7. Lots Of Bass But Little Sensitivity

On playback, you are straightaway surprised by the bass range. It gets carried away quickly and has to be adjusted to the type of program. Fortunately, you can do this with the remote, but it is still a drawback: the subwoofer does not seem optimally adapted to the satellites. What's more, the bass lacks sensitivity. As the response curve shows, it is centered on a "killer" frequency - 80 Hz - which used to be known as the "disco" frequency and still in service. Some people will like it but you could never call it the epitome of musical fidelity. All the more so because it is often hard to find the right balance between subwoofer and satellites. More generally, though the sound reproduction is fairly pleasant, the mid range is a bit neglected and furthermore it soon saturates when you turn the volume up. On the other hand, if a lot of sound is what you want, then this system delivers - especially in the bass range - since it reaches 110 dB SPL!

Top sound level: about 110 dB SPL

The Creative system is even and balanced but the bass notes are soon muted below 80 Hz. There is also a lot of unevenness in a sensitive part of the mid range between 500 Hz and 2 Hz.

Even when we focused our measurements on the deepest bass, we could not get away from the fact that the Creative subwoofer is centered on the 80 to 100 Hz frequencies.