Posted: October 28th, 2002
Written by: Justin "The Sheriff" Woods

Sound quality & conclusion

Sound Quality
As I have mentioned when reviewing speakers in the past, the task of grading a speakers sound quality is subjective, and as they say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I want to use that phrase in the current context and say, "Beauty is in the ear of the beholder". I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the Pulse-420s. The sound was bass-heavy, which is nice in some respects, but just came out sounding, well…"farty". Quake 3 shotgun blasts sound good, but when you turn the sound up any further than about 4 or 5 (out of 10), the sound just gets muddy, and the sub sounds like it's going to keel over. Music is the same way, in fact, I notice a distinct flatness to instruments in songs which normally stand out. An example would be on 311's CD, Transistor, they have a song called "Beautiful Disaster", which has a very punchy, slappy bass drum sound. You really couldn't hear that, but more of a dull thumping.

Conclusion When all is said and done, these speakers won't produce the highest quality sound, and for $39.95, you can get a way better set of PC Works speakers from Cambridge Soundworks. I really wanted to like these speakers, but with no separate bass control, volume and headphone control on the satellite, flat, muddy sound; and no hardware for mounting the speaker, I just cannot recommend it. I know Labtec can do way better than this, and when I spoke to the rep, she mentioned that they were revamping their entire line. Let's hope the new speakers are a lot better.

Rating: 60%

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