And I’ll Bet You Drive a Hopped Up Honda Civic
Written: Jun 16 '02 (Updated Jun 16 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice satellites.
Cons: Poor subwoofer performance.
The Bottom Line: You can do a lot better. Long story short, the subwoofer needs serious work before I can call this a serious speaker system.
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| zero_'s Full Review: Creative Technology Inspireâ„¢ 2400 2 Speakers |
I’ve voiced my opinions on speakers and sound quality before. Avid readers of mine have doubtless heard me wax lyrical about it in the past.
Judging sound quality is a tricky task. There’s no standard for sound – The perceived quality of a sound system, be it a set of speakers or headphones or what have you, will depend on the listener, the music or media being played, what is driving it, how loud it is being played, and a whole host of other variables. To me, the best way to define sound “quality” is a measure of how accurately a sound system can reproduce the sound or music being fed to it. Once again this falls victim to changes in the type of music being played, the quality of the recording (a set of variables in and of itself), and mindset of the listener.
Basically, your mileage may vary. That’s why it’s an opinion.
Multi element speaker systems for computers are growing more and more popular as of recent times. This movement is largely born of the desire for computer users to be able to play sound and not have it… well, suck. The computer audio landscape is a rocky one – As with anything of a vaguely technical nature, manufacturers happily lie, distort, and stretch the truth in the tooth-and-nail battle to win your dollar.
Big numbers impress consumers. This has been a longtime fact of marketing. Thus, prominently printed on any given speaker box is bound to be a PMPO (peak music power output) wattage/power rating, which is a boldfaced lie, a maximum and minimum frequency rating, which is also a boldfaced lie, and an assertion of the utmost quality contained in the speakers therein, which is also usually a boldfaced lie.
But not always.
I suppose you’re wondering when I’ll get to the review. My point here is that you can’t live on numbers alone, and you can’t judge which set of speakers will be right for you solely on the hearsay of one person.
Got that? Good.
I find there are four schools of thought among speaker buyers: The Big Bass school, the Loud school, and the Whatever school. The fourth and most elusive is the school of Moderation, which encompasses anyone who isn’t a flagrant tin-eared git.
The Big Bass folks are the ones that drive around in air dammed Honda Civics that have been dropped so low that they routinely bottom out on passing insects, and pack subwoofers that are significantly heavier than their engines. They tend to go hand-in-hand with the Loud schoolers, who insist on pushing the envelope on the human sensory experience by turning up every speaker they own to the point of complete and total auditory breakdown.
I know several people like this. And I hate them.
The Whatever school, by far the most common, consists of “non critical listeners”, who will be quite happy listening to their shoddy, staticy cassette tapes on their shoddy, staticy Kmart boom boxes. By and large the Whatever schoolers are content with whatever excuse for a set of speakers their computers came packaged with, and that is that.
Dang it, there I go again.
The Creative Inspire speaker set is a simple and understated little 3 piece rig, with two satellites and one “subwoofer” (put in quotes because it is not a true subwoofer ,but merely pretends to be). In the interest of making the above three paragraphs make sense, I would say it would appeal to the anyone subscribing to the Big Bass school of thought. I must say that the satellite speakers on this system – The two smaller ones that are supposed to handle the treble and midrange – don’t sound half bad. The subwoofer, however, leaves quite a bit to be desired in my book. Foremost, it seems to be incapable of producing actual bass level tones. Instead it produces an ugly boom every time a note passes by that it deems low enough. There’s no way around this, as far as I can tell. There’s a “bass level” adjustment knob on the back of the woofer unit, but it merely reduces the frequency of ugly booms and eventually prevents the woofer from making them entirely – Though it still never does anything else.
If you want something that will shake the floorboards, this is the speaker set for you. If you want something that can produce actual tonal bass, keep on walkin’.
While the output of the subwoofer leaves this to be desired, the rest of the system is spot on. For casual listening the satellite speakers can crank out some good notes (with the woofer turned off, obviously) and with the addition of a woofer that actually works could add up to a decent set of speakers.
All three speakers in the set are relatively compact black cubes. The satellites are perhaps four inches to a side, and the woofer is a good twelve. They all have plastic and foam grilles over the drivers. The grille on the woofer comes off easily enough, which is a good thing – The set I used had a loose one and it buzzed every time the woofer boomed. I had to remove it to make it shut up. Talk about adding insult to injury. The grilles on the satellites are either very firmly attached or do not come off. Regardless, they didn’t buzz on my set, so I was content with them. There is a small black volume control widget that comes with the set as well. While you can’t turn the system on and off with it (the power switch is on the back of the woofer), it will control the volume of the rig without leaving you to fiddling with the woofer under your desk. It seems a tad misadjusted to me, though. There was very little middle ground on mine between “full blast” and “off”, so adjust your volume with care.
In the box you get the three speakers, wall wart power pack, and volume control. There’s a little sheet that tells you which end of the thing to plug into your computer, and that’s about it.
For a forty dollar price tag you could certainly wind up with a better set of speakers. Were it not for performance of the woofer I’d say the Inspire 2.1 would be a good rig, but as it stands I suggest you shop around a bit before taking a second look at this one. Not recommended, though your mileage (and opinion) may vary.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
zero_
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Robert "Zero" Drendall
Location: Claymont, DE, United States
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Providing your semi-regular dose of extreme verbosity since somewhere around the turn of the century.
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