Performance
For my testing I hooked the speakers up to my PC, placing the sub under my desk and the speakers at each side of my desk. The design certainly works well on the desktop and the speakers are small enough to be unobtrusive and their angled design lends well to directing the sound towards your head.
Since I’m a big music fan I wasted no time in blasting out some of my favourite albums, I picked a few of my regular albums that I use for testing speakers and headsets, since I know how they’re supposed to sound and that they can be difficult to get sounding “right” on many systems.
- Bloodbath – Resurrection Through Carnage
- Steve Vai – Where The Wild Things Are
- Devin Townsend Project – Epicloud
- Opeth – Orchid
- Genesis – A Trick of the Tail
- Pendulum – In Silico
They’re very dynamic albums with a wide range frequencies, textures and tones that require a lot of detail. While albums such as Bloodbath and Pendulum are excellent for testing bass clarity, Steve Vai and Devin Townsend for finding clear high tones and the warm tones of both Opeth and Genesis are a solid test for mid ranges.
Initial impressions were very promising, the live sound of “Where The Wild Things Are” gave off some incredible vocal and acoustic tones that have a real live quality to them, while the thick and heavy bass of the sub also added a lot of depth and a rather rich sound overall.
The sub isn’t the best in the world and it does lack some detail when things get frantic, but it’s certainly not poor in quality. There is plenty of power for desktop use and the mid and high frequencies of the speakers offer impressive results despite their cheap looking design.
Gaming offered equally impressive results, although I did find myself having to set the bass to half for gaming, and full for music listening as many games these days ramp up the lower end EQ, where I prefer a more natural and balanced sound. It would be nice to be able to control bass from the in-line controller rather than the side of the sub, but it’s hardly a big deal at this price range.
Movie performance was great too, sure it doesn’t compare to my home cinema setup, but the bass has a decent enough thump to it to give a wow factor, and the speakers offer loud and clear dialogue, which is about everything you can hope for from a speaker set of this size.
