Cambridge SoundWorks

What do you get when you cross five tiny speakers and a sub-woofer with an amplifier? Sheer entertainment. The Cambridge SoundWorks Desktop Theater 5.1 speaker system produces six-channel Dolby Digital Surround Sound that’s sheer pleasure to your ears. It has four 3” satellite speakers, two of which come with two sets of tripod floor stands. There’s one 3.5” cube center speaker, and a compact sub-woofer. Finally, these are all connected together through a decoder/control unit, which acts as the amplifier. 

Each of the satellite speakers receives 5 W from the amplifier, while the central speaker and sub-woofer receive 15 W each. 

We tested the whole unit using Creative’s Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, which supports environmental 3D Surround Sound. Connecting the speakers is a simple job, and we managed to do so without scrolling through the manuals. There’s a test button on the amplifier that generates white noise from each speaker to ensure it’s working properly. 

The amplifier unit has lots of controls that let you configure the speakers for the kind of audio you want to listen to. It has three modes–for listening to music, watching a movie, or enabling Surround Sound. The latter doesn’t use the sub-woofer unit–it uses only the remaining speakers–to generate high-quality Surround Sound. 

We placed the speakers in four corners with a listener in the center, and played a variety of audio samples. These included some audio samples that generate music in various environments like an auditorium, a cave, a stone room, and even a bathroom! The clarity of music was clearly discernible for each environment. We then played some Dolby Digital samples that are usually played in most movie theaters. The effects were quite similar and rocked the entire area. We even played some movies to feel the difference. The quality was really good. If you want to hear the best output, then you’ll need to get DVD movies with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound tracks. 

The SoundWorks would make an ideal home theater system, but for its price–you’ve to shell out a whopping Rs 28,600. And of course, you need a sound card like the SB Live! to get the full effects. If you’ve that kind of money, then these speakers are definitely worth housing in your home.