manly:
The hiss from your Z-560s are likely to be caused by your Live!, which is known to be a noisy hissy soundcard. To call Live! a crap would be an understatement, but if you want to hear how your Z-560s ought to sound, your next step should be run (or click?) to the nearest retailer, online or B&M, and grab a: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Philips some variant of Edge (new versions), Hercules Game Theater XP, or if you absolutely are a hardcore gamer, Audigy.
[rant] I wouldn't recommend Audigy since Creative is full of s**t and Audigy is NOT repeat NOT a true 24/96 soundcard, but hey, if you like swallowing Creative's cock then Audigy is for you. If nothing else, Audigy does blow Live! out of the water and it approaches the quality of "pseudo-audiophile" (meaning damn good for a computer audio component) soundcards like the GTXP, the TBSC, and the Philips cards. But remember that your initial Audigy investment isn't the end of your cash to Creative, since they are now charging for drivers. I'm never buying Creative again after fighting with my old Live! to make it work in 2K/XP, but the choice is yours. [/rant]
Anyways, since ResellerRatings.com is all but dead (sadly), I find that Bizrate.com is good for rating most of the somewhat larger online retailing operations. So if you can't find anything at ResellerRatings then try Bizrate. I was one of the unlucky who didn't get in on the Dell $115 Z-560 deal, so I've been shopping around myself. Here in CA, unfortunately, is where many of the great online retailers like Newegg is based, so I get to pay Gray Davis some sales tax. This, as you can imagine, is mildly annoying.
I also found the previously linked "Dan's Data" (some audiophile in Australia, it appears) to be quite humorous. Extremely so in fact. As in this guy nearly matches Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie for ROTFL Tech Humor (well, audiophile humor i guess, but your average computer geek knows enough about audio that this suffices). What's interesting is that Dan here didn't really knock how the Z-560s sounded, other than the rather excessive bass that other reviews have also complained about, but he did rather debunk the "400 watt" rating that Logitech makes. (To give you an idea of how ridiculous their claims are, think of it this way. Your average Sony A/V receiver puts out what Sony calls "100 watts burst" which is the same as saying "if you turn this baby up to distortion levels and burn up your speakers, you can get 100W". In reality, it probably puts out 60-70 watts RMS, which isn't bad by any sense of the imagination, but consider your average home theater speakers or satellites. Pretty big, huh? Your average home theater speakers use probably 6" midrange woofers, 8" low-range woofers, and a nice 1.5-2" titanium or aluminun tweeter that can take a lot of power. Now compare that to the Z-560's, which use some rather pretty looking but surprisingly perfunctory 3" full-range drivers. Now are you going to claim to me that you can put 53W (as Logitech claims) through those things and not blow those speakers out? Obviously not. I have no doubt that if I took these nice Z-560 satellites and hooked them up to a nice home theater receiver using the rather convenient speaker binding posts that Logitech provides and really crank the volume, I would immediately have some rather pretty looking but surprisingly perfunctory drivers implanted in my living room's back wall.)
That said, however, the Z560s are generally accepted to put out nice sound, especially considerin the competition in the multimedia speakers market segment. Which is why I'm looking for a pair. I've no interest in the "superior" sound from Monsoon's offerings, because Monsoon is so nice to pair their wonderful planar speaker technology with little or no power in the amps, which translates to surprisingly beautiful and balanced sound that i can't turn up to reasonable listening levels without getting audible distortion. Wonderful. Thank you so much Monsoon. But consider their home theater speakers, those things are head-turners.