Audibly better
I was in the market for some new computer speakers recently. My then current set, some Creative 5.1 something-or-the-others had developed a couple of faults. Firstly, if there was a loud sound which stopped relatively suddenly, I could hear a high-pitched whine which would start loudly, then slowly peter out. This was a liveable thing. The second issue was with the volume control – it’s a couple of dials on a wire, one for volume, another for bass, plus headphone outputs and aux inputs. The volume dial had screwed up, so it would take a very careful touch to adjust the volume. Anything else and it would suddenly jump to super-sonic levels, or just not do anything.
I started looking elsewhere, and decided to forego a surround speaker set. Having surround sound was nice, but not a necessity. All my music is stereo, so anything else is done in hardware to make it pseudo-surround. Granted, some CDs do seem to utilise some sort of Pro-Logic encoding, but for the most part, it’s best to have things in ‘proper’ stereo. The only things I ever have in stereo are DVDs, and I watch those on the TV or projector with the decent surround system, so surround speakers on the PC seemed a bit redundant. Also, I no longer have a high-end sound card in the PC. I’m using the onboard card, so it wasn’t like I’d be losing anything there.
So for a while I briefly courted the notion of something like the Bose surround speakers, but the price put me off. Creative also did a similar set, but they used USB for the connection (i.e. the speakers are the sound card). Plus they had a silly-massive subwoofer, which didn’t seem great to me. I don’t really like subwoofers much as they send all their sound through the floor, thus annoying others. What I needed was a set of speakers which were able to produce their own bass. The speakers on my TV are a Sony set I got with a Hi-Fi system I bought some years ago. I have no sub there, but the speakers are very big, and produce plenty of bass on their own. I figured if I could get something similar for the PC I’d be onto a winner, as it would mean no sub, less cabling, and better sound.
So I managed to find these:
These are the GigaWorks T40 Series II. I found them in PCWorld, and the first thing that struck me was a) how big the box was, and b) how much it weighed. I’ve found that light, small speakers often produce a sound that is, well, light and small. But these had some bulk to them. They are of a big size, and so I settled on them.
I’ve been using them about a week now, and I’m really quite happy with them. The sound is quite well defined and very broad – I certainly felt like I was hearing everything. They’re not too bassy, and the highs don’t seem lost. The mids sometimes seem to go walkabout, but that’s something that can be tweaked. I’ve turned down the bass a little bit, and they sound pretty good now. They look and feel like proper, decent speakers, and to be honest I think they are. PC speakers have always been something of an also ran, so if you listen to a lot of music on your PC (like I do) then you can often find them somewhat lacking. These tick all the right boxes for me, so I’m quite impressed with them.
