Old but not obsolete
Written: Feb 23 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, crisp, and satisfying.
Cons: crappy tripods
The Bottom Line: You want a cheap 4.1 speaker that sounds expensive? Fps2000 is your ticket.
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| vhylynx's Full Review: Creative Technology FPS2000 4 Speakers |
By the time i write this review, i have been using fps2000 for a month with sound blaster live value.
I bought these speakers based on positive reviews on the net. And you know what? They are right.
I always want to buy the best product ever in the market, but i realize that the best speakers can only be enjoyed to the fullest if you have the opportunity to listen to them in very loud volume. I live in an apartment, and my baby son was just born last week ( feb 13 ), i believe i will never ever got a chance to enjoy loud sound! Why do i have to pay 300 dollars for the new Klipsch V2-400 if i cannot enjoy its main attraction?
One thing that made me hesitate to buy fps2000 was this : the reviews i got from the net were either 1 or 2 years old, or written by people who never got a chance to listen to another set of speakers. Both type of reviews have one bad side : they dont offer you comparison to the latest speakers available in the market. Fps2000 was released for the first time around 2 years ago! I was even kinda dissapointed when i found that there are lots of people in 3dsoundsurge.com forum saying that Boston Acoustic BA4800 is the best set of speakers under 150 dollars! Well, it was too late already, but honestly, Fps2000 doesnt dissapoint me.
I bought Fps2000 from Buy.com. I sent them money order via overnight delivery mail, and 4 days later the speakers arrived in my mailbox. Spent 109 dollars for the speakers, 16 dollars for shipping and handling, around 126 dollars total.
Setting Up :
It took me 40 minutes to set the speakers ( it was timed on purpose for this review ), with additional
15 minutes to tidy up the cables. The cables are "bare" cables. I thought they were very inconvenient, since it was just like connecting cables to your grandpa's sound system. But i realized this is a good design decision. If the cables were chewed by your cat or dog, you can easily replace them with a new one without having to connect them to a jack.
Then, i instantly realized that the tripod for the rear speakers were crappier than what they have said in the reviews. These tripods dont even stand very well. Everytime i move them, 2 of the legs would snap off...really frustrating. Do i have to re-attach the legs ten times in a day??!! What worse, they are only about 45 centimeters tall. Not tall enough! I want them to be at least
on my ear level when i sit down in front of my pc. In the end, i got rid of those crappy tripods. I am lucky that my pc desk is symmetric, so i positioned the rear speakers on the edge of the desk, facing about 45 degrees outward ( while the front speakers naturally positioned just beside my 17 inches monitor ). I put the subwoofer in the corner, far from my cpu because it doesnt have magnetic shield. Besides, according to lots of audiophiles, the corner is the perfect place for the sub. You cannot tell where the source of the lower frequency sound is.
Well, now is the time to talk about the sound quality. Be aware that speaker placement, and the room acoustic ( such as size ) matter. At first i positioned the subwoofer about 25 centimeters away from the wall. I heard "Dhlump, Dhlump" thumping sound, instead of "THUMP, THUMP". Heheheh i am not a native english speaker, i think that is the best way to describe what i heard. The bass was slightly distorted, but after i put it closer to the wall, around 5 centimeters away, the problem solved.
First, for videogames.
I was dissapointed to find that Startrek Voyager - Elite Force doesnt support 3D positional audio with EAX. It supports only A3D! Fortunately the 3D sound effect worked beautifully with Hitman. I can pinpoint the direction of gunfire directly from behind, even though the rear speakers placement, theoretically, is not ideal. Believe me, it worked. The zings and zangs of bullets all around
you sound so cool! The sound of explosions sound like the way it should be heard. Boom!
Second, for dvd movies.
I found that 4.1 set of speakers is not ideal for dvd movies. Why? In 5.1 format, you get a center channel. Without the center channel, the voice of the actors would sound tiny. You will try to increase the volume, but it will make the sound of explosions way too loud. Fortunately, the sb live do a good job of creating the "phantom" channel. Since the front speakers are not place too wide apart, the lack of real center speaker is not a problem. The problem comes from the rear speakers. Fps2000 doesnt have a decoder to decode AC3 signal. AC3 is basically the way sound is recorded to provide you with 360 degrees of enveloping sound. My dvd hardware is sigma's realmagic hollywood, with pioneer dvdrom 12x. Turned out that the hardware doesnt support 4.1 speaker setup. That means both of the rear speakers can only stream one rear channel. I cannot tell the difference between rear left explosion and rear right explosion.
P.S.: the first time i tried to watch dvd, the rear speaker did not produce any sound. It turned out that i had to select "watching movies" in sb live surround mixer. Thanks to Mark at 3Dsoundsurge.com for that.
According to 3dsoundsurge.com, i should have used a software dvd player like PowerDVD or WinDVD to solve this problem, or get an external AC3 decoder. So there. But i have to say that i still think this doesnt detract too much, considering that the speaker costs only 109 dollars.
Third, mp3s.
There are 2 mp3 songs that i originally thought had defect. You see, mp3 was created without audiophiles in mind. So i accused these 2 particular songs as being recorded by "ignorant" users. These 2 songs are
Madonna - Take a Bow
Rockwell - Knife
( the bitrate for both is 320 bps )
Using my previous speaker, Boston BA635, the bass distorted at even a medium volume, i said, no way! Gamespot.com said BA635 is one of the best small speakers on the market! So it must be the mp3's fault! I am wrong. With Fps2000, these songs sound perfect. Any kind of songs and music sound good!
Unfortunately i cannot tell you how it sounds using the digital connector, because my soundblaster live value doesnt have digital output. According to lots of people in online forums, the difference between analog and digital sound on Fps2000 is minimal. It kills hissing, but honestly i dont notice hissing sound from analog output. Maybe that is because i almost never force the speaker to get very loud. Loud, in my case, is maximum windows volume, maximum sb live surround mixer volume, maximum winamp volume, and half volume on the speaker itself. Never tried beyond that half, i am afraid of upsetting the neighbor, waking up my baby boy, and damaging the speakers itself.
These babies can get very, very loud for my 3 times 6 meters room, which is virtually "empty". I sleep on the carpet, if you are curious, and i dont have any desk, tables or anything like that beside my pc desk. I really want to give a perfect score, but the tripod stands are horrible, creative did not give me software dvd that utilize all 4 satellites to the max, and i cannot choose the color of the speakers. My keyboard and my monitor are beige. They looked ugly together.
Anyway, those are all minor ramblings. I give these babies a 4 stars!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
vhylynx
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Member: felix suwarno
Location: chicago IL USA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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