The DTT3500 Digital 5.1 surround sound system from cambridge playworks/soundworks (creatives speaker department) cost around £200

Where to start...well it comes in a fat box, big enough for a 17" monitor, everything comes neatly packed with lots of expanded polystyrene to keep everything nice and safe.

Inside the fat box you get:

1 15V 4A DC power adapter 1 291 page manual (30 of which are in english) 1 amp/decoder 8 coloured fronts for the amp/decoder 1 tiny little remote control 2 AA batteries (for the remote) 1 horizontal stand 1 vertical stand 1 centre speaker (21Watts RMS, also slightly larger than the satellite speakers, for extra range in vocals) 4 satellite speakers (7Watts RMS) 1 fat sub (30Watts RMS) (/me pauses writing to play about with mouse on everglide pad :) its just soo smooth) 4 satellite speaker desktop stands 1 centre speaker stand down (for placement on top of your monitor, a good place for it) 1 centre speaker stand up (for placement on your desktop) 2 satellite speaker tripod stands (for placement on the floor) 2 5m speaker cables (1 end has 2 exposed wires the other end has a phono connector) 4 3m cables (all 1m i think) 1 optical cable 1 minijack to DIN cable (for you SPDIF output on your soundcard) 1 SPDIF cable RCA to RCA 1 Stereo to Dual RCA cable 1 tandem audio cable 1 SPDIF DIN cable 1 dual female-to-female RCA adapter

So basically it comes with everything you could possibly need to connect it to whatever you want.

It's really easy to set up, just a simple case of positioning everything where you want it to go and then just plugging it in, the tricky part is getting it to work. Once everything is plugged in you get a great sense of achievement, cos it looks so damn cool, little black speakers and the cool desktop amp/decoder with your choice of 4 coloured fronts with either vertical writing or horizontal (neat huh, they've thought of everything). The speaker stands have little grippy feet on the bottom so they don't move about, very handy for the centre speaker on your monitor, don't want it falling off and hitting you on the head (oof). That sense of quality improves even more when you first turn it on, the leds which indicate which mode you are in flash on and off in sequence creating a mexican wave effect and then the blue (yes BLUE!) led on the volume control switches on, this has to be the coolest start up effect ever.

Right, now the tricky part, getting sound out of the damn thing! If you have a creative player 5.1 then you will want to use the digital DIN and SPDIF to din convertor cables, so that you have sweet digital sound from your comp. Next you need to set up your creative card to only output a digital signal, you will find a little check box for this in your speaker set up in control panel/audio hq/speaker you will want to change your speakers to 5.1 here as well (5.1 for those who don't know means 5.1 channels and the .1 is the sub). Next on the front of the amp/decoder you will want to set the line in to digital DIN and the CMSS (creative multi speaker surround) to fourpoint/5.1 DIN. This will give you 5.1 sound as often as possible, most games are 4.1 but it should create a centre channel from the front left and front rights. Now all you need to do is test it with the test function on the remote (this puts a noise through each speaker in sequence to let you know that everything is plugged in, a very handy feature which should reduce wire checking) you should also test that your sound card is outputting a digital signal to all channels by pressing test in the creative speaker set up window.

Hmm this has turned into more of a how to than a review ohwell.

Well overall this is one l33t speaker set up, despite the complicated business of setting up, fortunately you only have to do this once, so this doesn't really detract from the coolness of it (/me turns off his dtt3500 just to see the cool start up sequence again). The only thing that would make this better is if the indicator leds were all blue instead of green (blarg! green sucks).

Overall the system gets a well deserved 4/5, the only major downfall being the stupidly high cost (~£200) of the thing :/ oh and those gh3y green LEDs.



5.1 sound is l33t, no doubt.

Carlos_Fandango, 24-10-01.

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