder). Since there's no way to adjust the gain, you end up with speakers requiring you to turn them completely off when not in use. Otherwise, white noise constantly bombards your ears.

3) Faulty adjustment dials -- another well-known problem with Klipsch multimedia speakers since (and including) the ProMedia 2.1 days. Klipsch has once again decided to use a very cheap brand of potentiometre for their bass and volume adjustment knobs. The problem with these pots is that over time/use, dust manages to get inside of the pot. When this happens, you'll hear static coming out of the speakers every time you adjust the volume or adjust the bass. As stated, the ProMedia 2.1 control pod suffers from this problem too. Why Klipsch keeps using the same crummy pots for their products is anyone's guess.

If you think my complaints are limited to just one person (me), I urge you to visit the Klipsch Forums and see for yourself. Look at the ProMedia 2.1 forum as well, because they use the same pots as these speakers.

Because of these three (what I consider to be major) flaws, I can't give this product more than 2 stars. I will admit that the audio quality is quite good for small form-factor speakers (compared to the Creative Itrigue series, for example), but the negatives easily outweigh the positives.

If you want a good set of semi-small speakers, but require the use of a humongous heat-emitting subwoofer, and insist that they must be Klipsch, get the ProMedia 2.1 set (which do not suffer from the hiss problem). Otherwise, consider a different manufacturer.

Over the past 20 years I've tried lots of external computer speakers. In the early days quality wasn't much a consideration; PCs only sounded a few beeps and buzzes. However, ever since 1997 when I started ripping all my CDs and playing music from my computer, speakers became really important ... expecially when in 2002 I replaced my home stereo with a laptop and powered speakers. Quality sound is now a very high priority but for my situation so too were two other criteria: 1) I needed a two-speaker solution, nothing with a subwoofer would work and 2) I didn't want to spend over $100.

Well, my standard answer to the above has been Bose Companion 2 speakres. I have two pair, one pair in each of my offices (home and work). While I absolutely love those speakers I just didn't feel they were right for a living room setting. They're too "plasticy".

After a relatively extensive search I stumbled across the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 speakers (quite a mouth full, eh?). They're new so it was hard to come across reviews or opinions but the few I found sounded positive. Normally I'd order through Amazon but these were unproven speakers and I wanted the option of returning them so I bought a pair at the local Apple store and set them up.

The cabling is pretty straight forward. Power and audio source plug into the back of the controlling speaker; also on the back is an RCA plug to connect the other speaker via cable. On the front of the controlling speaker are (from left to right) bass control, secondary audio input, headphone jack, and volume control. A green LED sits below the two front plugs of the controlling speaker to indicate the unit is ON. As I say, pretty simple to set up.

Firing them up was a bit disappointing. I played some of my daughter's music and it sounded flat ... then I realized she had ripped the music at 24kbps so of course it sounded bad! Once I played some 128kbps music my heart soared. Beautiful! I hear great range, I feel sufficient base, I can sense much detail. Yes, I'm very pleased with these speakers and if you can live with black, then I'd highly recommend them. At 15W per channel they can crank.

I paid $99 but I'm sure you'll get a better deal here on Amazon.

Will I be returning them? Not a chance!!! :-)

I use these speakers in a small office to listen to news and classical music. The most impressive thing about them is their overall balance and clarity. Male voices are clear and completely free of upper-bass boominess. Classical music is accurately reproduced. As I type this, I am listening to Schubert's Trout Quintet. The double bass is clearly audible without distortion or undue emphasis in the upper range. The piano and strings come through naturally with low distortion. Other classical music also sounds great. Even harpsichord music is cleanly reproduced, with sparkling high frequency overtones. I listened to many other speakers, some costing several times more before deciding on these. All of the others were annoying in one way or another: many had exaggerated bass and some had piercing highs. These Klipsch would be a good bargain, even at a much higher price, if you're looking for clean, natural sound.

My old Logitech Z-560 developed a short in it creating nasty crackling noises over one channel. The Z560 was a rare beast, a $140 400 watt 4.1 monster that Logitech built to really high standards to create a strong foot forward into the PC speaker market. Sadly, their quality has declined since then, and their current offerings are cheaply made, sound far worse with music than the 560s, and have even fuzzier and more overwhelming bass than the 560 did (the systems one flaw). I decided to try 2.0 systems to see if I could get good PC sound without the added failure risk of a high powered sub and the muddiness that all that extra bass and clumsy frequency transitions between sats and sub causes...

