4. Altec Lansing VS-4121

Altec has stayed in the same vein as for many of its earlier systems which were quiet and subdued, all in gray with not too many shiny bits. You may like it or find it a bit dull, depending on your taste. The satellites are slim with two little dome/cone tweeters on the front but the base has a big bulge containing a loudspeaker pointing towards the desktop it is set on. This is a neat way of keeping the satellites slim, stabilizing them and ensuring mid-range sound is broadcast in all directions. This design naturally requires you to set them on a surface with no cloth to absorb the sound! The controls - on/off, volume, high and low note adjustment - are all on the front of the right satellite and there is a headphone jack on the side.

The subwoofer is very classical to look at with a 165 mm boomer on the front. The acoustic load is a bass-reflex with the port outlet below the boomer. Oddly enough, Altec seems very quiet about its system's power capacity because there is no mention of it on the packaging. They prefer to talk about its top sound level (97 dB), but that is no more explicit. In fact, this system is the least powerful of all those we tested, though, as you will see, that is no drawback.