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Now, The Bad
This won't come as a surprise to many people that are used to using 3" satellites, but...
WHERE IS MY 800-1200 Hz FREQUENCY RANGE?!?!
When listening to music, vocals sound tinny, guitar solos sound flat and when Mik Kiminski plays a violin solo on an Electric Light Orchestra track, it sounds like he's playing a fiddle!
The problem? Initially, I wanted to blame the 3" satellites. I thought, "When will these manufacturers learn that I will pay for 4" satellites?"
It also comes down to the electronics of the unit itself and not the speakers themselves more than anything. Sure, 4" speakers would be really, really nice in my book. But a better crossover "system" that employs crossing over the satellites at multiple points would help considerably. Despite the size of the speakers and their enclosure, they actually come in at a fairly low frequency.
All I want is just something that would cut down the 2000Hz range. Then, amplify the whole satellite system more so they don't sound so "flat" due to the lack of volume at 2000Hz (certainly we don't want to rid of the 2000Hz range altogether). Let me do the rest of the tweaking with an equalizer after that, based on the music I'm listening to, but with the current set up, all music and movies sound thuddy and tinny! Now we're back to that kid's car with the 5" tailpipe!
Speaking of equalizers, charting these frequencies really helped me tweak out the equalizers in software. I simply lowered the 70 and 2000Hz points, cranked up the range between 100 and 500Hz, kicked 1000Hz up a bit and started a gradual slope upward at 5000Hz. From there, minor adjustments suitable for the type of music I am listening to were simple.
On paper, the sub goes up to 3000 Hz. That's a far cry from the drop off in frequency response that began at 700 Hz when I tested the sub alone. In these "real world" tests, that sub was thumping along at frequencies as high as 600 Hz, but began to drop off at 700 Hz (which is actually reflected in the chart). The sub was doing absolutely nothing when 1000Hz came around.
The satellites were true to their paper specs, but there was an inexplicable drop in volume at 700 Hz. The volume didn't pick up again until 1500 Hz and was unbearably tinny sounding at 2000 Hz where the satellites peaked no matter what volume level I was at.
The end result is a subwoofer that thuds quite loudly at 70 Hz and satellites that blare at 2000 Hz. Good? Not in my book. Are these speakers much different than other speaker systems with a 5" sub and 3" satellites? Actually, no. So am I just being a hard ass? Yes, but I think I reserve the right to be when we are talking about a speaker set that is supposed to compliment a full bodied "entertainment system" experience from a PC.
>> At Least They're Not Ugly!
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