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ProMedia 2.1: how to get noticeably better sound without doing any physical mods


TwoCables

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Would you like to get even better sound from your ProMedia 2.1 speaker system very easily? If so, then here are 6 things that you can do to get noticeably better sound without doing any physical mods. Yes, going the route of doing physical mods can potentially provide amazing results (noticeably better than what you'd get from doing all 6 of these things), but this is for people like me who aren't up to such a task. This is also assuming that you are using your ProMedia 2.1 system as computer speakers. However, some things can obviously apply even if you're not using these as computer speakers, and SOME things can apply to almost any speakers.

 

So, without further delay, let's get started:

 

1. Remove the grills from the satellites

If you don't have any pets or children who might damage the speakers, then remove those grills. You might find as I did that the sound is clearer and the imaging is even a little bit better (and so, tiny details are even easier to hear). The difference may seem subtle to some of you, but some of you may feel that the difference is quite noticeable. What I hear is the lack of having something blocking the sound coming out of the speakers; it's completely uninhibited. It's as clear as it can possibly be. Taking the grills off is even mentioned in Klipsch's FAQ: http://www.klipsch.com/Education/general-faq Look for "Should I play my speakers with the grilles off for better sound?" I looked for this AFTER taking my grills off and discovering that the sound is superior. I had to make sure I wasn't crazy!

 

2. Experiment with the angles of your satellites (which way they are both pointed)

What I'm talking about is getting the best imaging for where you usually sit while allowing for other occasional positions (such as leaning forward) so that you never sacrifice clarity. The idea is to maintain clarity no matter if you're seated comfortably or leaning forward. So, what you do is simple: play music or a movie and listen to it very carefully while you slowly lean closer and closer to your monitor until your nose almost touches it. Now, with your nose still almost touching the monitor, start slowly backing away from your monitor until you are as far back as you ever go in your chair. Did you hear that?

 

What you should have heard is a point where the clarity disappeared while slowly leaning forward, and then reappeared while slowly leaning back. You will also have noticed a change in the imaging. While slowly leaning forward, you should have reached a point where the sound seemed to be behind you, and then while leaning back away from your monitor, you should have noticed a point where the imaging sounded perfect. You might have even noticed while leaning back that the farther back you went, the narrower the stereo image seemed to be. So, you might have also noticed that the sweet spot for the stereo image with your current speaker angles is in front of where you usually are.

 

As you're probably guessing, you're discovering how to adjust your sweet spot and I'm talking about making it as perfect as possible for you. You will still notice that your sweet spot has its own sweet spot. My sweet spot has a very small sweet spot where I wish it could sound like that all the time, but I lean pretty far forward sometimes, like for eating at my desk. So, I can't just optimize my angles for when I'm comfortably reclined in my chair. That'd be nice though! When I began discovering this, I wanted to stay in the best part of the sweet spot (the sweet spot's sweet spot), so I was constantly adjusting my angles depending on how far forward I was leaning, or how far back I was sitting, but that got old very quickly. lol So, I decided to discover the best possible angles for all of my positions: leaning back fully reclined, or leaning forward hovering over my dinner plate. lol So far, so good.

 

It's also good to be dead center and to make sure both speakers are at the same angle. If you want a good way to make sure they're at the exact same angle, then first remove the grills. After that, find the exact center between the satellites and then put your head in between them (or as close to it as possible - yes, you will look silly, I guarantee it). With your head there, look left and right at the woofer or at the tweeter and find a point of reference and stick to it. Like, you'll notice that a certain portion of the tweeter or the woofer isn't visible to you. When you look at the other satellite, you'll notice the same thing, but you might notice that you can see either more or less of the tweeter and the woofer. What you want to do is, while your head is dead center between your satellites, find angles where both of them are identical when you look left and right at them, where you can see equal amounts of the woofers and tweeters. Like, I looked at the dome (the dust cover) of the woofer on one satellite and memorized exactly how much of it I can see and exactly what the visible portion looks like. Then, I looked at the other satellite to compare and adjusted the angles so that both match.

