Here at the Ld, we try not to gush about something no matter how much we like it. Within about 15 seconds from when we first connected the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 Powered Speakers, we knew we were going to have trouble sounding neutral. These things, for lack of a better word, rock. In fact, they sound so good we can’t refer to them as PC Speakers, because it would almost be insulting.
I hooked up the speakers to my laptop, a Dell Latitude D800 which generally does a good job with its audio outputs. Over the course of several hours, I listened to:
- 128Kbps (lousy) MP3s.
- 384Kbps MP3s
- Uncompressed CD audio
- A DVD movie
- Rhapsody streaming radio
Virtually all sounded great. Unbelievable great. Almost like my home audio system great. Disconnecting them from my laptop and returning to the tinny noise of the internal speakers was a physically painful process.
Next I connected them to:
- a Rio Karma
- my cheap Sony AM/FM sports walkman
- a TechnOTunes MP3 Watch
- a DirecTV set-top box
With the exception of the set-top, everything sounded better than they did before. The sound is fundamentally richer and fuller. Since the DirecTV was formerly connected to my regular stereo, I am reluctant to say the Klipsch unit beat own my Definitives, but it was not as far apart as I expected. Since this isn’t the real use scenario, I’ll go back to calling them great.
And now for the inevitable but. But, one of the above tests sounded much much worse. The 128Kbps MP3s. They sounded atrocious. Now, for the audiophiles who are reading this, you are probably nodding your head, maybe even telling a friend ‘I told you so!’ Low-bitrate music (unfortunately, the default settings for many CD ripping software, and yet another reason why you should contact dmp3 to rip your CDs) sounds bad when you can really hear it. Most PC speakers, you just can’t hear it. Well, the Klipsch speakers are good enough that you just aren’t allowed to play bad music through them. Sorry.
If you are in an environment where you can use powered speakers, you deserve it to yourself to own these. They are only $99 on Amazon!
Seriously, these go to 11.