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I recently decided to upgrade my PC sound "system" from my going-on-10-years-old Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000, a 4.1 setup which I had been using in a 2.1 configuration with only the front satellites. A friend of mine has owned the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 for the past several years, and I'd always liked how they sounded when I was over, so last Tuesday I went to Best Buy and picked up a set. Wouldn't you know it, on Wednesday the [H] posts up their review of the Corsair SP2500. Being a longtime Corsair fan, and since the review was so favorable, I decided to pick up a set from Fry's and do a side by side comparison. Here is that review, as promised in the Corsair thread.
Disclaimer
This review is a subjective review, and is only meant to explain my personal observations about these speakers. Your listening conditions, taste in music (feel free to make fun of mine
), and EQ balance preferences are likely very different from mine and will affect which one is best for you.
TL;DR
Both have very good bass performance. If you like to crank your sound up LOUD, the Corsairs are far and away your best choice. If, however, you tend to listen at low to moderate volumes, it's a little fuzzier depending on what kind of music you listen to. Music that involves a lot of mid frequencies (2kHz - 4kHz), especially female vocals, strongly favor the Klipsch; music that involves a lot of high frequencies (8kHz+) or lots of instruments at the same time favor the Corsairs.
Overall, the Klipsch tend to sound a little damped, like music being performed in a well insulated room, while the Corsairs sound bright but slightly hollow, with a weird resonance that can sometimes be harsh. This mostly matches what they found in the 5 speaker roundup thread (just read the first post, ignore the rest of the noise in that thread). For myself, while I'm not 100% happy with the Klipsch, the Corsairs will be getting returned this weekend; they simply aren't $100+ better than the Klipsch.
The Control Pod
Before I get started on the detailed review, I would like to point out some issues with the control pod that I experienced. The first, which I'm very surprised wasn't mentioned in the review, is that the volume settings are discrete, meaning that you can step between two volume levels but not anywhere in between. This contrasts with the Klipsch, which have true analog volume knobs which let you fine tune the volume however you like.
The other issue I encountered is that the dial on the control pod is VERY inconsistent. Sometimes a rotation of a quarter turn will only budge the volume by 1 bar, while other times just barely touching it will change it by as much as 2 bars. Even going up one bar and back down one bar can require different amounts of rotation right then left. Maybe I have a bad sensor, or maybe this can be fixed in firmware, but the end result is that you can never be sure how much you will change the volume by when turning the knob, which makes it impossible to intuitively change the volume with a twist.
Hissssss
Another issue I noticed with the Corsairs is that even with the volume turned completely down to 0 bars, and even muted, there is a light hiss from the speakers, though granted you have to be pretty close and in a quiet room to hear it. The Klipsch have no audible hiss until almost 90% of full volume. I can't help but think that this may be contributing to what I hear as the "weird resonance" in my listening.
Setup
As I listen to a lot of music while working or gaming on my computer, testing was done solely using mp3s that were encoded myself from original CDs or purchased from AmazonMP3 and iTunes. Most are VBR encoded using winLAME with High/Quality 0/Standard, the rest are 256kbps fixed. Playback was using Winamp 5.601 on Windows 7 Pro x64.
The speakers were driven by an ASUS Xonar DX (pci-e) using analog out. A Y-splitter was used to drive both speakers simultaneously so that I could switch between them on demand between and during songs. I also did limited testing with one speaker from each set active (Klipsch R, Corsair L) together, adjusting L/R balance back and forth.
Audio Center was configured as 2 Channels, PCM 44.1KHz, 2 Speakers, volume at 50%, all other options disabled (no Effect, KARAOKE off, FlexBass off, AEC disabled, VocalFX disabled, no DSP Mode).
In the Corsair control pod menu, program was set to NONE and EQ was set to REFERENCE. The AUX1 input on the subwoofer was used.
I tried to match volume and subwoofer levels as best I could, at my normal listening volume - this resulted in the following:
Klipsch: subwoofer knob 45 degrees CW, volume knob 90 degrees CW.
Corsair: subwoofer set to 13 bars, volume set to 11 bars.
Since that may be a little unclear, I've made these two images to illustrate:
The speakers were positioned on either side of my monitor - from the middle of one speaker to the middle of the other this measured 28", and from the monitor front to my body this measured 30". Speakers were turned inwards to face me squarely. The built-in stands on the Klipsch were used, and the included stands for the Corsair were used to point them up slightly.
Using this webpage to test my hearing on both sets of speakers, I can hear the 17kHz tone clearly, can barely hear the 18kHz tone, and cannot hear the 19kHz tone at all even with the volume at full. I will take it on faith that both speakers can actually play a 19kHz tone.
The Review
To elaborate on what I said in the TL;DR above, music that involves a lot of mid frequencies and female vocals strongly favor the Klipsch. They just sounded more natural and pleasing to my ear. On the Corsairs such songs tended to be a little harsh and have a strange resonance that I disliked. The Corsairs had a definite advantage in high frequencies though, playing them clearly, while the Klipsch tended to have a hard time making them heard.
