Introduction

MidiLand S2 4100

Recently, I have received numerous emails from those who are busy at work building their Christmas wish lists. When it came to making speaker recommendations, about half of the emails contained the words "MidiLand S2 4100," and asked how these speakers compared with current offerings by Klipsch, and Cambridge.

The Midiland S2 4100

Just to give a little background, the S2 4100's were released nearly two years ago, and still remain within the vocabulary of enthusiast multimedia audio. During these two years, MidiLand hasn't just been sitting on the praise of the S2 4100's, and was busy at work on their next generation S4 series of speakers which are due to accept the baton from the MidiLand S2 series very soon.

Though officially discontinued, the S2 4100's can still be found at retailers and we were fortunate enough to obtain a pair of S2 4100's for comparison. First, let's recall how MidiLand became such a recognizable name.

A little history

I can still recall the days when the words "PC speaker" referred to the little 2 inch driver that was mounted inside of the system case. Later these evolved into motherboard-mounted piezoelectric devices that could beep and buzz, but do little else.

The convergence of music and computing can really be traced back to the days of MIDI. Early sound cards were basically MIDI interfaces, and it was in this field that the synergy between computing and sound was discovered. Roland was one of the pioneers in this field; bringing us the MIDI devices themselves, and just as important, they brought speakers through which the artistry of the musician could be expressed.

Back in the day, the best multimedia speakers were designed for studio MIDI applications. So it is no surprise that MidiLand Incorporated brings to us one of the benchmarks in multimedia audio, the MidiLand S2 4100 Multimedia Sound System.