Moving on to the sub/amp
we see that it is a down facing, side ported subwoofer.
The front of the sub has the IR receiver as well as the volume
display. The side of the sub is bare except for the
air port on the right side of the sub. The back of the
sub is the location of all the inputs and speaker outputs,
as well as the power switch. Moving inside the sub we
see the subwoofer, with the power adaptor right in front of
the sub. To the upper right is the tuning port, and
in front is the connector for the IR receiver and volume display.
Looking at the amp portion of the speaker we see that it is
very simply laid out, without much in the way of heatsinks,
unlike my other sub, which has a large heatsink on the back
of the sub. The cables inside the sub are the amplified
sound to the different speakers as well as the front panel
of the sub. Like the speakers, the sub is magnetically
shielded, which is odd for a subwoofer. The actual sub
is an 8" speaker, inside a MDF enclosure, held together
with plenty of glue again. Now lets take a look at the
back panel by itself.
Moving from the bottom right
in a counter-clockwise direction we see the power switch,
nothing really special there. Next is the line-in which
has the six different channels all marked clearly, from left
to subwoofer, using standard RCA cables. Lastly there
is the speaker outputs, for the speaker wire. They use
the quick connector for the wire, with the five separate connectors
for the five different speakers that you connect to it.
Now that we've looked at the product, lets see how it sounds,
because if it looks cool but sounds bad, then its a useless
product. So lets see the results.
Benchmark System
| CPU: |
AMD
Athlon XP 2500+ (1833MHz) Barton Core
|
| Motherboard: |
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Bios 1008 |
| Memory: |
1
- 256MB Corair PC3200, 1 - 256MB OCZ PC3500 - (133MHz,
2-2-5-2)
|
| Hard
Drives : |
40GB
Maxtor 6E040L0, 40GB Maxtor 6L040J2, 2*80GB Maxtor SATA
6Y080M0
|
| Video
Card: |
ATi
AiW Radeon 9000 Pro - 64MB |
| Operating
System: |
Windows
XP Pro SP1 - DirectX 9b |
| Drives: |
Asus
DRW-0804P 8X DVD +/-R/RW |
| Cards: |
Creative
Labs Sound Blaster Audigy |
| Cooler: |
Alpha
PAL-8045T |
| Case: |
InWin
Q500 |
| Power
Supply: |
Sea
Sonic SS-400FB |
| Software: |
Winamp
2.81 |
Unreal
Tournament 2004 |
|
WinDVD
4 |
Splinter
Cell: Pandora Tomorrow |
|
Tested
Speakers |
| Receiver: |
Panasonic SA-HE70 |
Edifier R501
AMP |
| Front Speakers: |
Quest Q660
(20-120W @ 6ohms) |
Edifier R501
(6W @ 8ohms) |
| Center Speakers: |
Quest Q3.4C
(15-70W @ 6ohms) |
Edifier R501
(8W? @ 8ohms) |
| Rear Speakers: |
Omage
Fusion F-2 (40W @ 8ohms) |
Edifier R501
(6W @ 8ohms) |
| Subwoofer: |
Kenwood
103SW (100W @ 4ohms) |
Edifier R501
(30W @ 8ohms) |
For audio testing we used
two different songs, first Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with
real canons, and bells. Secondly We tested a "Weird
Al" Yankovic song UHF from the CD Greatest Hits Volume
II. For the five channel test we used Star Trek First
Contact, the first battle scene between the Borg and Federation.
We also tested using two games UT2004 and Splinter Cell Pandora
Tomorrow, to test positional audio (Splinter Cell) as well
as the subwoofer (UT2004).
The sound levels between the two systems were
basically equal, at about 75dBA from the listening point.
For UT2004 I ran through a couple of levels, with the audio set
in H/W 3D + EAX mode. With Splinter Cell I ran through the
final part of the U.S. Embassy level, with the audio virtualization
set to high, 3D Audio enabled and EAX HD enabled. Now lets
look at how our tester found these speakers.
Test Results
First lets get a quick look at my impressions
of the two systems with the two test games. I found that
both systems managed to place the sounds of the games accurately,
with the sub working pretty well with the rocket launchers' boom
coming through very well. One thing I did notice is that
both systems started breaking up after a little while. The
Edifier speakers broke up much quicker, after about 5-10 minutes,
but the other speakers also eventually started breaking up, though
not quite the same problems as the Edifier system and not as quickly.
Now is the music/DVD testing. One common
problem shared by both systems is that the bass power was severely
lacking. First the impressions of the Edifier speakers.
The symbols in the 1812 Overture were very clean and crisp, this
is interesting considering that the speakers do not have a tweeter
in any form. The horns in the music were somewhat dull sounding,
while speech had a slight bit of hissing in it. The overall
sound was very bright, while it was bordering on the harsh.
Now for my patchwork system. The overall
sound was very crisp, though there was some harshness when there
were horns and the like. Symbols however were weaker than
the Edifier speakers, with less resonance to the sound as they
didn't continue on after the initial sound. There was a
good bit of hissing in some of the music at the higher end of
the range. Overall the Edifier speakers seemed to offer
better sound quality but had a little bit of a problem with games,
which used a lot more bass.
Conclusion
We've looked at all parts of these speakers,
so lets take a quick look at what we have found.
First the packaging, what do we see?
The box that the speakers come in is pretty big, but to hold a
8" subwoofer, and five speakers it is expected. Everything
in the box was packaged very well, with nothing loose, except
the manual which didn't matter. The products included with
the speakers was as complete as you could find, with 5 sets of
speaker wires, of varying lengths. The inclusion of RCA
cables to connect either a computer or other six channel system
was nice, as was the included remote with batteries.
The actual units themselves are also something
to look at. The satellite speakers were all identical, at
least they seemed to be anyway, though the center channel was
supposed to be slightly more powerful. They were all made
of MDF, a standard for many speakers, and relied on a single woofer
for all frequencies above the range of the sub to about 20KHz.
The sub was a rather large beast, as long as the 10" Kenwood
sub we used otherwise, but about half as tall as the other sub.
The amplifier portion of the Edifier sub didn't have much in the
way of heatsinks on the various components unlike the Kenwood,
which has a large aluminum heatsink protruding from the back of
the unit, though the Edifier sub didn't get too warm. The
back of the unit has all the connectors properly labeled, but
I was a little disappointed that there was no optical or digital
inputs, as this would have meant a one cable install.
Now for the sound quality of the unit.
Quite frankly I was pretty surprised that it sounded pretty good
in both music and DVD's, with nice highs even without a single
tweeter. For gaming I did notice that it started to crackle
after a short time, making gaming something that isn't quite a
recommended pursuit with these speakers, though the sound card
did have something to do with this.
Now on to the most important area of all,
price. The price is near $100 US, which when you compare
it to offerings from Altec Lansing and Creative Labs, and Logitech
it is pretty close to the others. With what you get from
the Edifier speakers, 8" sub, IR remote, and all wood speakers,
makes it a pretty good value for the budget minded 5.1 speakers.
Good Points
- Good quality sound
- All wood system
- 8" subwoofer
- IR remote
- All speakers/sub magnetically shielded
Bad Points
- No Tweeter
- Some sound issues in games
- No Digital/Optical in
- No real center channel (not marked)
Final Words
This system has all the basic features that
you would look for in a speaker system, wood based, large subwoofer,
and decent speakers. While they might not be the most power
system in the world they provide very nice quality, the only things
I'd add is a true center channel and tweeters to the speakers.
If
you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
HOME
