I bought my klipsch 5.1 speakers roughly a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago.  Recently I got up one day and sat down at my computer to listen to some music and nothing came out of the speakers or the sub.  There was no power outage or anything the night before.  I have no clue what to do, I tried hooking up a friends speakers to make sure the sound card was working correctly, and it worked fine.  I am really dissappointed if thats really all I got out of dropping $350 on these speakers.

try to use a cd player or ipod and see if sound comes out from the ultras.

Klipsch speakers are good designed but not the sub. Here is why: In order to have great sound without noise, Klipsch engineers have to use linear power supply. There are two kinds of power supplies: Switching and linear. The power supply of your computer is switching. Linear is different, even you turned it on and don't use it (no sound), it still consumes the same amount of power and extra power is generated to heat. The heatsink of the linear chips is small and not attached to the back metal pannel to disipate heat to outside. Trust me, even you have brand new speakers and without modification or adding cooling system to it, you will shorten the life of the sub (amplifier). One day you wake up and....: No sound from speeakers but headphone works fine, fuse blown, sound distortion, all kinds of problems... When you send the sub to Klipsch for repair (if you are lucky, still covered under warranty), the tech only replace the defective components, not changing the design, so the heat is still there....and soon or later the problems will appear again...
There are three things you can prevent this:

1. Turn the volume real low, just enough to listen (a polite way: not to disturb your neigbor)
2. Add cooling devices to the sub (if you know how to do it, or hire someone to do it for you)
3. Put it on Ebay to sell

BTW, ultra 5.1 is a great system if Klipsch fix heat problem.

Good luck to all

If you want to know more, email me: ptran3014@yahoo.com

That is just sad, and absolutely ridiculous. Usually when you buy a high end item if the company screws up cause their design or technology sucks they usually have a recall. I wish I would have found this forum before I ever decided to get my promedia system. There are so many other reputable companies out there with comparable products around the same price range that don't have these issues.

I wonder how my potential customers and/or existing customers Klipsch has lost over this amp failure issue. I honestly didn't have a complain, but the fact that when I bought my unit, came home and hooked it all up it was DOA, then the other units amp failure; my issue really set in when I read all these bad things about this product, I'm a new member and 1 st post is about the problem with this product, and now having to pay additional money to send back to Klipsch only to know that I am gonna get the same exact quality department nightmare product all over again.

I won't buy klipsch anything again even though the speakers do sound great. Too much competition out there to stick with a shaddy product and/or company (sorry honest opinion!!). I just thank God I didn't buy that RVX-54 Home theather system. I can live with getting stuck with $499 BS product, but I think I would have gone postal if I would have taken a $3K hit.

If you want to complain about the PM 5.1 because you've owned one and have had problems, of course you have every right to so.  But please do not compare these speakers with rest of Klipsch products.  They are a completely different technology, completely different design, components, everything about them is different.  It is really an unjust comparison.  If you spend any time on the rest of the forum, you'll know we have very few complaints for our home audio products. 

If we had an unacceptable failure rate, we would recall the units.  We have nothing to gain by selling defective products, either financially or by reputation.  I don't know how many times I have to say it.  This section of the forum has more complaints simply because of the sheer number of units sold.

 

Moistical:

I won't buy klipsch anything again even though the speakers do sound great. Too much competition out there to stick with a shaddy product and/or company (sorry honest opinion!!). I just thank God I didn't buy that RVX-54 Home theather system. I can live with getting stuck with $499 BS product, but I think I would have gone postal if I would have taken a $3K hit.

I am sorry but you are really missing out. Umm most hometheater speakers have little problems and the fact that they are not self powered units only improve the odds that they work forever.

I would have to agree with ptran3014. I just got my subwoofer amp back from klipsch customer service. It works but sooner or later it will fail again. I hooked up the sub amp to the subwoofers themselves but I did not put the 12 mount screws back on. Then I hooked up all the speakers and control pod and started playing Battlefield 2 for about 2 hours, I kept the sub on its face to monitor the heat build up. At the end of 2 hours the back face was very hot to the touch then I unhooked the power cord and waited  about 2 min for any capacitors to drain and then took the amp out of the box.

There are 2 L shaped thin silver metal components on either side of the power supply each facing a set of capacitors, I assume these are the heat sinks and they were white hot. If these are the heat sinks then they are the most pathetic excuse for heat dissipation I've ever seen in any electrical appliance. They cannot possebly dissipate enough heat to prevent heat breakdown of the electrical circuitry in immediate proximety to them especially the R527 4.7 ohm resistor and C511 diode that are just in from of the power supply. The heat should not stay in the box, it should be dissapated to the outside. What are the 2 enemies of electrical components? you guessed it. Heat and water. The R527 resistor is getting alot of heat exposure from these thin metal heat sinks and over time sometimes longer sometimes shorter sooner or later it will fail and that is probably one if not the leading cause of the system failures.

 Stpetesshepherd. who post on this fourm explained to me in an e-mail I got from him. He's the guy who does the modifications on these speakers, I'm sending my amp to him to get some fans installed, one fan over the power supply where the heat is being generated from, it will also cool the set of large capacitors to the right of the power supply and the right heat sink and one fan on the left heat sink and set of capacitors to the left of the power supply. they will be configured so one fan blows cool air over the area and one fan sucks hot air out. They will be Silenx Ixtrema Pro 50mm and 60mm fans because they have a decibel rating of 16 at 2200 rpm, very quiet. Also he will move the R527 resistor to the opposite side the it's current location to spare it from being burnt alive which it is right now in it's current location. I don't know what electrical engineer got away with designing an amplifier like this but in my opinion he or she needs to go back to school and relearn electrical engineering. It appears that this amplifer is designed to fail but is still is the best sounding multimedia speaker system on the market today so to protect my investment I'm going act now before the inevitable occurs. this system, the one I own has already failed  once,  and it is on it's way to failing again.

Hi Coolbreeze23,

Are you sure R527 is 4.7 ohms? What I read is Yelllow - Violet - Black = 47 ohms. Can you recheck this? Thank you

Yellow = 4 ohms, violet = 7 ohm, black is multiplier of 1. Your right, my mistake. it is 47 ohms.

Hi Brianabd

Would you like to sell the system? Email me if you are interested in: ptran3014@yahoo.com

Thanks

Jay481985:

try to use a cd player or ipod and see if sound comes out from the ultras.

Ok...silly question, but how do you go about doing this?  As you can tell, I am "electronically challenged".

Also, when or what year did they become ultras?   Mine was purchased in 2001 or 2002, can't remember which year?

thank you,

cwest

October 1 first time the ultras sold.

Put the green cable into the headphone part of the cd player or ipod. raise the volume on the ipod /cdplayer and promedia to get volume.

Jay481985:

October 1 first time the ultras sold.

Put the green cable into the headphone part of the cd player or ipod. raise the volume on the ipod /cdplayer and promedia to get volume.

Ok....thank you...appreciate it.

October 1 of when?

thanks.

im sorry 2003

Jay481985:

im sorry 2003

LOL...no problem,  thank you again.