 

Just for the sake of clarity, yes, you will be leaning forward and you'll have your head hovering just above the surface of your desk. It's the only way I have found though to be sure that my angles are identical (it matters to me).

 

All of this stuff is difficult to explain, but if this is important to you, then you'll get it. Otherwise, don't worry too much about it.

 

3. Adjust the Bass level in your operating system

If you don't know how to do this, then ask me and I will do my best to assist you. If you have Windows and you haven't done this yet, then your Bass is still at 50%. While 50% is fine for the Treble (you'll see the Treble when you find the Bass in Windows), it can be way too high for the bass. Depending on your sound card (or your onboard audio chip), you might need to go lower than 20%.

 

I've read lots of posts by people who complain that the ProMedia 2.1's subwoofer is overpowering, even when they turn it down very very low (way lower than the 10 o'clock position).Yeah, so is mine if my bass is set to 50% in Windows. So, after experimenting, I have my bass set to 15% while my subwoofer is at the 10 o'clock position, and with this I don't have any problems; it's perfect. There are times where I'll even set my bass to 10%. You see, adjusting the subwoofer level isn't the same as adjusting the bass. All you're doing with the subwoofer level is you're adjusting its volume (gain), but you're not adjusting its tone. Remember that Tone and Volume (gain) are two different things. Changing the subwoofer level in order to adjust the Bass would be the same as adjusting the master volume in order to adjust the Midrange and Treble. So, experiment.

 

4. Carefully adjust the Graphic Equalizer in your sound card's control panel (or your onboard audio chip's control panel)

Again, if you don't know how to do this, then I can try to help. In general, you will want to have a gentle upward slope from left to right beginning at 2k (or 3k, depending on where yours starts). When I say "beginning at 2K or 3K", I mean that you want 2k or 3k to be increased, but you also don't want it to be higher than any of the others that you will increase to its right. So, 14k or 16k will be the highest - but you want it to begin leveling off at around 8 or 12k. Experiment with different levels. Some sound cards are so good that you don't need to increase the levels very much at all (maybe roughly 3dB at the highest point in the slope) but if you have a very cheap sound card or worse yet if you have onboard audio, then you may need to increase it quite a bit. Of course, your settings may also depend on your hearing as well.

 

When you're done, you should have 1k and everything to the left of 1k being flat, right at 0dB. 2k or 3k should be dead center between where 1k and 4k or 6k are (again, 4k or 6k depending on what frequencies you have available to you), and 4k or 6k should be centered between where 2k or 3k and 8k or 12k are. 8k and 12k and up can all be the same (leveled off at the top of this "hill"). So, it's just a curve, like a hill that slops up and levels off at the top.

 

Of course, your best results might come from careful experimentation: take each frequency all the way up and then all the way down, one frequency at a time (don't increase and decrease them too fast because you want to hear the range as well).This will show you the sonic signature of each, thereby making it easier to choose the right level for you. After you're done listening to each frequency, find different ways of combining them until you're satisfied. I'd bet that you'd end up with an upward curve that begins with 2k or 3k being the first one that's increased in the curve, and I'd bet everything from 1k on down to the left in the lower frequencies will be flat. Well, you might enjoy increasing frequencies at around 60Hz. This is the typical frequency of a rock bass drum.

 

Be careful though because Graphic Equalizers are typically the cause for "Listener's Fatigue". So, try to find ways to do "A/B" comparisons between flat (no EQ) and your new EQ settings. Aim for the lowest levels that satisfy you. Sometimes, being new to using a Graphic Equalizer can result in using levels that are way too high because the sound is new and exciting. Be aware of that.

 

5. If your media player(s) of choice has a built-in Graphic Equalizer, then take advantage of it (but only if you're not already using another Graphic Equalizer, like the one discussed above)

Basically, if you can't find a Graphic Equalizer anywhere in any special software that is for your sound card or your onboard audio, then at least use any kind of built-in Graphic Equalizer in your media player(s) of choice. Of course, you might still have one available to you for your sound card or onboard audio as a download from the manufacturer's website, or even on an installation CD that came with your sound card or your motherboard (or your computer).

