My Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Ultra’s arrived today. I bought them through NewEgg.com since the price was right compared to other online retailers. And great scott! These are even better than the original 5.1′s. Only real down is that I think the headphone jack on the original unit outputted more power to my Sennheiser EH2270′s, it hardly makes a difference though since it was so much power you couldn’t wear the cans. They’d literally vibrate on the table when I played Massive Attack’s Angel.

My bedroom really isn’t built for these speakers though, it is the perfect size at 11×11′ but my entire set up is so ridiculous at the moment with all the cables everywhere. I did have 4 computers plugged into one set of Altec ADA885′s which was quite funny but nevermind. I’m not sure when it happened, but I was testing the speakers out with all the WMA Pro/WMV HD demonstrations. After walking into my room a couple times to convince my Mom even more that he doesn’t quite understand how amazing Windows Media is, I noticed a crack on this little modification we made to the upper wall. Before the ceiling was open, I had closed it off so that sound wouldn’t escape. It must have been the T2 Ultimate Edition or Beethoven’s 9th at 100dB because I noticed a crack in the wall . It’s not cracked the actual dry wall, just where it meets. I love these speakers!

A while back when I had my BostonAcoustics THX speakers (later stolen) I had broken a window. That was understandable really, I mean the sub alone was 1000W RMS iirc. It didn’t really matter back then when I had those speakers because WMA9 didn’t exist (I so wish it did) and I only had a 8.4GB HDD to hold the music anyway. But today, if you’re going to be ripping your entire music collection to the computer and really do care about the sound and plan on some day being an audiophile wannabe, do yourself a favor. Rip at 192K WMA CBR or 135-215K WMA VBR. Heck you may even want to turn it up all the way. I currently use 135-215K and you can really tell the difference on good speakers/headphones at louder volumes. For example The Moody Blues’ Ride My See-Saw, you can hear some distortion at 128K WMA and even 160K WMA in the tamborine. Symbols and tamborines seem the be the hardest thing to compress in most music. It may not matter on your portable music player and probably won’t matter on your average $100 computer speakers but spend more than $300 and it will. Keep in mind too that someday you’ll probably be listening to these same files on your home theatre system as well. Rip high, play high, and if you’re listening to Moody Blues, well, you probably already are high .