Sound Quality

Of course, the most important part of a speaker system should be how good it sounds. When it comes to audio, most people know that $150 can either buy you 15 sets of stereo speakers, or cover half of the sales tax on one cable. There's a wide price/performance range, to put it lightly. As mentioned previously, the sweet spot for many computer/consumer electronics is around or under $200 or so - that's the price which makes a lot of expensive stuff "worth the money," (take the Palm Pilot or Voodoo2/TNT for example).

Given the numbers, you'd expect the 4620s to perform better than Cambridge Soundworks' benchmark SoundWorks series of satellite/subwoofer multimedia speakers. Does it deliver? Quite succinctly, not really. Take a not-so-close look at the subwoofer unit, and you can see that the Labtec dwarfs its competition. Not to say that a larger subwoofer means better bass, but it's quite obvious that Labtec has poured a good deal of its resources into this aspect of its package.

Bigger is not Better

Judging from size alone, I would have expected the 4620s to be incredibly bassy. Instead, I was pleasantly pleased to hear the Labtecs' smooth, dull lows, without much exaggeration or discreet coloration. While not as clean as the bass from the Soundworks (amazing considering the compact size of the Cambridge unit), the 4620s did what the Soundworks couldn't - the bass really kicks in wonderfully at higher volumes, especially when the bass knob was fully turned up. At the standard setting, the lows were much too muddled and incoherent. In fact, the Labtecs were best-used at higher volumes, at which they beat out some high-profile competition in our subjective tests, including the Microsoft Digital Sound System 80.

The treble was unfortunately less tuned - even with a separate tweeter, the Labtecs couldn't hold step with the Soundworks in terms of sheer, clinical sound reproduction, though the sheer size of the system lets you crank up the noise level up past the limits of a smaller system. In most cases, I wasn't satisfied by the equalized settings unless I set the treble/bass controls both to maximum, on the physical dial as well as in Windows.

The problem with maximizing both hardware and software settings is the coloration which occurs, as the treble and bass outpace the midrange. Unfortunately, without these adjustments, the sound from the 4620s is simply too dull and muddled.