Logitech X-540 5.1 Speakers

Reviews: Multimedia

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
Logitech
May. 3, 2007

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Sound Quality

The X-540s were tested using a PC with a Soundblaster X-Fi Music card, with the PC's volume at low to minimize over-amplification.

The speakers were first tested with a recording of digitally-produced tones starting at 20Hz and moving linearly up the scale to 20,000Hz.

20Hz barely audible
30-40Hz audible
50-2,500Hz strong
3,000-13,000Hz good
13,000-17,000Hz good, slight distortion
18,000Hz slightly audible, strange noise
20,000Hz inaudible

These speakers drive consistent, level volume across all low and middle frequencies, and hold up well into the higher frequencies. The fact that you can even hear the subwoofer down to 20Hz is incredible.

At 18,000Hz and higher, fiddling with the volume caused some severe leakage through the rheostat, and the speakers emitted some strange harmonic noises; this is probably because the rheostat is new and not at all broken in, but it was fairly alarming to hear. Slight popping associated with new rheostats was evident at all frequencies, and even when the speakers were unplugged. This requires that the volume knob is in just the right place, so it is completely avoidable.

Following with a music test, the drop-off at high frequencies was compounded with some warping of the high-end; this is realistically because the satellites' drivers are good for mid and high frequency sound, but not both at the same time. For fidelity, I ran a course of tunes:

Selections from Tool's 10,000 Days and Anne-Sophie Mutter's performances of Mozart's violin concertos. These feature a lot of precise, rapid notes that together, span the whole audio spectrum. The speakers did great at low and middle volumes, but distorted the high-frequency sounds. The sound in general was a little soft, but only high frequency sounds were distorted.

Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire can't be played softly, and the X-540 had no problems reproducing the tracks at all but the highest volumes, where again, the mid- and high-frequency sounds mashed together.

Finally, the pure vocals of the Real Group's a capella and Ella Fitzgerald's perfection was delivered with nothing but precision and respect.

So far, these speakers have not failed any mark, at least, not in light of what they cost. What's even more impressive is that enabling the Matrix feature honestly improved stereo playback. While it did the opposite of surround-sound, focusing the playback through the center channel, enabling Matrix audio seemed to change the cutoff frequencies through the speakers and overall dampened distortion without adding to or changing the sound or character of the music.

For gaming sound, several of the Fighter's Guild's quests were completed in Oblivion, and again the boys of the Seventh Armored forced the Desert Fox into retreat after a quick re-tread of Call of Duty 2, and the whole of both sessions was great. There was no impromptu mixing of channels and in general, direction-based sounds were faithfully projected. They delivered what they were meant to.

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Page 3 of 4

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Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Taking a Closer Look, Setup & Features
Page 3: Sound Quality
Page 4: Conclusion

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