 

Warning: if you're already using the 'global' Graphic Equalizer for your sound card or onboard audio (which is what I talked about in #4 above), then don't use the built-in Graphic Equalizer of your media player because it will add to whatever your 'global' Graphic Equalizer is set to (and vice versa).

 

Anyway, speaking of sound cards, if you have a good Creative "X-Fi" sound card (especially the Titanium HD) or a very good "Sound Blaster" sound card (especially the Z or the Zx), then you should have the option of changing from "Entertainment Mode" in the Console Launcher over to Audio Creation Mode. Audio Creation Mode has an option called "Bit-Matched Playback". When playing movies or music in a media player that has its own Graphic Equalizer, use Audio Creation Mode with Bit-Matched Playback enabled and then adjust the Graphic Equalizer in your media player(s) of choice until you like the sound. Doing it this way gives you a superior sound that's truer to the original. For things like YouTube though, Entertainment Mode is the way to go since YouTube doesn't have its own Graphic Equalizer. Some people even prefer Game Mode general audio like that, but I don't.

 

6. Use Winamp, and use the Maiko WASAPI plug-in and maybe even configure it for Exclusive Mode

Seriously. I have tried many other free media players for my music with a WASAPI plug-in, and none of them can provide me with the same level of fidelity with Winamp and the Maiko WASAPI plug-in - at least not to my ears! Some of them come very close, but Winamp with the Maiko WASAPI plug-in just sounds like the audio stream is completely unhindered or something.

 

So, why configure it for Exclusive Mode? I have two reasons for that:

  1. To my ears, there's a very slight improvement in audio quality over Shared Mode (shared mode is when Exclusive Mode isn't enabled). However, for some of my music, this difference is completely inaudible. Still, the fact that I have noticed a difference here and there makes me leave it enabled.
  2. If it's configured the way I describe below, all other audio is disabled while Winamp is either playing your music, or while it's paused.This means that you won't hear distracting sounds that your computer might play while you're listening to your music. You can configure it to NOT do this, but then you'd have to close Winamp just to free up your audio device (like your sound card).

Of course, Exclusive Mode shouldn't be enabled if you need to be able to hear other sounds (like a video game) while Winamp is playing your music.

 

Download link for Winamp: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=374929#download

 

Download link for the Maiko WASAPI plug-in: http://maiko.elementfx.com/software/out_maiko.zip ( source)

 

Installation: after downloading out_maiko.zip, locate it and open it and then extract the file that's inside (out_maiko.dll) to your Winamp plugins folder. Mine is C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\Plugins That's it. Once out_maiko.dll is in that folder, this plug-in is installed. So as you can see, you're not really "installing" it, per se.

 

Configuration:

  1. Open the Winamp Preferences (Ctrl+P while looking at Winamp for quick access)
  2. On the left side, click "Playback"
  3. Enable "Allow 24-bit"

You can also enable "Allow surround sound" and I would also recommend enabling "Use dither". I would also make sure Playback Thread Priority is all the way up.

 

How to enable Exclusive Mode:

  1. Open the Winamp Preferences (Ctrl+P while looking at Winamp for quick access)
  2. On the left side, scroll down to Plug-ins and select "Output"
  3. On the right-side, double-click Maiko WASAPI Output 0.53.test.04
  4. Make sure your sound output device (such as a sound card)
  5. Switch to the Exclusive tabv
  6. Enable EVERYTHING (check all of the boxes)
  7. Close the window
  8. Click Close on the Winamp Preferences window
  9. You're done.

Note: After enabling Exclusive Mode, Winamp's volume control is disabled. You can go back to the Exclusive tab to disable the option that disables volume control, but as it says, disabling the volume control is required to enable a bit-matched playback, and we want bit-matched playback for the best audio quality. Or, at least to hear the source exactly as it is without any alterations to its bits. Again though, Exclusive Mode means that no other sound can play while Winamp is either playing your music or has it paused. The only way for other sounds to play is to Stop the music, or close Winamp during playback.

 

Also note: before you play anything in Exclusive Mode, be cautious because the volume could be too loud for you. The reason for it is, with the volume control disabled, Winamp is no longer able to limit the source's volume which means it's at the source's full volume. This means the only way you can limit the volume now is by using other volume controls at your disposal.

