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Posted by
Thomas
McGuire on June 20, 2002
Manufacturer: Creative Product:
Creative
Inspire 5300 Speakers
Search
for Inspire
5300
prices.
With every new soundcard line Creative launches, they also get
ready a complimentary
range of SoundWorks speakers to come along with them. In fact,
with the Audigy introduction, it came the Inspire line of 2.1, 4.1 & 5.1
systems; later on the MegaWorks 2.1
& 5.1 systems were also released though targeted to the higher
end market.
The Inspire 5300 speakers come as budget 5.1 system,
essentially replacing the DTT 2200 much like the
Inspire 5700's replace the DTT 3500 system. Retailing in most places
for less than
$90, maybe and this is exactly the kind of system you were looking
for, read on...
Installing speakers is always a long
enough process; what with taking everything out of the box,
then taking each speaker out of the little box that it’s
been packed into. Then you have to mount them onto their
stands. Certainly it takes a lot longer than installing a
new soundcard. Connectivity is provided via 3 stereo
mini-jacks – 1 for Front left/right, 1 for Rear left/right
& the last one for Centre/Subwoofer. After positioning
the speakers and subwoofer I had to run the cables into
the Subwoofer & connect the Subwoofer to the Soundcard.
Finally I placed the “remote” volume control of sorts
behind my Keyboard for easy access.
The only thing that felt missing
from the package were stands to mount the Rear Speakers onto
(All speakers use the same small mounting bar the Centre
which has an optional mounting, though a wall mounting is
supplied also). Seemingly the stands were omitted to keep
the cost down to a minimum and are available
separately at the Creative
website. Rather than the old tripod mounting you’ve
seen with the DTT2500 & other Creative systems the
Inspire 5300 (& 5700) uses a monopole metal stand
instead, supposedly as they provide far greater stability
– though not having them I can’t really comment too much
more on that.
Regarding
soundcard connectivity, the Inspire 5300 provides 3 analog inputs only,
as was already mentioned.
This shouldn’t be of any problem for those with 4 channel
only Soundcards, e.g. Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo 2,
though for other 6 Channel capable Soundcards the single
Centre/Subwoofer input might require an adapter or 2, as
would be the case with the Game Theater XP, whose rack
features separate Centre & Subwoofer outputs and as such require a single mini-jack to dual RCA cable
to connect from the Center & Subwoofer outputs of the
rack (though it does provide 2 mini-jack outputs for Front
left/right & Rear left/right channels).
Those of you
using a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1, Audigy, Extigy, nForce (with
motherboards that come with the add-on bracket with the Rear
& Centre/Subwoofer analog outputs, e.g. Abit
NV7-133R), Philips Acoustic Edge or Seismic Edge 5.1
soundcards do not need to worry about this though. Also, no
mini-jack to dual RCA cables are required to get 6 Channel
analog output with the system – This may well be the case
with other 6 Channel analog capable Soundcards, though
I’ve none others at my disposal (It shouldn’t be too
hard to check this anyway) which would allow this.
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