Anthony Lipari

Finally my dreams have come true, I have the Logitech Z5500’s! My old speakers were the Logitech z640’s which is the 5.1 setup but about 1 fifth the size of the 5500’s. The z640’s were amazing when I first bought them 6 years ago, they had a good run and pumped out some amazing sound for the time I had them. They’re still in good condition so I’ve put hooked them up to Mum’s computer downstairs.

Now, the Z5500’s set me back $499 AUD from Austin Computers in Osborne Park. It was a struggle to carry the huge box to the car and it was pretty heavy as well. When I got home, opening the box was pretty easy, ripping off the plastic for each speaker and set of cables, then spreading everything out on the pool table so that I could see all the parts. Then came the sub, my god! This thing is even bigger than I imagined it would be. The 10 inch sub shat all over the old 6 inch sub from the z640’s. It’s so big that I have to have my legs towards the left side of the desk because it takes up too much room on the right.

It took a while to set it all up because the satellites don’t have a direct RCA cable like they do on the z640’s, these had the two black and red wires that you need to clip onto the satellite, then into the sub. The audio jacks are on a triple binded cable that runs from the control centre to the back of the computer. With my old setup I didn’t have 5.1 sound because I used an adapter that joined the front and rear speakers into one socket, so that the same sound would come out of all speakers as I don’t have a wall behind me to mount the rear speakers on. At the moment as you can see from the photo I have just put the rear speakers on the far sides of the desk, and with 5.1 setup, even though the speakers aren’t behind me, it still sounds amazing!

The first thing I did was crank out some tunes, straight to some FLAC Trance to test out the bass. And I was actually disappointed at first because the bass was really low, even though I had it set to 100% from the control panel. I kept playing different songs to see if the bass would kick up, but it still didn’t. DEVO! What the hell is going on?! Where’s the insane bass? I then looked through my audio software control panel to see what was going on, and after a while mucking around with settings I could see that “Optimize Bass Routing” was enabled, and when I unchecked it, the bass KICKED IN! NOW WE’RE COOKING WITH GAS! Yeeeah that’s what I’m talkin about, there it is! The monster bass kicked in and sent shivers down my spine. I went from song to song, genre to genre, through hardstyle, dance, trance, eletro, progressive, R&B, even screamo. Everything sounds so good. I’ve always liked R&B, but never really been a big fan of it, but now I just can’t stop playing it. 50cent and akon tunes with the big bassey beats, omg they sound so good like I’m in a club or something. It sounds the way it’s meant to be heard. 

I even cranked out some games like Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament 3, and with this bass on full bolt and the speakers at a decent level, the gunshots sound so realistic. It really changes the gaming environment majorly, I just can’t play anything in headphones anymore! The clarity of the satellites are breathtaking also, no matter how loud you put this thing, the satellites keep up with the bass and the sound never get’s distorted like they did on the old z640’s. Whenever a good song came on I always wanted to crank it that little bit extra, but it didn’t actually add anymore bass because it was already maxed out, and it just turned the satellites up even more, but just went all distorted and sounded a bit shithouse! But the Z5500’s, they take anything you throw at them. I’ll have to tell you, at first I didn’t think they would be worth the money, but I’ve seen these speakers everywhere at the shops like Harvey Norman, Target, Myer all for $799AUD, and only at Austin Computers were they $500, so really it was a bargain. But man, I’d say even $800 is worth it. I’m sending my parents insane now. The doors are constantly shut now, and when my parent’s arent home, faaark. Crank it non stop and full bolt! The neighbours would hate me but the builders wouldn’t mind it I think.

So in conclusion, if you want some monster speakers, you can’t get any better value for money than the Z5500’s. They will amaze you! Click on the images to see the enlarged versions. You can buy these speakers from Amazon through the product link for extremely cheap!