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Personal speakers can sound superb, as we found when we looked at the Sirocco Spirit computer speakers in MacUser volume 16 issue xx. But what if you want to fill a decent sized room with full-on pumping sounds? A pair of speakers designed to surround an individual when sitting at or near their Mac aren’t going to work quite as well at filling out a large studio.
If that’s what you want to do, then consider trying VideoLogic’s Sirocco ‘studio quality speaker system’. Like the highly-rated Sirocco Spirit, this system contains serious hi-fi hardware and is put together to very exacting standards.
The system comprises of a single meaty sub-woofer unit which stands almost not far off half a meter high, two satellite speakers fitted with mid and tweeter units, and a separate 100 watt-per-channel amplifier unit. The satellite speakers are full bi-wired devices, with separate inputs for the mid-frequency and the high-frequency drive units. This keeps the signals separate as they come from the amplifier, and results in a slightly cleaner, more pure sound. Videologic supply two 2-meter lengths of proper bi-wire cable to hook the satellites up.
The satellites are actually relatively small devices, standing just 20cm high and narrowing towards the back. It isn’t clear where they are designed to be placed; they could be seen as forms of bookshelf speakers, although this kind of placement is generally not regarded as ideal by the serious hi-fi enthusiast. There are also no ready-made screw mounts in the casing to help with wall mounting. Still, this drawback is soon forgotten once things are turned on: plug the amplifier into the sound out minijack socket in your Mac, wire up the speakers, and you have an audio powerhouse capable of causing serious offense.
The amplifier unit actually contains two independent amplifiers for each satellite speaker, plus two bridged amplifiers for the subwoofer, making this a real no-nonsense bit of kit made with audio perfectionists in mind. As with the Sirocco Spirit speakers the amplifier has a single ‘attitude’ adjustment for tone control rather than separate ‘high’ and ‘low’ controls. This creates a smoothly balanced shift from a sound which is rich and bass-optimised but still clear to a crisp yet full sound. Beside this is the subwoofer dial. Leaving this at the standard middle setting delivers a pleasing depth to any audio. Turning it up makes listening happen with the whole body, but this should be treated with respect; this isn’t the kind of bass enhancement that background listeners tend to leave engaged without thinking, it is a pretty powerful audio tool.
This is almost certainly overkill if you just want richer gore-fest audio from Unreal Tournament (although we were impressed as well as disturbed by how well the Sirocco setup performed with this game). What this is designed for is giving richer, louder, and above all, better-quality music from your Mac - and it certainly does this with a vengeance. In fact, these Sirocco speakers have made the MacUser office a seriously rockin’ place. If you’re after top-notch audio while sitting at or near your Mac, the Sirocco Spirit speakers are arguably better, and cheaper. But if you want to take things further, and be able to push the sound to party levels if necessary, you’ll like these. |
