Related Articles

By now you've got a pretty good idea of what you're getting yourself into - or do you? The store is not your domain - that environment is in the control of the salesperson. Often speaker systems aren't setup properly and are just stacked on display shelves, an environment which doesn't really lend itself to a good audition. I've had folks come to my house and listen to a set of speakers I bought and tell me that they sounded night and day from how they were in the store. Try and get the salesperson to move the satellites or sub around to suit you within reasonable limits - I know how difficult that is going to be but nothing ventured, nothing gained. You'll be bringing your own reference material with you to play but the chances are that the salesperson has cranked up the treble and bass controls because they know that "loud and boom" sells. Unfortunately "loud and boom" won't really let you know how the speakers actually sound so turn those tone controls FLAT - you'll get a much more realistic assessment. The one exception to that is DVDs - you WANT to see how the system handles bass. You also want to see how well it handles surround effects and The Matrix or The Fifth Element (particularly the Diva Dance / fight sequence) are now pretty much reference DVDs for that kind of evaluation. If the system handles DVDs well, the chances are high that it handles games well too.

Don't audition just ONE set of speakers - I can't stress this point enough. Get a good cross reference of systems or the chances are even money that you'll end up with something that you wouldn't have bought if you auditioned some other choices first.

At this point it's important that you be aware of a practice that is widespread throughout the entire computer industry:

Slipstreaming.

The computer business is extremely competitive and in the zeal to rush products to market, manufacturer testing and design stages may not necessarily be as thorough as they could be. This is by no means the sole reason for slipstreaming - there is also the normal practice of fine-tuning a product on the fly as customer feedback dictates changes. I am yet to see a manufacturer that doesn't do this. What this adds up to is that new revisions of satellites, subwoofers or amplifiers may make it into succeeding shipments of the same product. As an example, if you buy multimedia speaker system "X" today and your friend buys the same model three months from now, you may notice differences in the two systems, perhaps in terms of fit and finish and maybe even in terms of performance. This is the result of slipstreaming. The most important thing to know about slipstreaming is that the manufacturer doesn't announce these changes and neither does the salesperson. In fact, the salesperson may not even be aware of them. For that very reason, I NEVER recommend that someone buy version 1.0 of any computer product and that includes multimedia systems - you can always tell the pioneers because they are the ones with the arrows in their backs. Wait a few months (I recommend at least three, preferably four) after release of a brand new product until things settle down - by then there should be a reasonably stable revision on the market.

All right, you've bought them and taken them home

You've spent your money and gotten them home so just unpack 'em and start using 'em, right? Almost. Like any other speaker system you need to optimize their placement. Take some time to adjust them so their location provides you with the best they can do - make sure you're in that sweetspot I mentioned earlier and optimize it as much as you can. You do that by changing the angles of the satellites towards your ears and the width between them. Sub placement also matters - to increase bass, place the sub near a corner or wall and to decrease it move it away from the wall out into the open between the satellites under your desk. I'm known to be tremendously finicky about stuff like that and I took an hour to set up my particular system.

There's also the little matter of burn-in. Today's multimedia speakers are complex enough that they require a burn-in period just like their more expensive home audio counterparts. How do you burn in a set of speakers? Pick some reasonably detailed source material and play it at medium volume levels for a few days. To burn in my system, I pointed Winamp + MAD at the jukebox directory across my network where I store my currently playlist of MP3s, set it on shuffle play and left it running at medium volume when I went off to work in the morning. After several days of that, the system was well broken in.

Epilogue

As you can see, it's no longer the old days of cheapie beige no-name boxes that sit on either side of your monitor. Today's multimedia systems employ a lot of technologies that were formerly found only in high-end home systems and some interesting compromises have been made adapting them to the PC environment. Hopefully the points I've raised will help you in making your purchase and getting the most out of what you've decided to use it for.

Enjoy!