My findings, from worst to best:

Logitech Z-10: 30 watts. Looks good, costs a lot, $150, list. Sounds dreadful. Despite having a largish 3" woofer, and a 1" tweeter, the Z-10 seems to be doing a lot of signal processing of music and the soundstage sounds compressed and artificial. Changing bass and treble makes things worse, and your music will sound different (and worse) on these speakers than it would normally. The touch controls and LCD screen are useless pricy gimmicks that increase chance of failure and add weight and cost to the system. Who in the world needs to see the name of the track playing on the bottom of the speaker? Anyway, these are a disappointment, with the worst sound and tied for the highest price. The speakers are heavy and well made, very stylish, though easily smudged with the reflective black surface on the front of the speaker. Logitech needs to redo these, silly gadgets and useless feature are tolerable, bad sound however is always a deal-breaker. Two stars, for style and build quality.

Klipsch ProMedia 2.0: Also 30 watts. Nice sound, good price, $100 list. Dual 2.5" woofers and a 1" tweeter with a Klipsch high-freq horn in it. These sound pretty good, but they are unexpectedly bulky and poorly made. The oddly formed speaker housing means these take up a lot of space and the volume and bass control knobs look like they come from a $10 CyberAcoutsics set. The cheapie knobs, bulk, and ugliness make these fit for corporate presentations where good loud sound matters and where style is largely irrelevant. For the home user, the cheap knobs may well break over time, which was the Achiles heel for my 560s; quality system, cheap volume pot. Three stars, good though not excellent sound, reasonable price, loses points for ugliness and some shoddy cost cutting in build quality. The bulk is sort of a neutral issue, as the larger box size probably helps the sound and bass extension of the units, but for some users the footprint and added portability difficulties may be an issue.

Creative Gigaworks T20: 28 watts (though the box says 22 watts!) $100 list. Creative obscures most specs on these, probably fearing the single 2.5" driver versus the bigger Logitech and the double same size drivers of the Klipsch may convince buyers that the T20 lacks in comparison to its rivals. Truth is the build and design of the T20s makes them sound much better than either the Z10s or the Promedias. These little speakers can put out an awesome amount of clear accurate sound, and they look great and feel very sturdy. Treble in particular is excellent, and the alleged Bass Xport technology must have something to it, as bass is more than adequate. The separate bass and treble knobs may or may not appeal; to some, they offer more control, to others the added circuitry distorts the signal and gives an added area of complexity in the design that may fail. The portability is excellent. The only real problem is that Creative is so secretive about the wattage and driver size, out of unnecessary concern that buyers may avoid getting these because of a few watts or a half inch. These sound great, look good, and the size to sound ratio is impressive. Four stars.

M-Audio AV40s: 40 watts, $200 list. My personal choice, these speakers are much bigger than the other contenders, but the amazing sound and plentiful bass will convince you that you don't need to even think about a sub system. These wooden cabinets are very attractive and sturdy, but are not exactly portable weighing 14 lbs and being quite bulky. (More so than the Klipsch, but they also look nicer and are built better.) Besides the size and weight, the other issue is cost and maybe availability as few vendors sell M-Audio, and the price for the AV40s even with discount will be $50-$65 more than the cost of the other units I looked at. To me the sound and accuracy (no distortion at high volume, lots of accuracy at low volume) of the M-Audios, at both low and high volume, offsets all the problems. Four stars, loses a star because of higher cost and weight. (Note though these are still theoretically portable, far more so than any 2.1 system or even the average boombox...)

Do You Need More Power, a Subwoofer, or More Speakers? Probably not. If you sit at your desk with the speakers a few feet away from you, you do not need much more than 30 or 40 watts for great powerful sound. A subwoofer (unless it costs a lot!) will just screw up crossover freqs, create too much bass, and encourage the mfgr to give you cheapie satellites on the theory that the loud prominent sub will wow the casual listener who will not care that the sats have 1" uni-drivers and are made of cheap light plastic. Unless you need to entertain parties with your PC, you don't need more power or a sub.

