What Is 5.1?

The "five", in 5.1, stands for the five discrete channels of sound information. These channels are left front, right front, left rear and right rear and center. The "point one" is the sixth channel designated for a subwoofer. The channels are "discrete" meaning that each channel is completely individual from the others. The channels do not interact or derive information from one another but work individually.

When compared to typical "surround sound", it is a vast improvement because surround sound, as most of us knows it, encodes multiple channels of information into two channels and then decodes the multiple channels when played back. This does not allow for true sound sculpting that the 5.1 standard offers and limits frequency response for the subwoofer channel.

The Specs

The biggest thing to remember about the Kinyo R-655U is that is a Dolby and DTS 5.1 compatible speaker set that does not require a 5.1 sound card...or any sound card for that matter.

You see, the Kinyo R-655U only requires a USB port to work. The USB port can be 1.0, 1.1 or 2.0. The heart of the system is a 5.1 compatible external audio box that has 3 outputs for 6 channels (front and rear, left and right, center and sub) and a line/microphone input.

The audio box supports a 12 MB/s data rate and supports DVDs with 5.1 and has the ability to create it's own 5.1 surround sound called "Q-Space' for typically two channel formats, such as MP3s, WAV files and CD Audio.

The audio box features LED indicators that show power, surround sound (Q-Space or 5.1), and microphone enabled. Control buttons control mute, surround sound, and microphone input activation.

The box has a signal to noise ratio of over 85 db. Signal to noise is the ratio of the largest signal that can be handled by a sound card with low distortion to the noise sent at the same time. 85 is good, and you'd need a dead silent room to notice the noise, but Creative Labs has a better STN ratio of 94 db for their Live cards and 100 db for their Audigy and Extigy sound cards.

The five 3" satellites are rated at 5 watts RMS and the 5" subwoofer is rated at 20 watts RMS. RMS stands for Root Means Squared and is the average power output under the very best and the very worst conditions. If you want the number that represents peak momentary power output, it's 850W PMPO (la dee da!).

The frequency range of each satellite is 120 - 20,000 Hz and the frequency response of the subwoofer is 40 Hz - 3000 Hz (the website is wrong and states 70 Hz as the lowest clean frequency). The sub actually produces 20 Hz, but there is distortion and there is excessive port noise at 30 Hz.

Of course, what the speaker can do free air versus what it can do in an enclosure is the pudding of proof. I will be charting actual frequency responses of the speaker set and see what it really can do and how well it can do it later. Regardless of what I find out charting frequency responses, one thing remains true and I don't need a sound level meter and a test tone CD to know this. DESPITE speaker sets having subs capable of, let's say, 20~40 Hz, you still tend to end up with 3" satellites that totally miss the mid range, and you end up with a sound that is bassy and brassy with no in between often missing the range somewhere between 700 and 2000 Hz. I would rather have a rich representation of frequencies across the most common spectrum.

The kind of set up I'm used to something that reminds me of some kid's car that has 15" Fosgates in the trunk and a pair of 4s in the dash. Do you know the cars I'm talking about? They usually roll down the street going "boooooom tick tick tick booooom", but the person in the driver's seat is completely happy with his sound system as long as he is able to drown out his 5" tail pipe.

The only difference between the kid in the car and Joe Computeruser is that Joe is just happy drowning out his Delta 50cfm fan.

On paper, these speakers look like they might be able to pull it off, but not until I actually hear the representation of these ranges will I know if these Kinyos are any different than any other speaker set that pairs up 3" satellites with a subwoofer.

Installation

Installation is idiot proof. This is a good thing since the manual is chock full of classic Engrish sentences like this one from page one: "It is needless to open computer chassis and turn your desktop or laptop into an audio and video entertainment center."

True, it's needless to open your computer, but it's NOT needless to turn your desktop into an entertainment center!

There are two manuals. There is one 30 page manual that only covers the actual "audio box", which is an eDio AS-100 CineMaster made by FIC (yes, the motherboard people), and a two page flyer printed up by Kinyo that covers everything else which is a "Control Center", a remote for the Control Center, five 3" satellites and a 5" subwoofer.

The audio box plugs into the PC via USB. Any Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 98SE up has native drivers for "USB Audio Device".

The audio box features three buttons. There's a "MIC" button that turns the microphone on and off. This beats the pants out of muting the microphone through Windows to avoid feedback.

There's a "SUR" button to enable and disable surround sound. The bad thing about doing this is that the sub reproduces absolutely NOTHING. I pretty much left the surround on all of the time, except for when watching DVDs when actual 5.1 kicked in.

