| | The Product
After receiving the speakers and taking them out of the box, the first
thing that I noticed was all the connections on the rear of the subwoofer.
The AMR150's have great support for all the popular soundcards that
are available on the market today. The AMR150's feature front and
rear digital coaxial inputs, as well as the standard front and rear
analog, for all those that haven't had the chance to upgrade their
soundcard. Along with the connections on the back, the speaker set
also includes a Digital DIN breakout cable for those SoundBlaster
Live users out there, as well as a Digital mini jack breakout cable.
I am very impressed with the full range of support that this speaker
set offers.
As with most systems the right satellite speaker serves as a control
unit for the system. It features both bass and treble adjustments
as well as front/rear fade and volume control. The actual subwoofer
itself features both a power button as well as a subwoofer bass
control.
I was somewhat surprised that the rear speakers did not include
stands. Surprisingly they only included wall mounts. If your room
is like mine in which there is a bed directly behind you, you will
have to look for an alternative means in which to place the rear
speakers. I was forced to place them under my bed when not in use
and then stood them up on my bed when I used them.
Testing
For testing out the AMR150 I used the new Hercules Game Theatre XP
in Windows ME.
Since most of you will be buying these speakers for music, games,
games, music or games. (Did I say that already?) I tried my best
to test out each of these wide areas. I thought I would save the
worst for last so I decided to do the music scene first. I chose
a selection from the various genres of music including classical,
rock, techno, R&B, and dance. I found that most music was very
clear and lifelike, not loud or distorted. The bass was very good
as long as the controls were not turned up too much. I found that
even with my soundcards volume control set at half, if I attempted
to go above about ¾ on the bass volume of the subwoofer,
the bass would become muddy and distorted while playing some songs.
If kept at about ½ volume the bass is clean and moderately
loud. If you want to crank the bass up, you can get some room stomping
sound, but it will be distorted at certain levels.
Next, I tested these speakers out on several games including Counterstrike,
Giants, and Thief II. The speakers seemed to perform very well with
these games. They especially produced a nice sounding rifle as I
shot up a few people in CS. :)
To obtain the best performance out of these speakers, I would highly
recommend using them in conjunction with a good soundcard that supports
digital out. After having tested them on the Hercules Game Theatre
with both digital and analog out, there is no contest when saying
that the digital is a whole lot better for these speakers.
|