 

Finally: be sure to configure Winamp's built-in Graphic EQ as needed (experiment). Speaking of which, go back to Winamp's Preferences and click "Playback" on the left side (it's closer to the top). In there, select the Equalizer tab and make sure "Constant-Q EQ" and "ISO Standard frequency bands" are both selected. The other two result in an inferior sound quality.

 

Configuring the Graphic EQ: don't increase the 1k level (go ahead and increase it to hear why), but you can increase 2k and up. If you want a little bass boost, then start with 63 Hz first, and then follow it with 125. Play with 31.5 too. 31.5 will increase the depth of the bass if the source has any frequencies this low in it.

 

7. Last, but certainly not least: if you have the older ProMedia 2.1 speaker system that has the speaker wires that you plug into the back of the satellites, then upgrade your stock speaker wires to these:

 

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1, Premium Speaker Wires, Custom Made Pair 10'

 

The seller made these wires using a spool of Monster XP wire: http://www.monsterproducts.com/Monster_XP_Clear_Jacket_Compact_Speaker_Cable

 

More details here: http://wwv.crutchfield.com/p_119XPMS202/Monster-XP-20-feet.html

 

They used these plugs: http://www.rean-connectors.com/en/products/35-mm-plugs/nys226bg

 

If you do some looking around on eBay for other wires, then you may also find the wires below, but don't buy them:

 

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 Premium Gold 16ga Speaker wires, Cables, Professional, Pair

 

The seller used a spool of speaker wires that say "Audiopipe HWY 836 16 Gauge Speaker Wire" on the jacket. I can't find them on the internet. They used the same Rean plugs.

 

I upgraded to these first and so did a new friend of mine here on the forums, and we both noticed the same differences (we both like them quite a bit). Here's the thread:

 

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/155443-old-promedia-212002-versus-new-promedia-212015-old-has-much-better-sound/

 

Here's where you can begin reading what he thinks of his new speaker cables:

 

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/155443-old-promedia-212002-versus-new-promedia-212015-old-has-much-better-sound/page-2#entry1850301

 

A couple of days after owning these, I happened to notice in the photo of the Monster wires that the winding is quite superior to these Audiopipe wires. I couldn't rest until I tried them out to see if this resulted in a superior sound, so I bought them. I was pleasantly surprised to find that these wires are indeed superior, but not just in sound. Physically speaking, they are much thicker, heavier, and the jacket's quality is quite a bit superior. Not only that, but the winding is unique: the negative wire is wound clockwise while the positive wire is wound counter-clockwise.

 

I compared the thickness using the bare ends, and I'd say that the Monster wires are at least twice as thick, if not thicker. Based on what I'm seeing, I'd say that those Audiopipe wires are probably about 20 AWG because they're also not that much thicker than the stock wires, which are 22 AWG. So, I think the reason why the Audipipe wires provided a superior audio quality is, the stock wires are just 22 AWG aluminum in a cheap jacket while the Audipipe wires are probably copper in a jacket that's higher in quality. They don't compare to the Monster wires though. Omg. Not only are the Monster wires physically quite superior to the Audipipe wires, the sound I get with them is a little bit better as well. So, don't waste your money on those Audiopipe wires!

 

 

Anyway, this is my complete list of all the different ways that I know of to get noticeably better sound from the ProMedia 2.1 system without performing any physical modifications (and obviously, some of these things can apply no matter what computer speakers you have).

 

So yeah, enjoy your better sound, and let me know what your results are and what you did!

 

Also, if you have any tips or tricks to add, then please post them and I'll consider adding them to this list.

Edited by TwoCables
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  • 3 years later...

Hello,

First off thank you for all the useful info...I recently purchased a Promedia 2.1 system because I have heard alot of good things...I decided to do the cable upgrade mentioned above the problem being that the monster XP cable gauge is too thick to fit into the REAN 3.5 mm plug shells...I was wondering if you might be able to shed some light on this?

I should note that I did purchase the navajo color version compact cable and not the clear version mentioned above but otherwise the specs are the same

Edited by Oscare30
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  • 2 years later...

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