Like most people, I have my own collection of CDs and music that I play most of the time to relax or just hang out. Well I can tell you that I've been using Winamp almost non-stop since I received the ProMedias. The sound quality for CD music is very good. The sound reproduction is almost flawless. These speakers will expose flaws in your mp3s though. You'll be spoiled by these speakers in that you won't want anything but high quality rips. I am a bit disappointed with the bass output though. It's great up until you reach around 50%, and then it starts to get less and less noticeable. The highest level where the sound quality wasn't compromised was about 65-75% depending on the song. At that level, the system was VERY loud. I mean, not concert level, but enough so that I needed to shout to talk to someone next to me. Needless to say my neighbors in the dorm are getting annoyed by the constant music. :) The only speakers that rival mine in loudness and clarity are a set of speakers that my friend brought from home. The rest of the speakers here just don't come close to the ProMedias. Although some of their subs get really boomy at high levels, they don't sound as tight as the ProMedias.

Being a 4 speaker system, the ProMedias are definitely built for games. The positional audio helps to immerse you into the game and provides an better overall gaming experience. I tried Quake 3 Arena with these babies and it was an entirely new experience. I could accurately tell in what direction and how close my opponent was. The blasts from the weapons were very good, and it really felt like rockets and rails were flying past my head. I couldn't really find anything wrong with these speakers in terms of gaming. If anything they would scare me when I would hear a shot go off behind me. I also played Diablo 2 and a few other games which were equally enhanced by the 4 speaker system. Even if the game didn't have support for 4 speaker sound, just the presence of the two extra speakers and the quality of the over-all system heightened the experience.

The THX certification tells you that this system is built for movies. Lucasfilms tries to bring the ultimate cinema experience to the PC with their multimedia certification. That alone tells you that these speakers meet very high standards. Klipsch even added a recommended setting (about 10 o'clock) on the volume control for the subwoofer, so you get the best sound for movies. Since I don't have a DVD drive myself, I tested the speakers out on a friend's system. We both have the same sound card, and he was using Windows 2000 also, so everything was pretty much the same. He has the Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 speakers. Although those speakers are nice, the lack of 4 channels really limits them. The 4 speaker output of the ProMedias made watching DVDs just like watching movies in the theater, except without the loud people in the back. Even though Dolby Digital is done through software (5.1 is down mixed to 4.1), the ProMedias sound quality is good enough to make it seem like Dolby Digital was being used.