harman kardon soundsticks II - help needed

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seneca196

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Hi,
i'm new to this forum, so apologies if I've posted in the wrong place.
I've been given a pair of soundsticks by a friend, but without the sub woofer. Is there any way I can get sound out of these. Must mention - I'm not technically minded, so having a bit of difficulty.
Firstly - if someone has soundsticks 2 - can they please describe the different connections and how they all attach to each other. I've looked at the online manual, but that doesn't tell.
1) one stick has a normal rca jack, but I don't know what the other stick (left with vol controls) has. It looks a bit like a mouse connection, but with 4 pins and the flat plastic bit. What's the name of this connection?
2) how can I connect these to my soundblaster? (3.5mm
jack - I think.)
3) Is it possible to connect them to a sub-woofer? (friends one stopped working, hence he gave the sticks to me)
4) Is there a sub that would be compatible? The soundsticks sub is difficult to get hold of on it's own. They sometimes come up on ebay, but they are the USB v1 subs with totally different connections. I've looked around at other makes, and other harman kardon subs, but non seem to match.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
come on guys, has anyone got a pair of soundsticks? There must surely be something I can do with them (no jokes!) I'm stuck as to what the connection is on the non rca cable. Is there no converter that will atleast allow me to get sound out of it, even if it's not loud. If I could convert to rca, then I could maybe get a 2 rca to 1 3.5mm jack and get some use from the speakers. Better then chucking them.
 
The soundsticks are practically worthless by themselves as the amplification and crossover electronics reside in the bass box.

If you were to wire both of those to a 3.5mm jack and plug them in the output socket of your soundcard, all you'd get would be a low level tinny sound, as there is no amplification and the soundsticks were only designed to handle mid and top, probably from about 600Hz to 16Khz.

So, sorry to be the harbinger of bad news but they're more or less worthless.

And don't be so impatient, you've had a response in half an hour, some folks wait days ;)
 
>>And don't be so impatient,
sorry (becoming a bit obsessed with the problem)

here's where I am now -
I've come across some karman kardon K395 speakers, which have a similar setup and the technical specs are similar:
both 2.1, both subs power the sats, both have vol control on sats.
differences:
soundsticks - sub 20w sat 10w per channel, total power 65w max.
k395 - sub 18w sat 6w per channel , total power 30w
(don't know the frequency range comparsion)
Another big difference is the connection on the volume sat (sticks has 4 pin, 395 has 9 pin)

I was wondering if I got the k395 set (£5 at computer market) and kept the sub and it's wiring, but chopped off the sat and tried rewiring with my new soundsticks, would that work? I may not get maximum performance, but hey, I'm only using them for basic sound (+ they'll look cool and work!....hopefully)
 
his subwoofer had stopped working and it was really expensive to send it to get fixed (apparently is was more than half the cost of the speakers!) Apparently, it is a common problem with these speakers. The sub is a sealed unit that you can't take apart to fix. Most people agree that once the sub goes it's not worth fixing. As he had sent it off and it was too epensive to fix, he didn't want it back. The sats were just lying about in his garage, so he gave them to me.


I figure there must be a way of hooking them up to a cheap, used sub. They do look pretty cool!
 
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