Here we go
Logitech Z 340 2.1 Surround Computer Speaker Review
Prelude
First of all these speakers were ordered from newegg.com on Wednesday August the 20th. They arrived on Friday the 22nd of august. I would like to thank newegg.com for their speedy service as i DID NOT pay extra for them to rush my order.
Test Machine
The machine these speakers are being auditioned on is my desktop machine. This machine includes;
Abit NF7-S Revision 2.0
OCZ PC3500 EL 2x256MB
XP1800 JIUHB DUT3C @ 10*215
Antec True Power 550
Toshiba SD-R1202 DVD ROM/CDRW
M-Audio Revolution 7.1
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Non Pro Flashed to Pro BIOS
My soundcard has a Driver Level Preset for these speakers. All comments made about sound quality hereafter are with this preset enabled. Also the volume knob on the satelites is turned up 100% and vlume is controlled through windows. For the subwoofer i adjusted it's volume through it's knob on the back of it as i was not able to wire the subwoofer into my sound card seperately as i had hoped to.
Delivery
I received these speakers in their OEM packaging from Logitech. The box packaging, in my opinion, was somewhat shoddy. I opened the top of the box to be greeted by a molded carton material. Standard fare for this type of product but what surprised me was the lack of any type of packing foam or packing peanuts. Beneath the top half of the carton mold were the speakers wrapped in their typical anti static wrap.
The Package contains
1x Subwoofer
2x Satelite Speakers
1x Instructional manual in 5 Languages
1x Cable adapter. The manual says this is for connecting the Z 340's to a console gaming system.
Installation
Setting these speakers up is a snap. Literally a ten minute installation. After unraveling the speaker cables from their zip ties I postioned the satelites on my desktop about 18-20" apart, placed my laptop in between them with about an inch to spare on each side. Next i ran the main cable to the back of my soundcard and then the sub cable down from the satelite to the sub, more on this later
. After that i plugged in the power and began the audition.
MP3 Audio
OK! First order of business is was to put them through your average everday use. I opened Windows Media Player 9.0 and began the MP3 audition. My Favorite MP3's to use are, Evanessence - My Immortal 192Kbit, Yuri Chika - I Cry 192Kbit and to mix it up my Slipknot collection in 128Kbit. Right away I noticed the amount of shear volume these speakers are capable of. They get LOUD! Immediately on the piano intro to "My Immortal" i noticed the sub woofer was blairing a bit. I seemed to fix this by turning the sub volume down a bit on the back of the sub woofer. The rest of the MP3 tests went as well as possible considering the low quality audio source.
CD Audio
For My CD Audio test i used Fear Factory's Obsolete for a heavily distorted rock sample. Also i used LeAnn Rimes' "You Light Up My Life" CD for overall sound quality. This is one of my favorite CD's for testing speakers. It's well recorded and the last 2 tracks are acapella which allows you to hear the full range of the speakers without anything else covering it up. And finally, I used the Method Man Redman Black Out CD for rap/hiphop songs with deep bass and heavy percussion.
The Rock CD sounded wonderful on these speakers. The distortion of the guitars comes in very well giving you that deep mid range ripple effect. Again though, the subwoofer let me down. I was quite depressed that the bass drum didn't come in with the power and accuracy one would expect from a sub woofer. On most speaker setups with a sub woofer you can hear the impact of the drum through the speakers, the satelites or midranges creating the tone of the drum and the subwoofer providing the feeling of impact on the drum. These didn't give me any response of that sort. Instead it sounded as if the subwoofer was just a larger mid range speaker providing the same frequencies as the satelites just emphasizing the lows a bit better.
Next up was the Method Man Redman disc. Same as before, the vocals came in very clear and the mid range bass and misc. sound effects sound very nice but the lower end frequencies just fall out. What is normally deep driving bass became more of a drone. The overall tone in the lower frequencies seemed very distorted anywhere above 50% volume.
Finally we get to the kicker, my sound quality test. Here i was able to bring out the true character of the speakers, well as much as i could with the limited way i had to audtion these. In the begining tracks where there is strong bass guitar and drum intros the speakers really seemed like they were tying. This is what i mean by a well recorded disc. It appeared that there was a little more bass and percussion while playing this disc. Still though the sub woofer represented the song with more of a mid range feel and not much of a deep "sub" like response. Vocals and higher frequencies sound pretty nice on these tracks. i noticed a little bit of distortion in the more extreme highs. I would guess this is the speakers high frequency ceiling combined with the limited RMS power. Skipping ahead to the acapella songs i noticed a bit more of the speakers character. Through the middle parts of the song where she's demonstrating the melodies the speakers sound pretty good. Not much distortion and when she puts some power into her voice the satelites let you know it. When she deviates from the mid range and starts to push into higher notes the aforementioned distortion comes back. The song seems to blair and the tones sound like they're all crashing into each other. In the acapella tracks the lower frequencies aren't bad at all. Probably because her voice is able to deliver the low end power that it would take to show the speakers weakness in the lower frequencies.
DVD Playback
For DVD playback I'm using "The Fast and The Furious" from Universal and "Pearl Harbor" from Touchstone Pictures.
