Hearing is one of the five major senses that
humans have. We can here sounds that range around 50Hz and
20KHz which allows us to hear things that are very low and very
high. Speakers have been around for quite a long time and
are in almost every home, connected to a CD player, TV, DVD player,
or many other things.
However another thing that one can use speakers
for are computers. Since they are moving toward a merging
of your home video system to your computer, it would be obvious
that speakers would be something that you would need. We
have moved from speakers that have been directly connected to
the motherboard, and are good for nothing more than basic beeps
of the system, to speaker systems that can rival many standard
systems out today.
Edifier Enterprises have been around for eight
years, and has grown quite a bit moving from China to include
Canada in just two years. They specialize in making genuine
wooden enclosure speaker systems, which is nice to see that they
are actually using wood instead of plastics or other less expensive
substances for speakers. So lets see what this company can
produce for the computer user.
Edifier R501 Speakers
Since we here at Viperlair haven't looked
at too many speakers, what does Edifier include with the speakers
we received. If you want a more detailed specification sheet,
please look at Edifier's site, though we will look at most of
the specifications during our review.
So lets take a quick inventory
of what was inside the box:
- Five satellite speakers
- Subwoofer/amplifier
- Manual
- Five speaker cables (varying lengths)
- Three stereo to stereo RCA cables (6' each)
- Three Stereo (RCA) to 1/8" jack
- Two speaker stands, with screws
- IR remote, with two AAA batteries
We see that all the things you would need
with speakers are included here. From the different length
speaker wires, three shorter and two longer speaker wires.
What was nice to see is that you get cables to connect to either
the computer or a DVD player with all six channels.
The packaging is very professionally done,
with everything in its proper place. The top layer had six
spots, for five speakers and for the accessories (wire, cables,
remote). Underneath that is the subwoofer's location, which
is well packed in plastic and Styrofoam. Gladly batteries
have been included with the remote, unlike many things with the
famous words, batteries sold separately. Now lets look at
the separate parts of the system a little more in-depth.
The remote that is included is of the infrared
variety, with the receiver in the subwoofer itself. There
is the obviously the power button, mute button, and volume button,
just as one would expect from any remote. The majority of
buttons are for controlling the individual sound levels of the
center channel, the surrounds, and the subwoofer, and there is
one button to equalize all three, which is how it is set in all
our tests.
Looking at the speaker itself
we see one interesting fact, there is no tweeter included
with the speaker. The actual woofer is full range and
is 3.5" in size, using a paper coil. The casing
is very small, smaller than most computer speakers, but still
larger than the little cubes that some computer speaker systems
use. Supposedly there is two different speakers, one
for the center speaker and one for all the rest of the speakers,
but I couldn't tell the difference between them. Marking
the speakers, or at least the center channel would be a very
good idea here. All the speakers are magnetically shielded,
so putting them next to your monitor or anything else that
is sensitive to a magnet is okay. The speaker cabinet
itself are made of the wood that many good speakers are made
of, MDF, which is held together with a generous amount of
glue as you can see in the bottom middle picture. The
back of the speaker uses a quick connect speaker connector.
The grill is nothing unusual just a standard plastic grill
with a cloth cover.
NEXT