As far as surround sound, unless you watch movies on your PC or play a lot of FPS shooters that need positional audio, the added wires and difficulty of positioning the rear and surround sats in the listening environment are too much of a pain for most folks. Plus a decent PC surround sound system is at least $250, meaning a much higher cost than any of these 2.0 systems.

Buying Recommendations: Don't mind big and bulky? Get the M-Audio AV40s. (Note the company has a smaller less powerful variant, the Av20s, but I did not hear these and they do not seem to be widely available so I cannot comment.) Want small and portable, get the Creative T20. The Logitechs unfortunately have no comparative strengths, and the Klipschs are adequate but offer no real advantage over the Creative. If you can find the Promedias significantly discounted, they may be viable.

We all know the first pair of speakers we got for our computers. Probably paid $20 for two satellites and that's it (unless you're an audiophile -- if that's the case you're probably not reading this in the first place).

The sound was tinny and it didn't take much to blast out the cones. What did you expect from a $20 investment?

Well, these aren't your grandpa's cheapo speakers -- just look at the price. Given, you can probably get a decent 5.1 system (no THX, no Dolby) for $99, but you're probably looking for something a little more portable; maybe you've got a laptop, maybe you just hate those powered subwoofers. Well, let me tell you the sound from the ProMedia Ultra 2.0s is INCREDIBLE [for a 2.0 system]. I think we all need to realize the limits of 2.0 systems, since they are all-in-one boxes (subs, midrange, tweeters), but Klipsch stays true to its history and has produced some of the best sounding 2.0 computer boxes I've ever heard. The lows are surprisingly low and the highs are crisp. My favorite thing is that you can turn the master volume on the computer up and still crank up the volume on the speakers -- these things will get VERY loud and can easily drown a bedroom with loud music! And it's not just loud, but it's high quality sound -- as long as you keep the audio source's volume lower than the speaker volume (a general rule), you'll be hard pressed to hear distortion.

The bass can be overwhelming -- sometimes you've got to fiddle around with it, especially if you've got the EQ going on with whatever audio player you use for your computer. I'm used to just jacking the bass all the way up on 2.0 systems, but in this regard the ProMedias really are comparable to a x.1 system in that the bass is true to a powered amplifier. Not as strong, but it reacts in the same way.

Let's face it, most computer speakers are the pits. Most of these sub/sat system comprise of a low quality satellite speaker coupled with a tiny subwoofer with an emphasis on making one note boomy sounds. So now we have a boomy loose sounding sub, with a huge gap in the midrange tones.

So along comes Klipsch with this Ultra 2.0 system. Finally a speaker designed for best accuracy, not volume. A nice change among a whole bunch of mediocre 2.1 and 5.1 entries. The speaker itself is tall and deep, but not too wide, most people won't find it overbearing on their desks. This speaker uses a horn loaded tweeter, and two metallic 2.5 bass/mid drivers. Suffice it to say that you won't be rocking the house with bass with these tiny drivers, but what does come out is pretty even and clean. Just enough that you can hear the bass instead of saying "where's the bass?", and the rest of the sound is quite flat. Klipsch themselves say the frequency response is plus or minus 5 decibels, which is a rare spec among computer speakers. I measured the frequency response and I found that the response started to roll off below 100 Hz, with a hump at 130Hz, but in all, the frequency response is considerably flatter than any of the other speakers you'll find in this price range. I'm satisfied with the bass for the most part keeping in mind the size of the speakers.

The sound is crisp and lively. You can hear all the details, and vocals are nicely voiced, even in tone with good presence. The bass is somewhat limited, but what's there is pretty tight sounding, and not overemphasized just to make a quick sale at the in-store demo. These little speakers are good enough that one can enjoy them even if you are used to much better sound from a home system.

Even though these speakers aren't cheap compared to many other offerings. I'll still give them four stars. Actually a rating of five isn't out of line, but I only give five stars when I know that *everybody* will like them. To get better, you could always buy some real home audio bookshelf speakers, and an amplifier, but then you've spent a lot more. If you don't want to go through that much trouble, these are really a good compromise between most of the junky satellite systems, and a full home setup.

Edit: Since I posted this review a year again, my speakers have been cutting out on the left side and the volume control has gotten very staticky. I have heard other people report this problem so long term longevitity may be an issue.