There is also a "MUTE" button. Self-explanatory.

There are three LEDs on top of the audio box as well. Power, Microphone On, and Surround On. The Surround LED only lights when the audio box is decoding it's own 5.1 sound (the Q-Space) from a standard 2 channel signal, like an MP3 or CD Audio. The audio box auto detects inbound 5.1 signals, so regardless of the "SUR" button being depressed, the Surround indicator LED will never light.

The back of the audio box has a LINE/MIC input, FRONT, REAR and C/LFE (Center/Low Frequency Effect) output. This ensures that your channels are truly discrete.

The ensemble comes with a wiring harness reminiscent of car audio of the early 80s. On one end of the harness there are three 1/8" phono jacks. There's one jack for each output on the audio box (or ANY 5.1 sound card for that matter). On the other end there is a proprietary mini DIN plug that plugs into the RB-6A Audio Effect Control Center. This unit is what gives the system external volume control and remote control capability.

The RB-61 unit features LEDs that show whether the signal coming in is 2 channel, surround or 5.1. The back of the feature RCA inputs as well as the proprietary mini DIN input. There are also 6 color coded speaker outputs. These speaker outputs go to yet another proprietary DIN plug that plugs into the back of the subwoofer.

The RB-61 unit can be bypassed altogether by plugging the AS-100 directly into the back of the subwoofer, but doing so negates use of the remote control unit and the ability to adjust volume independent from Windows. The remote control included with the unit controls channel volume, master volume and mute, as well as power.

The back of the subwoofer has the satellite's output jacks and they are not labeled at all. They are, however, color-coded. I simply plugged the satellites into each jack, matching the color of the RCA plug with the color of each jack.

The software bundle included with the Kinyo R655-U is fantastic for a set of speakers, but lame for a sound card. I'm used to speakers coming with squat and soundcards coming with games and MP3 software. This seems to be a happy medium.

First, we have InterVideo's WinDVD version 3.0. Personally, I like WinDVD. Perhaps it's all of my years of owning 3Dfx cards that were bundled with this software. Of course, this software is anything phenomenal in that it is typically bundled with software decoding dependant video cards or bought ion it's "OEM form" for under $10, but it's good DVD software nonetheless.

InterVideo's WinRip 1.1 is another piece of software bundled with the PC. This one took me a minute to install because it asked for a serial number. The sleeve of the CD had the serial number for WinDVD and this did not work for WinRip. It turns out that the root directory of the CD has a Read Me file with the serial number. Who'd a thunk it?! WinRip is an MP3 player, very similar to the look and feel of Winamp. The software is not as powerful as many MP3 suites, but does what it does well, and simply. Pop in a CD, select a bit rate and a format to rip the files to and go. Quick and easy MP3 rips.

The speaker tester is also included and a very good thing to have with this ensemble as the speakers themselves is not individually labeled. I had no problem figuring out which speakers were rears and which were fronts. Rear speakers had the insanely long speaker wires. But left channel and right channel was left as a guessing game based on the position that they plugged into the back of the sub. There are no test tones or white or pink noise, however. For my tests, I had to provide my own tones and noise.

First...The Good

The best aspect of this speaker set is its ease of use. Coming from the tech support background that I do, I can really respect a device that requires no installation of a sound card, no drivers (if the user is using 98SE or higher) and has all of its connectors color-coded.

Most motherboards have on board sound, but few have 5.1 sound and there's no need to explain to someone how to install that PCI 5.1 sound card with this unit. Of course, for most readers here, this is a moot point. Some of us have no problem installing a sound card, but isn't it nice to know that if you buy an external USB sound device that is 5.1 compatible and you do not have to worry about chipset or OS compatibilities? A-ha!

The value for this ensemble is definitely there, IF you want to use the whole package. Certainly, 5.1 speaker sets that feature a 5" subwoofer can be bought for less ($150 easy) and just as certainly the 5.1 audio box isn't too expensive by itself (I easily found it for $59), and the remote is something I found myself rarely using. But as a package, the street price of $199 (found as low as $179 from TCWO.com, which is where we obtained our test speakers) is actually pretty reasonable.

Now, The Bad

This won't come as a surprise to many people that are used to using 3" satellites, but...

WHERE IS MY 800-1200 Hz FREQUENCY RANGE?!?!

When listening to music, vocals sound tinny, guitar solos sound flat and when Mik Kiminski plays a violin solo on an Electric Light Orchestra track, it sounds like he's playing a fiddle!