In terms of overall characteristics, the Klipsch sound damped or muted as compared to the Corsairs. The Corsairs are brighter, with a stronger treble and seem to reproduce some frequencies more loudly which, while making everything distinct and easy to hear, also had the effect of making some songs sound like a TV commercial. Prolonged listening (in the two-hour+ range) was a little fatiguing.
For bass reproduction, while both speakers were excellent, I found the Corsairs to be better in some situations: where the Klipsch can be "thumpy", the Corsairs tend to be a little smoother and more pleasant. In my opinion this is probably due to the fact that the Klipsch satellites will still play some low frequency sounds even with the subwoofer disabled, while the Corsairs seem to "do the right thing" with the subwoofer turned down.
Overall, I preferred the Klipsch over the Corsairs. This isn't because they are so much better than the Corsairs, but rather because they are less bad at doing the things I care about. The sonic characteristics of the Corsairs being somewhat brighter and slightly hollow sounding overall, and the distinct harshness and weird resonance with female vocals, made them unsuitable for my needs. These points, combined with the over $100 price difference, made it an easy decision to return them.
Song Testing
The first song that I tried was Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings', performed by the New York Philharmonic. I have heard this performed live by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall (sitting in the Loge level section G) and in my opinion the Klipsch were able to reproduce this most closely to that experience. This test also first exposed the mid range weakness of the Corsairs, although I hadn't figured it out at this point.
The next song I tried was 'Dreams on Fire' from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. This song actually sounded pretty good on the Corsairs, due to the distinctness of each instrument and the vocals, but again the resonance poked its nose in and slightly spoiled an otherwise excellent performance.
At this point I began to detect the Corsair's weakness in vocals, so the next song I tried was Sainkho's 'Tanola Nomads'. The majority of the female vocals in this song are in the 1kHz to 4kHz range, so it really highlighted the issue by being a worst case test for the Corsairs.
Another difference I had noticed was that the Corsairs did tend to have better clarity when lots of instruments were playing, so I loaded up Ott's 'Jack's Cheese and Bread Snack'. Not only does this song have a lot of things going on at once, it also has a large amount of audio in the 8kHz and even 16kHz+ range. Unsurprisingly, the Corsairs did very well on this song. On the Klipsch the highest frequencies were slightly clipped and parts of the song sounded like some of the instruments were muted.
At this point, having played the above songs repeatedly, I was pretty sure I had made up my mind. Here are some other songs I tested, in no particular order, but they only served to reinforce the key points mentioned above:
Magna Canta - Kyrie
Eluvium - Prelude For Time Feelers
William Orbit - Water from a Vine Leaf
Balligomingo -Beyond, Wild Butterfly
009 Sound System - Dreamscape, Killer with a Thousand Faces
Alexander Popov - Vapour Trails (Original Mix)
Delerium - Terra Firma
The American Dollar - Anything You Synthesize
The XX - Intro
Robotaki - Falling from Heaven
Disclaimer
This review is a subjective review, and is only meant to explain my personal observations about these speakers. Your listening conditions, taste in music (feel free to make fun of mine
), and EQ balance preferences are likely very different from mine and will affect which one is best for you.TL;DR
Both have very good bass performance. If you like to crank your sound up LOUD, the Corsairs are far and away your best choice. If, however, you tend to listen at low to moderate volumes, it's a little fuzzier depending on what kind of music you listen to. Music that involves a lot of mid frequencies (2kHz - 4kHz), especially female vocals, strongly favor the Klipsch; music that involves a lot of high frequencies (8kHz+) or lots of instruments at the same time favor the Corsairs.
Overall, the Klipsch tend to sound a little damped, like music being performed in a well insulated room, while the Corsairs sound bright but slightly hollow, with a weird resonance that can sometimes be harsh. This mostly matches what they found in the 5 speaker roundup thread (just read the first post, ignore the rest of the noise in that thread). For myself, while I'm not 100% happy with the Klipsch, the Corsairs will be getting returned this weekend; they simply aren't $100+ better than the Klipsch.
The Control Pod
Before I get started on the detailed review, I would like to point out some issues with the control pod that I experienced. The first, which I'm very surprised wasn't mentioned in the review, is that the volume settings are discrete, meaning that you can step between two volume levels but not anywhere in between. This contrasts with the Klipsch, which have true analog volume knobs which let you fine tune the volume however you like.
The other issue I encountered is that the dial on the control pod is VERY inconsistent. Sometimes a rotation of a quarter turn will only budge the volume by 1 bar, while other times just barely touching it will change it by as much as 2 bars. Even going up one bar and back down one bar can require different amounts of rotation right then left. Maybe I have a bad sensor, or maybe this can be fixed in firmware, but the end result is that you can never be sure how much you will change the volume by when turning the knob, which makes it impossible to intuitively change the volume with a twist.
Hissssss
Another issue I noticed with the Corsairs is that even with the volume turned completely down to 0 bars, and even muted, there is a light hiss from the speakers, though granted you have to be pretty close and in a quiet room to hear it. The Klipsch have no audible hiss until almost 90% of full volume. I can't help but think that this may be contributing to what I hear as the "weird resonance" in my listening.
