I bought these speakers about a month ago. I've spent Sunday afternoon
on Tottenham Court Road, going trough all the electronics shops
searching for an active speaker system. Originally I was after a
decent 2+1 system.I wanted the speakers mainly for listening to music, either MP3s from
my computer or my MP3 CD walkman (Sony one as well). I listen to all
sorts of music, bit of classical, a lot of jazz, quite a bit of rock
and some quite recent nujazz / funk stuff. For that reason I was
discouraged, by a few people independently, from buying a 2+1
system. Apparently they're not very good at reproducing mid-range
frequencies and generally better for games and films than music.
What they offered me were these speakers and a similar thing from
Bose, that was about 100 pounds though. I didn't want to spent quite
that much and so I bought the Sony ones.
When you unwrap them the first thing you might notice is that they are
quite heavy and the second thing you might notice is although they
look small from the front, they are actually good 12cm long. The cable
connecting the speakers is quite long but not quite as long as I would
like it to be, only about 2 meters - clearly designed to be placed on
a desk. There are two inputs, which is ideal for me: I can connect
both my MP3 Walkman and my computer. Oh and there is also a headphones
output, but I don't have much use for it. The on/off button
illuminated by a green light, when the unit is on. The volume knob is
solid, if a bit on the small side. It turn very smoothly and does not
feel loose at all, which makes it nicely simple to adjust the volume
by small amounts, exactly to the level you want. Overall I must say
that the speakers look quite.
The sound quality is very good as far as I can tell (I don't claim to
be an expert), no cracling distortions even at high volumes. Each
speaker has two components - a generic speaker and then a smallish
subwoofer. I'd imagine that a big wooden subwoofer unit under the
table would be able to crank up louder base, but as the music I listen
to is not based solely on low frequency booms and few tweets, I'm very
happy with it. If you're one of the people who think that there is
nothing else in music but base, then there are better speakers for you
to buy. For the rest of us, they really deliver. I was surprised how
load these smallish speakers are, I'd imagine they could even
entertain a large living room full of people talking loudly at a
party.
Overall I guess they're good value for money. I was considering whether to give them a score of 4 or 5, but
since they exceeded my expectations by far, I decided for 5 in the
end.
