Altec Lansing MX5021 2.1 Speaker System

Reviews: Multimedia

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Mike McCormick
Kurtis
AltecLansing
Sep. 13, 2005

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Setup

Piece of pie, easy as cake. However you want to look at it. You only have to make a few connections! two speaker wires from the woofer to each satellite, a wire from controller to woofer, a wire from computer to woofer, then plug the woofer into the wall outlet. Gosh, I think it took me longer to write about setting these speakers up than to actually set the speakers up. **Note: The only place I goofed was by putting the woofer next to my monitor. If you do the same, a quick degauss will fix the problem. The satellites are shielded, but the woofer is not. Of course, if I actually read the instructions it could have been avoided.

Testing

Ok, enough of the stuff that makes my editors happy and on to the stuff that makes you readers happy. WOW!!! Sometimes I can be longwinded, but these made me speechless. Sound came out of these speakers with authority. It only took my downstairs neighbor about 15 seconds to start banging ferociously on the ceiling to tell me to turn the "noise" down.

Music

Running through my standard compilations of music, I found these speakers to be phenomenal. The lead guitar from Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" was outstanding. The bass guitar from Primus and Ozzy doing their version of "N.I.B" (Nativity in Black) had me playing air guitar like I was at the concert. The drums from Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" came through loud and clear. Then I played some really bass-heavy songs like The Propellerhead's "Spybreak" (yeah, the one from "The Matrix"), Harold Falthermeyer's "Axel F", Michael Jackson's "Thriller", and Beastie Boy's "Intergalactic." I got just a hint of distortion from "Intergalactic" but it was difficult for me to notice.

Here's a partial list of other songs I tested:
"Sand Storm" by Darude, "Days go By" by Dirty Vegas, "Woo Hoo" by Blur, "You can do it" by Ice Cube, "Pipeline" by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Dick Dale, "Voodoo" by Godsmack, "Show me your P****" by Lords of Acid, "One of These Days" by Pink Floyd, "Feel so Numb" by Rob Zombie, "Let Forever Be" by The Chemical Brothers, and "Lagrange" by ZZ Tops.

For those of you that think I am biased towards classic rock, techno, rap, and more classic rock, I spun an old favorite: Wagner's "Ride of the Valkeries." It was cool, clear, and crisp. In fact, I performed my own version of "Apocalypse Now". For those of you who don't know this movie, it's the same movie that has "I love the smell of napalm in the morning". One of the best beginnings of any war movie, period. Anyway, there was no disappointment in sound quality when jumping from the digitization of today's music to the upper echelon of classical sounds.

Movies

I forgot how bad my TV/DVD setup is for watching movies. When I watched "The Matrix" on my PC, I enjoyed sound superior to my old setup. Honestly, just going to stereo sound quality made a huge difference; I highly doubt I will be watching any more DVDs with my old setup. (My old setup was at 15 inch TV with a mono-speaker.) The MX 5021 speakers worked quite well for watching movies. The lobby scene in "The Matrix" was approaching theater quality. Distortions were nowhere to be found and bass rumbled with every explosion. Obviously these speakers are no competition to a 5.1 system, there is no comparison between stereo and surround sound. However, if you can only afford a 2.1 speaker set, you will not be disappointed with these speakers for movies.

Games

For the gaming test, I plugged in some of my old favorites: Unreal Tournament 2003, Doom 3, and Call of Duty. Several times I found myself jumping in freight whilst playing Doom 3 - the Imps were certainly coming over these speakers loud and clear. In Call of Duty, you really feel like bullets are flying overhead. I will definitely continue using these speakers for gaming. My neighbors will probably not like me as much anymore, since the bass really comes through when the mortar shells fall - I never was the headset type. Even with the volume level set to about 25%, the downstairs neighbors knocked on the ceiling a few times for me to turn it down. The MX 5021 performed flawlessly as a set of PC gaming speakers.

General Use

During the general use of these speakers, I did find a few slight annoyances. First, the bases of the satellites are on the small side. They have a high center of gravity and I found them to be as tipsy as Grandma during the holidays. Altec Lansing does include wall mounting hardware for the satellites, so it would pay to mount them to something a bit sturdier. The wall mounting hardware is a small piece of plastic that screws to the back for the speaker and has an eyelet for the head of a screw. The remote control also annoyed me on occasion... Sometimes, when adjusting the volume level, the system would make sporadic jumps to much higher volumes. My roommates were not fans of such jumps in volume level, particularly not when it happened in the middle of the night. Lastly, I think Altec Lansing could improve upon the 5 LED indicator lights by increasing their numbers to something more like 10 or 20 LEDs. This would give the user a better feel for the current levels of volume, treble and bass.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Impressions / A Closer Look
Page 3: Setup / Testing
Page 4: Conclusion

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by Frosty on September 13, 2005 - 4:46 pm

ooo sweet my bro is looking for new speakers i will tell him about these, all he buys is altec lansing....

2 - Posted by mike on September 13, 2005 - 4:56 pm

we will be rocking our house party with these bad boys this weekend. You may want to base the value of these by with the number neighbors that we piss off.

3 - Posted by Frosty on September 13, 2005 - 5:54 pm

ahhahaha, sadly these speakers are out of my bros price range, even though they are kinda cheap for there quality....i might buy them for him as a gift...

4 - Posted by Bowler27 on November 25, 2007 - 3:48 pm

Does anyone know the cable length to the two satelite speakers please.

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