9. Altec Lansing 641

The first thing you notice about the 641 is that it looks like a hi-fi sound system. The subwoofer is imposing and augurs sound of unusual force - in fact, it has no less than 100 RMS watts, which is more than respectable. The four speakers are not left out and are so carefully designed they could quite easily fit into a living room without spoiling the interior decoration. They have a three inch driver for medium frequencies and a one inch tweeter for the highs. They power at 25 watts each, so the sound strength is shared equally with the subwoofer. The 641 comes with a wired remote control also of very elegant design. It has three buttons to control volume, low and high frequencies and a fourth one for selecting the playback mode: Stereo, Stereo X2 and Quad. For the connections, Altec Lansing has opted for simplicity with just two mini-jack analog inputs. It's a pity that there is no digital input in keeping with a system of this kind.

For music, the four speakers are about as true as many hi-fi systems, even better than some. The quality of the medium frequencies and the clearness of the high ones, which hardly saturate at all, is a decided asset when it comes to classical music. The subwoofer has unheard-of strength, with the deep percussive sounds needed for listening to rock and modern music. The 32 Hz threshold is maintained in practice, which is a good sign. Note too that, as is so often the case with Altec Lansing, low frequencies are given definite prominence if you use the default settings. Music lovers will of course lower them to fine-tune the balance in the 641 system. The stereo image and instrument distribution are excellent, even if they don't reach the same level as the MegaWorks 510D from Cambridge SoundWorks.

In games, the sound is well distributed over the four speakers, and gamers will find themselves completely surrounded.. Explosions and gunfire sound real. And the 641 can be used for watching DVDs on a PC, even without a digital input for 5.1 sound. You can downmix on four speakers using a recent playback program, which doesn't give the positioning quality of a 5.1 system but is still quite good, especially with such speakers. All the more so because the sound volume that a 641 can reach goes much higher than the usual systems for PCs, and can quite easily fill a large room.