Setup
As I listen to a lot of music while working or gaming on my computer, testing was done solely using mp3s that were encoded myself from original CDs or purchased from AmazonMP3 and iTunes. Most are VBR encoded using winLAME with High/Quality 0/Standard, the rest are 256kbps fixed. Playback was using Winamp 5.601 on Windows 7 Pro x64.
The speakers were driven by an ASUS Xonar DX (pci-e) using analog out. A Y-splitter was used to drive both speakers simultaneously so that I could switch between them on demand between and during songs. I also did limited testing with one speaker from each set active (Klipsch R, Corsair L) together, adjusting L/R balance back and forth.
Audio Center was configured as 2 Channels, PCM 44.1KHz, 2 Speakers, volume at 50%, all other options disabled (no Effect, KARAOKE off, FlexBass off, AEC disabled, VocalFX disabled, no DSP Mode).
In the Corsair control pod menu, program was set to NONE and EQ was set to REFERENCE. The AUX1 input on the subwoofer was used.
I tried to match volume and subwoofer levels as best I could, at my normal listening volume - this resulted in the following:
Klipsch: subwoofer knob 45 degrees CW, volume knob 90 degrees CW.
Corsair: subwoofer set to 13 bars, volume set to 11 bars.
Since that may be a little unclear, I've made these two images to illustrate:
The speakers were positioned on either side of my monitor - from the middle of one speaker to the middle of the other this measured 28", and from the monitor front to my body this measured 30". Speakers were turned inwards to face me squarely. The built-in stands on the Klipsch were used, and the included stands for the Corsair were used to point them up slightly.
Using this webpage to test my hearing on both sets of speakers, I can hear the 17kHz tone clearly, can barely hear the 18kHz tone, and cannot hear the 19kHz tone at all even with the volume at full. I will take it on faith that both speakers can actually play a 19kHz tone.
The Review
To elaborate on what I said in the TL;DR above, music that involves a lot of mid frequencies and female vocals strongly favor the Klipsch. They just sounded more natural and pleasing to my ear. On the Corsairs such songs tended to be a little harsh and have a strange resonance that I disliked. The Corsairs had a definite advantage in high frequencies though, playing them clearly, while the Klipsch tended to have a hard time making them heard.
In terms of overall characteristics, the Klipsch sound damped or muted as compared to the Corsairs. The Corsairs are brighter, with a stronger treble and seem to reproduce some frequencies more loudly which, while making everything distinct and easy to hear, also had the effect of making some songs sound like a TV commercial. Prolonged listening (in the two-hour+ range) was a little fatiguing.
For bass reproduction, while both speakers were excellent, I found the Corsairs to be better in some situations: where the Klipsch can be "thumpy", the Corsairs tend to be a little smoother and more pleasant. In my opinion this is probably due to the fact that the Klipsch satellites will still play some low frequency sounds even with the subwoofer disabled, while the Corsairs seem to "do the right thing" with the subwoofer turned down.
Overall, I preferred the Klipsch over the Corsairs. This isn't because they are so much better than the Corsairs, but rather because they are less bad at doing the things I care about. The sonic characteristics of the Corsairs being somewhat brighter and slightly hollow sounding overall, and the distinct harshness and weird resonance with female vocals, made them unsuitable for my needs. These points, combined with the over $100 price difference, made it an easy decision to return them.
Song Testing
The first song that I tried was Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings', performed by the New York Philharmonic. I have heard this performed live by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall (sitting in the Loge level section G) and in my opinion the Klipsch were able to reproduce this most closely to that experience. This test also first exposed the mid range weakness of the Corsairs, although I hadn't figured it out at this point.
The next song I tried was 'Dreams on Fire' from the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack. This song actually sounded pretty good on the Corsairs, due to the distinctness of each instrument and the vocals, but again the resonance poked its nose in and slightly spoiled an otherwise excellent performance.
At this point I began to detect the Corsair's weakness in vocals, so the next song I tried was Sainkho's 'Tanola Nomads'. The majority of the female vocals in this song are in the 1kHz to 4kHz range, so it really highlighted the issue by being a worst case test for the Corsairs.
Another difference I had noticed was that the Corsairs did tend to have better clarity when lots of instruments were playing, so I loaded up Ott's 'Jack's Cheese and Bread Snack'. Not only does this song have a lot of things going on at once, it also has a large amount of audio in the 8kHz and even 16kHz+ range. Unsurprisingly, the Corsairs did very well on this song. On the Klipsch the highest frequencies were slightly clipped and parts of the song sounded like some of the instruments were muted.
At this point, having played the above songs repeatedly, I was pretty sure I had made up my mind. Here are some other songs I tested, in no particular order, but they only served to reinforce the key points mentioned above:
Magna Canta - Kyrie
Eluvium - Prelude For Time Feelers
William Orbit - Water from a Vine Leaf
Balligomingo -Beyond, Wild Butterfly
009 Sound System - Dreamscape, Killer with a Thousand Faces
Alexander Popov - Vapour Trails (Original Mix)
Delerium - Terra Firma
The American Dollar - Anything You Synthesize
The XX - Intro
Robotaki - Falling from Heaven
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