Digital Home Thoughts: M-AUDIO LX4 2.1 Speakers: Amazing Sound, Amazing Interference

A little over a week ago, I picked up a pair of M-AUDIO LX4 2.1 speakers - two satellites and a sub-woofer. Ever since my Logitech 2.1 speakers spontaneously died on me, I've been searching for a good set of replacement speakers. Some of the two satellite, no sub-woofer speakers I've written about recently were OK, but they just didn't cut it. I've never owned M-AUDIO speakers before, but they've been on Maximum PC's "best of the best" list for months, and that's a good enough recommendation for me. The LX4 2.1's are fairly pricey, retailing for $435 CAD, but I wanted speakers that sounded great and ones that I could keep for years.

After getting over the bizarre cabling requirements (I've never seen speakers that only accepted 1/4 inch jacks) I got them set up. The back of the sub-woofer has 1/4" jacks for up to five satellite speakers, meaning this system can grow from a 2.1 to a 5.1 by just adding more speakers. That's impressive flexibility, although you need to feed it a 5.1 signal because there's no decoder (which explains the lack of a digital input). The Roku M2000 I was connecting them to output via RCA, so I needed RCA to 1/4", which thankfully my local Source (formerly Radio Shack) store had in stock. They lack any sort of secondary connections for an MP3 player or headphones like most sets of consumer-level speakers have. These are aimed at prosumers and audio professionals - no iPod dock here!

Once I got them hooked up and they sounded superb. Crisp high end, full mid-range, and warm bottom end. They're extremely loud, and fill the room they're in with sound. The 256 kbps MP3s I was feeding it never sounded so good. There's a master level for volume on sub-woofer, and a master level for the bass on th sub-woofer. They're easily the best-sounding speakers I've ever set up, eclipsing the Klipsch 2.1 speakers that have always held the high-water mark for me. But, sadly, these M-AUDIO speakers are very likely going to be packed back up and returned.

What's not to like about these? They are the single worst-shielded set of speakers I've ever seen. From eight feet away if there's no audio playing through them, I can hear buzzing and low-level audio coming from them - a radio signal it would seem. When you get interference like that from a product, there are a few things to suspect: the cables from the audio source to the speakers, the power outlet, and speaker wires running from the satellites into the sub-woofer. I started my tests to eliminate the possible problems one by one. When the LX4's are disconnected from the Roku M2000, the interference is still present. I then bought a UPS with built-in line-conditioning to clean the power, and the problem persisted. I disconnected the UPS from the wall, running the LX4's solely on battery power, and the interference was just as strong. So if it's not the connecting cables, and it's not the power, that leaves only one thing: the speaker cabling or the speakers themselves, neither of which are that easy to do anything about.

I can't overstate how irritating this problem is: from eight feet away the speakers will start to buzz when my mobile phone is sending or receiving data. Cheap $99 computer speakers will do the same thing, but only if the phone is within one or two feet. Although the interference is covered up easily enough by loud music, it's easy to hear in quiet songs and in-between songs. And I certainly didn't pay this much for high-quality speakers only to have them introduce interference into my music.

I'm doing to do a bit more investigating - I'm wondering about buying some better-shielded speaker wire to connect the satellites to the sub-woofer, but I don't know if that will help the issue. I'm open to suggestions from the Digital Media Thoughts community on how to re-claim these awesome-sounding speakers from the murky depths of buzzing audio.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He's evidently still searching for the ultimate 2.1 speakers.