Edifier S5.1 240W Speaker System

Reviews: Multimedia

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Nicholas Hart
Kurtis
Edifier
Aug. 28, 2004

<< Previous

Next >>

Setup

Setup of these speakers isn't terribly difficult, but don't expect much help from Edifier here. Their manual does a perfectly acceptable job of explaining things, and they are just speakers after all, but the wires are not labeled and the color-coding of the RCA-1/8" adapters only cause problems. The Edifier S5.1 speakers use a ribbon-type cable with 6 RCA connectors on each end. The connectors are red and white to indicate left or right and you use adapters to change the connection from RCA to 1/8" PC connectors. These adapters, sadly, are not color-coded to match the appropriate outputs from the sound card. There is green for the front output, but the other two are blue and yellow; with blue typically signifying line-in and yellow not something you usually see. Not that having the standard green, black and orange connectors will help too much as the other ends still aren't labeled or color-coded for plugging into the subwoofer. Just remember that green on the sound card is for front speakers, black for rear (surround) speakers and orange is for center/subwoofer. Anyway, these are speakers not rocket science and with the help of your audio solution's control application, you should be able to figure it out. I will note that with my onboard sound, it was necessary to reverse the center/subwoofer channel in the CMedia software.

Connections from the subwoofer to the speakers are made with bare-wire cables and spring-loaded clamping terminals. There are two long cables and three shorter cables. While the cables themselves are nothing fancy, one of the pair has a slight tint to the jacket to aid in spotting positive versus negative and they are plenty beefy to help prevent any signal loss. As the center speaker is the only odd man of the bunch, you don't have to worry about placement of the other speakers; just plug in and go.

Testing

The first thing I did after getting these speakers setup properly was fire up iTunes and play "Hunter' by Bjork. If you are familiar with this song then you know that the bass can be downright punishing when turned up; I felt it an appropriate test for a subwoofer of this size. Unfortunately the bass was practically non-existent. I tried turning up the subwoofer and bass levels on the sub itself but the change was marginal. I'm using the onboard sound of the LanParty Pro875B motherboard and I have the CMedia control panel application installed so I went in there and turned on the "Bass boost' option and immediately I could feel the sub. Still this is kind of an odd thing to do when you get a new set of speakers. I had never used a 5.1 speaker set with this board before so I decided to try a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 card instead of the onboard to try and reproduce my problem. Sure enough, still no bass until I go into the Creative Mixer and muck with the bass settings. I found that, with a default level of 50%, that if I set the level to 75% things sound great and I can fine tune things with the controls on the sub itself. Still skeptical of the lack of bass, I took my system into work where we have a variety of other speaker systems. I hooked up four other speaker sets: Creative Gigaworks S750, Logitech Z640, Creative Inspire T7700 (minus the extra two side speakers of course) and Creative's Inspire 5300. While each of these speakers had varying levels of bass output, they each at least had bass to output.

Confident that my system was not the cause and that the subwoofer was indeed at fault, I contacted Edifier about the issue. Pleasantly, the phone number listed on Edifier's site got me in touch almost immediately with a real person. While not a tech support line, I was told to send him an email and he would forward it on to an engineer and indeed, within a few hours of my email I had a response. During this time, our illustrious editor Kurtis had also been in touch with Edifier and I was treated with a phone call from one of their R&D Engineers. Aside from a few technical topics that I was unable to fully comprehend, he told me that the target market for these systems had always been Asia and Europe who, unlike their American counterparts, didn't tend to like as much bass in their music. As such, they were sent from the factory with the levels set rather conservatively but he assured me the sub was capable of some truly powerful bass. Access to these factory presets is granted through a maintenance code entered into the remote (which sadly I was unable to come by) and not a potentiometer on the amp itself.

So that answer was somewhat disappointing but I was also told that Edifier was considering setting up their North-American bound speaker sets with a higher default sub level. At the same time, after having set the Creative Mixer bass level up, the bass was quite acceptable and I conducted all my testing with it set at the aforementioned 75% level. I've had these speakers for a few weeks now and I must say the subwoofer really is quite capable of shaking the room.

<< Previous

Page 3 of 5

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction & The Packages
Page 2: Taking a Closer Look
Page 3: Setup & Testing
Page 4: Testing Continued...
Page 5: Conclusion

Subscribe to Speakers [more info]

Add Comment

5 User Comments

1 - Posted by Rich on August 30, 2004 - 6:59 am

So Nick, how pissed are the neighbors??

2 - Posted by Nick on August 31, 2004 - 1:28 pm

HAHAHAH

I don't live in an apartment so that certainly helps. And then there is the fact that these things dont thump nearly as powerfully as Z680s or Gigaworks subs do. It is funny tho to listen at normal sound volumes and have the wife come in from the kitchen and ask about the thumping sound.

3 - Posted by Rich on August 31, 2004 - 1:41 pm

She's not familiar with that sound yet?????? For shame! :P

4 - Posted by Kerplunk on September 2, 2004 - 1:48 am

Thx for the review. i'll buy a 5.1 speaker system, but im not sure what to buy, edifier s5.1 or logitech z-680... what do you recommend me to buy?

Thanks a lot.

5 - Posted by Kerplunk on September 2, 2004 - 2:43 pm

thx for the reply Kurtis. Reading this review, there said that you may put some code with the remote control to "give more power" to the subwoofer.

How do i get this code?

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.