After reading all the rave reviews on Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 I decided to give them a try and I must say this is one the best sub-$100 SMALL self-powered speakers I have heard without going to separate satellite / subwoofer speakers combo.

LIKES
- Beautiful, musical midrange - instruments and vocals really come alive. On my first listen out of the box within a couple of minutes I can already tell that they sound better than most sub-$100 mini-stereo systems and speakers I have heard.

- Crisp, Airy Treble - thanks to the dedicated tweeters (a rarity), cymbal and violin sound quite refined.

- Low Background noise - I had heard MANY computer speakers /mini-stereo systems that eminated loud HISSING noises when no music were being played. The Promedia Ultra 2.0 has very quiet background noise

- Two separate inputs (mixed) - very convenient!

DISLIKE
- They can be kind of plain looking, especially when sitting next to your spanking new ultra-cool Ipods.

- They can sound "boxy" at times with limited dynamic range - remember they are SMALL speakers and therefore they are constrained by the cabinet size so don't expect them to perform magic in a large room

- No "true" low-bass because of lack of subwoofer and small cabinet size. However, the ProMedia Ultra 2.0 speakers do not sound anemic in the bass department nor does they sound boomy like many small speakers that tend to exagerate upper bass to give a "false" sense of true bass.

- If you want to listen to rap or music that have lots of deep bass I suggest you look for separate satellite / subwoofer combo speakers (personally I also have a Logitech Z2300 and it is awsome in bass - however you have to have room on the floor for its subwoofer)

CONCLUSION
As long as you don't expect chest-pounding bass I think most people will be happy with the sound of Klipsch Promedia Ultra 2.0 speakers - 5 star rating for such small speakers.

I consider myself something of an audiophile, and I can vouch for the tremedous quality of these Klipsch speakers. Since I live in a dorm, I had to purchase a speaker set without a subwoofer. The Klipsch set was a great choice, as it pumps out rich bass for my electronic music without compromising the mid/high-range sweetness of classical or jazz. An all-around great buy. Nothing lacks from these speakers, and the price is highly reasonable. Listen to a pair at an Apple Store to see what I mean.

Also, the two input jacks make it extremely easy to have both an iPod and a computer connected at the same time.

The reason I was looking to buy a nice pair of 2.0 speakers was I recently moved into a second floor apartment in a house. During the daytime I can get away with normal volume on both of my PC's. At night I use headphones through the control pod with volume control to play my games. The problem was I could not listen to music at a level to my liking on my surfing system since my JBL duets do not have a headphone jack. So I needed a pair of 2.0 speakers with a headphone jack. Now I am not an audiophile but I wanted something that sounded nice.

The first thing I liked when I took the Pro Media Ultras out of the box was that they were narrower (3.25") with a bigger depth (6.5") versus the Altec Lansing MX 5020 which was wider (5.2") with a smaller depth (3.0"). A very good move by Klipsch to have the design of the speaker go deeper instead of wider (IMHO). Another thing that I liked was the Klipsch speakers are slightly angled up so the sound comes at you versus the MX 5020 which are flat with the desk and would sound better if you lowered your head to be level with them.

The sound from the Klipsch Ultra's 2.0 is very impressive. They are without a doubt the best PC 2.0 speakers I have ever heard. I have owned plenty of PC speakers as well as my friend's and family's over the past 11 years. The sound is rich and has no issues with filling my room. The bass works well and is strong and tight considering there is no sub. After sampling all varieties of music on them I found they sounded the best with classical, acoustic, and jazz music as another reviewer stated. That is not saying pop and rock sounds bad, just not as rich (deep) as the others formats but this is due to no full sub. Again if you can only have a 2.0 setup, this would be the pair to have.

The games sound excellent as well with the Klipsch speakers. In Counter Strike I could hear the footsteps of someone coming around a corner clean and crisp. I played Onslaught mode in UT2004 and had a blast. These speakers will be awesome for anyone who goes to LAN parties. The people around you will be so jealous with the sound quality coming out of them.

So if you do not have room for a 5.1 or 2.1 setup but want a nice quality set of 2.0 PC speakers. I highly recommend the Klipsch Pro Media Ultra 2.0's.