The problem? Initially, I wanted to blame the 3" satellites. I thought, "When will these manufacturers learn that I will pay for 4" satellites?"

It also comes down to the electronics of the unit itself and not the speakers themselves more than anything. Sure, 4" speakers would be really, really nice in my book. But a better crossover "system" that employs crossing over the satellites at multiple points would help considerably. Despite the size of the speakers and their enclosure, they actually come in at a fairly low frequency.

All I want is just something that would cut down the 2000Hz range. Then, amplify the whole satellite system more so they don't sound so "flat" due to the lack of volume at 2000Hz (certainly we don't want to rid of the 2000Hz range altogether). Let me do the rest of the tweaking with an equalizer after that, based on the music I'm listening to, but with the current set up, all music and movies sound thuddy and tinny! Now we're back to that kid's car with the 5" tailpipe!

Speaking of equalizers, charting these frequencies really helped me tweak out the equalizers in software. I simply lowered the 70 and 2000Hz points, cranked up the range between 100 and 500Hz, kicked 1000Hz up a bit and started a gradual slope upward at 5000Hz. From there, minor adjustments suitable for the type of music I am listening to were simple.

On paper, the sub goes up to 3000 Hz. That's a far cry from the drop off in frequency response that began at 700 Hz when I tested the sub alone. In these "real world" tests, that sub was thumping along at frequencies as high as 600 Hz, but began to drop off at 700 Hz (which is actually reflected in the chart). The sub was doing absolutely nothing when 1000Hz came around.

The satellites were true to their paper specs, but there was an inexplicable drop in volume at 700 Hz. The volume didn't pick up again until 1500 Hz and was unbearably tinny sounding at 2000 Hz where the satellites peaked no matter what volume level I was at.

The end result is a subwoofer that thuds quite loudly at 70 Hz and satellites that blare at 2000 Hz. Good? Not in my book. Are these speakers much different than other speaker systems with a 5" sub and 3" satellites? Actually, no. So am I just being a hard ass? Yes, but I think I reserve the right to be when we are talking about a speaker set that is supposed to compliment a full bodied "entertainment system" experience from a PC.

At Least They're Not Ugly!

Sorry. I just had to continue the Clint Eastwood theme.

The speakers are black. Thank goodness. If they came in white there'd be another mark against them.

Also, the satellites come with nice metal brackets to screw into the walls. The speakers themselves have threaded inserts in the back of each of them so they can screw into each included bracket. The brackets pivot and lock so the speakers can be angled appropriately.

The audio box is small and doesn't need to be out in the open. Although the buttons are handy, I rarely used them. The Control Center on the other hand is rather bulky, and needs to be out in the open so the remote can work. As I said, though: I rarely used the remote. It was reminiscent of the receiver I used to have in my car that came with a remote. If I were going to take my hands off the wheel and my eyes off the road to play with a remote for my receiver, why wouldn't I do so to just tune the actual receiver sitting only 9 inches to the right of my knee?

Go Ahead...Make My Day

The graphing of the frequency response was done as follows: Since the speaker's sensitivity (the dbs the speaker is capable of reproducing at 1 watt measured at 1 meter) was not included in any documentation, a base line was determined using pink noise. Once the pink noise was measured at 50db, 60db and 70db using a sound meter at 1 meter from the sound source, a series of test tones were played and the dbs charted using the same sound meter in the same position it was at when testing the pink noise. The sound meter was positioned on a tripod so it would not pick up sounds as the bounced off of the floor.

The test environment was far from sterile. But then again, who has their computer in a sterile room? So before anyone asks, there was no acoustic materials on the walls, ceiling and floors and the PC was in the room whirring away with a Coolermaster fan on it. Ambient noise levels were well under 30 db where the sound meter was positioned prior to testing.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• The USB audio box supports Dolby & DTS 5.1 and does so without additional sound cards eliminating the need to open the PC or having to deal with compatibility issues.
• Q-Space has the ability to decode multiple channels emulating 5.1 out of a standard 2 or 4 channel signal.
• Color-coded wiring harnesses make installation clean and easy.
• Speakers are of good quality. The sub is wood, and the surrounds are poly.
• Decent pivoting wall mounting brackets.
• InterVideo software bundle (WinDVD And WinRip) is fairly decent software to get for a speaker set.

Cons

• The RB-61 Control Unit is a bit bulky. Can't we incorporate the audio box and control box into one unit?
• Lots of bass and lots of treble but not a whole lot in between. Why would I expect anything different?

SLRating: 7/10

Re-Printed From SLCentral

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