By Blackmarket. on 14th Jul 2003
Blackmarket.'s Ratings
| Value for money | 8/10  |
|---|
| Overall value | 7/10 |
|---|
 Blackmarket.'s recommendation |
Good Points
Looks good for the money.
Good connectivity.
Bad Points
Sub isn't really a sub.
Sound quality.
General Comments
OK, so this is what Acoustic Solutions does - makes cheap bits of kit. This stuff basically does the job of your general hi-fi and home cinema equipment, but costs about 10 times less.
How do they do this? They make it 10 times worse.
This system has Dolby Digital decoding, as well as various DSP modes, optical and digital inputs, and a plain old analogue stereo input.
I like these inputs, as they give you the opportunity of connecting your TV, DVD, video, or pretty much anything if you wanted to.
The question is, would you want to?
Let's start with the sub-woofer. This also has the amp and decoder built into it as well.
It looks quite nice, with lots of red LEDs which light up to let you know what mode you're in. Except you can't see from more than about 1 metre what the lights are supposed to mean because the corresponding writing is tiny and very hard to read. All you can see from your armchair is a light - totally useless. Also when put into standby, the unit flashes one of these LEDs on and off...and on - and then off - which is very annoying and serves no purpose.
Plus the sub enclosure is so small that it's not a sub as it doesn't produce anything like low enough bass. It does it's job to make up for the shortcomings of the tiny satellite speakers though which is enough to make the system sound complete, at least.
The satellites are surprisingly heavy for the size, and come with two stands - to be used fo the rear speakers in most setups, I guess. The stands hold up the speakers, so I suppose they do the job, but they're the most spindly things I've ever seen and are pretty hard to even get to stand up straight. But hey, they hold up the speakers, so who cares.
I actually think Acoustic Solutions have done an OK job on this - it sells at about £100, so they've probably only stuck about £20 of electronics in it, and they've come up with a system that's useful, and actually looks pretty nice.
What I don't like about it is the sound though - it does give you surround sound, and you'll enjoy the feeling of hearing bullets of whatever fly around you, but to me, the attraction of decent home cinema systems is the quality of sound, depth of bass, etc. and this system barely improves the sound quality over your normal TV speaker. But it does improve it, and yes, the improvement you get is worth £100, so go for it, but this system left me craving more bass, more volume and more quality.
