Pros: Inexpensive; great sounding bass with very decent mids-highs...
Cons: Design could be a bit nicer, and the controls aren't very good...
The Bottom Line: This is a great set for anyone who wants speakers for music listening and general computer use. They sound great and are very affordable.
Mad-Sci's Full Review: Altec Lansing ACS 33 2 Speakers
At way less that $100 these speakers are a real steal. I purchased a pair about a week ago, and they sound just great. I had been using some really old Altec Lansing’s before these (my old ones were pretty crappy), and I thought I would see what they had to offer in today’s market.
Altec Lansing is a great manufacturer of high-quality speakers and offer over 30 different speaker sets for your home computer. Depending on what you want to do, this set may or may not be for you. If you are looking to do a lot of gaming, I would take a look at some of their 5-piece systems so that you can have the full 3d immersion effect, hearing sounds not just to the front left and right, but to the back left and right also.
I am not big into gaming, so I thought I would just stick with a less expensive set for just listening to music or watching the occasional movie. For people who are looking to listen to some decent tunes while on your computer, but do not want to spend too much, this is the set for you.
The Sound
This set has a phenomenal sound for a sub $50 unit and covers low, mid, and high tones very well. These speakers rarely distort, unless turned way up. The one thing that I am a little picky about is that they do not go very loud without distorting a bit. My system is in my basement, so if I am playing a song and want to hear it upstairs in my kitchen or something, it is very difficult to do without having the speakers distort a bit. This is the case with most speakers of this price range though, so I am not going to dock many marks for that. I am now going to rate each individual part of the sound of these speakers: Lows, Mids, and Highs. Please bare with me :)
Lows
The lows for this set are very good, the sound is very deep and powerful. I sometimes think that the sub could be a bit louder, but I am a bit of a bass hog, so I will never think the sub is loud enough. I have never had any distortion with the bass though, which is really good, because nothing ruins a song more than cracked-up bass during a nice low note. Overall, I think the lows in this set are about as good as you are going to get for a sub $50 unit.
I give them: 8.5/10
for low tones
Mids
The mids in this set are quite good and incorporate a great mix of bass and treble. The speakers have never distorted for me when playing mid-tones, even when played quite loud. I have not experienced any problems with the mid range tones that this set delivers, so I will move along quite quickly to the highs.
I give them: 9.5/10
for mid-range tones
Highs
This is the part that gets a little tricky. During the high tones is when this set, as in most sets, distorts the most. During normal use, however, these speakers do not distort very often; they only distort when turned up quite a bit. I will occasionally turn the volume up on the speakers for a song that I really enjoy; in this set, doing this tends to cause some minor distortions in the sound. Fortunately, I do not do this too often, and so I rarely ever hear these speakers distort at all. And we must take into consideration again, the price; these are not top-of-the-line speakers, so we should not expect them to be.
I give them: 7.5/10
for high tones
and I give them: 8.5/10
for overall sound
Design
The design for these speakers are pretty basic and non-adjustable. I would have like a bit more freedom to position the speakers so that they face up a bit more instead of directly forward. Also, it would have been really nice to have a headphone jack on this unit. Currently, if I want to listen to music with my headphones, or I don't want to disturb someone else in the room while I am on the computer, I have to remove the speaker jack from the back of my computer and replace it with my headphone jack; no big deal, but it gets annoying sometimes. The subwoofer is nicely designed however, and fits snugly between my system and desk hardly even noticeable (these speakers should be heard and not seen).
I give them: 7/10
for design
Controls
My final sub-category. The controls are not very good; in fact, there is only one control, a single dial on the right speaker. This dial turns the unit on and off and also adjusts the volume. This can get a little irritating when I want to shut the speakers off, but I have them at an optimal volume for music/games. It is also annoying when you turn them on and are not sure how loud they will be until you get blasted out of the room by a startup sound. Overall, this set is a pain in the butt to control, and often frustrates me a bit.
I give them: 4/10
for controls
Overall
These speakers are pretty decent, and I would recommend them to people looking for an inexpensive unit with enough power to keep the average person satisfied. If you are looking for gaming speakers, or ones with a bit better sound, Altec will probably have a solution for you at:
http://www.altecmm.com
High-performance 3-piece system Compact speaker satellites with 10 watts of power Powered 15-watt subwoofer Volume control and power-on LED Magnetical...More at Amazon Marketplace
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