Good Crisp Sound (Creative FPS1500)

Member Name: manic_man

Product:	Creative FPS1500
Date:	16/06/01 (830 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Four Speakers, Well Priced, Very Clear Crisp Sound

Disadvantages: No 5th Middle (5.1) Sattelite

After buying my Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 a little while ago I suddenly found my two speaker set a little lacking and therefore decided to buy myself a new set of speakers to actually make my purchase worthwile! I decided that I would get a Four point set with four sattelite speakers and a sub-woofer. I looked at many incarnations of this setup, initally at the Creatve Labs/Cambridge Soundworks (CL/CS from now on!) FPS1000 and the alternatives from other companys such as labtec. Just as I was about to buy the Labtec incarnation the new FPS1500 from CL/CS appeared on Dabs.com. I researched them and decided to buy them in the end. My budget had been around £50 and they met this criteria. They also had slightly larger and therefore upgraded sattelites, more importantly however they also had an upgraded sub-woofer over the FPS1000. This had been the main point I had used when choosing the Labtec's initially as I had heard that the FPS1000 sub-woofer was a but lacking and was even prone to blowing up when the system was turned right up! The new sub-woofer is a totally redesigned shape and looks about 200% better!

When I finally got them I took about 3 hours installing them. A word of warning, if you are going to get a four speaker system, think about where the rear speakers are going to go before hand! This is where my major gripe with the systemn comes in. Although they came with everything you needed to fix them to a wall ot to have them freestanding, they only came with about (dont quote me on this) 5 meteres of cabling per speaker. This is fine for the front speakers but if you are trailing the speaker cable around the edge of the room, under the carpet to the wall behind you then it is probably not going to be enough. Luckily, all I needed to do was buy another 5 metre Phono-2-Phono cable and split it (1 section of the cable only was needed for each speaker.) Once the system was set up the first thing I did was play a CD through them. I was impressed inst
antly! I have been a music fan for years and consider the HiFi I have in my room to be very good, however the sound given out by these easily superceeds it, hence the reason all of my CD's are now played through my computer!

The sub-woofer certainly is good. It is made out of ABS plastic. Although many specialists prefer wood, the plastic gives a good sound and emits a healthy amount of bass. It has a dial on the back which actually allows you to adjust its bass output, although I have found its default setting to be the best. Although the sattelites are small they are very good quality, alo made out of plastic they have a metal grill on the front and small plastic stands with rubber feet on if you are not going to mount them. They give out a clear crisp sound and I have found that they do not distort at high volumes. The system also comes with a seperate volume controller. This is mounted on the end of a cable that is about half a metre long, it also comes with a VERY sticky pad to allow you to attach it to your monitor or your desk etc. i like this touch alot as it allows me to have my volume dial in a convenient place. it's also worth noting that this is also used as the off "switch" and has a power LED built in to it.

When coupled with a four speaker capable sound card, such as the SB live! series these speakers give out a very good sound and supply a very immersive gaming experience especially when the game supports API's such as EAX or A3D or even better EAX2!

I have no problems recommending these speakers to anyone looking for a good value but very high quality set of surround speakers.

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