When i first popped in the F&F DVD it went into it's AutoPlay feature and demonstrated the movie's sound track. Even on DVD quality audio the sub woofer let down the heavily hip hop inspired soundtrack. On to the movie. i started with the scene towards the begining with the main character testing his car in the parking lot of the baseball stadium. Here i noticed what is probably the saving grace for this sub woofer. The engine sounds and wind sounds were very well seperated. The sub would demonstrate the engine's rumble very accurately. When time came for the car to spin out the sub again kicked in with the initial impact with the satelites following in accordance with the left to right to left motion until the cr pulled away where you could hear the initial engine rumble from accelerating then the right channel kicking in with the feel of the car distancing itself from the camera postion. Nice!
Next up is Pearl Harbor. The movie i thought would stress the speakers quality a little better. As soon as the movie started up and the intro came in with the menu i noticed here as well that the sub woofer and satelites seemed more alive. The piano on the soundtrack seemed very clear. Probably more so then any other audio test i've been able to throw at it aside from the LeAnn Rimes' CD.
During the rest of the movie the speakers were quite accurate. The vocals and car engines were very clear in tone and the satelites described the source very well. Even during the fight scenes they stayed on top of things. The plane's engines were very loud and rumbley. Not at all distorted despite the volume level i was playing at. The gun fire was very crisp. Not the best i've heard but very nice considering the size of the satelites and the rated power of the system.
Gaming
My gaming tests were conducted using Hitman 2 Silent Assassin from Eidos and Warcraft 3 from Blizzard.
In hitman my sound card fails to play some things accurately so i can't give a very in depth review of how these speakers playback the game as it wouldn't be fair since my soundcard can't provide everything necessary to properly evaluate the speakers. I can say that the music through out the game is very nice. The 340's played back the soundtrack extremely well. Even the surround was very accurate. Bullets being fired at you actually sound like they're whizzing by your head. Gun fire to the left of you will sound to your distant left and so on. Foot steps were brought to life very well with this sub woofer. All in all a good show from the Logitechs.
Warcraft 3 played extremely well. I couldn't notice any particular difference between this setup and my home theatre setup besides the obvious size and power differences inherent to each individual speaker setup. The miscellaneous nature sounds were very clear. At one point i thought i heard an owl outside my window. I later realized, after the game did it 2 more times, that it was the speakers making the sound and not an animal outside. The music sequences in between levels were very strong and, aside from some minor distortion at higher volume levels, seemed to be quite clear.
Summary
All in all i'm pleased with these speakers. The sound quality is definetly lacking in all areas compared to my larger home theatre setup as well as other more expensive speakers i've auditioned. But what's more important here, in my personal opinion, is the value you get with these speakers. The amount of clear sound they were able to produce was pretty surprising given their size and RMS power rating. The MP3 tests were a 10/10. I don't beleive MP3 playback to be a particularly daunting task given the audio setup i have in ym system and the low quality of the files after being compressed from such a strong source. CD audio playback is a bit more important. These 340's fared so-so here. I noticed quite a bit of distortion in alot of songs and in particular the sound quality disc i played seemed muffled at quite a few points. Playing drum and bass on these isn't for the audiophile in you. If volume is what you want from your bass then these are wonderful. If you want shear driving power and low frequency response these aren't the place to look. DVD playback was probably what saved these speakers from disappointment. Playing DVD's on these is great. The surround is quite clear and channel seperation is wonderful. Gaming is really where these shine though. I was very surprised in my Warcraft 3 demonstration as well as a few other games i play and didn't mention because of their lower sound quality abilities.
If you're looking for great value or something good for gaming then these are your meal ticket. These are priced extremely well and are what i would consider great value speakers. The sub woofer is a huge dissappointment and i am working on ways to try to seperate it from the satelites more and try to make it more of a subwoofer and less of a mid range speaker acting as a sub but as for now i can't tell anyone looking for strong bass or Hi fidelity DVD/Multimedia playback to go for these. If this is what you want in a 2.1 PC speaker setup then I would recommend looking at the JBL creature speakers.
Overall Scoring
Satelites 7/10. Great for their size and surprisingly clean sounding
Subwoofer 5/10. Very dissappointing. When someone markets a speaker setup as 2.1 you expect a certain level of bass and character and i felt this was lacking here. If not for the DVD playback this would have been closer to a 3/10
Overall rating. 7/10. Sound quality isn't great but is far from bad. I'd say it's inbetween OEM car audio speakers at the low end and Higher end PC speakers on the high end. These speakers save face by offering a great value. They are definetly not audiophile grade. Not even close. But what you pay for that level of audio is very extreme. Considering i was able to get these for $35 after the $10 rebate i will say that you definetly get your money's worth as this level of sound quality would probably cost quite a bit more in other manufacturer E.G. Klipsch, Monsoon, Altec Lansing etc.
About the reviewer
I wanted to let you all know where i'm coming from with my opinion on this. I consider myself an audiophile. I've been around electronics for longer then i can remember and have devised my opinions on audio from listening to extremely high end car audio equipment as well as top end Home Theatre equipment. Everything I've stated is my personal opinion. If you own these please don't feel that I'm making fun of you. I feel that what sounds good to someone is like saying what smells or tastes good. It's a matter of preference. You are free to have your own opinions on these speakers and me as a reviewer.
