The
Inspire 6700s are the first 6.1 capable PC speaker system to
be available in the market. Touted as the ‘perfect
companion’ for Creative’s own Audigy 2 soundcard, these
new Inspire’s resemble somewhat what we have seen before
from systems in the same line-up but with some added value
(see our
previous
review of the Inspire 5300 5.1 system).
The
most obvious addition is the rear centre channel that takes
full advantage of Audigy 2 features and grants you some
Dolby Digital® Surround EX support, however what makes this
more interesting is CMSS (Creative Multi-Speaker System)
that is said to up-mix surround to 6.1 channels when used
with a 5.1 sound card. While this can be considered a value
oriented system (not to be compared with more expensive
MegaWorks or Klipsch systems), Creative has also done
upgrades in the subwoofer and is packing a new front centre
channel that is more powerful than the rest of speakers.
I
suppose one of the most common questions among the people
reading this is going to be, what kind of improvement
resulted from the 5.1 to 6.1 jump? We tested with both 5.1
and 6.1 cards to give you a fair answer. Read on and find
out.
Installation
& Connectivity
Having reviewed many
speaker systems by now, setting up the new Inspire’s
wasn’t much of a hassle. I took everything out of the box,
attached the mountings to the satellites, positioned the
speakers and connected them to the Subwoofer.
As I’m used doing
nowadays, I attached a strip of Velcro to the front center
channel and then placed it on the top of the monitor (this
would secure the satellite in place & should lower the
chance of it falling off “accidentally”). Finally I
positioned the remote controller near the Monitor for easy
access to master volume & bass adjustments.
As seems to be par
for the course of the Creative Labs’ systems I’ve tested
since the DTT 2500, no stands are included for the rear
satellites (3 in this case), so if you need to add some
vertical height to those satellites you’ll need to buy
compatible stands, available separately at the Creative
Labs website. This omission does of course keep
the systems price down.
Connectivity wise,
the Inspire 6700 offers 3 analog inputs for connecting to
your soundcard: one for the front speakers, another for the
rear speakers and a single jack for the two centres plus the
subwoofer.
This is how I connected both the Audigy & Audigy 2 to
the system using the supplied triple stereo line-in cable.
Those of you using a different 6-channel soundcard might
need an adapter for the single Centres/Subwoofer input, as
would be the case of the Game Theater XP, whose rack
features separate Centre and Subwoofer outputs.
The way you have to
connect the Rear center output is another matter though;
those of you using a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1, Audigy 1/2,
Extigy, nForce*, Philips Acoustic Edge and several others
don’t have to worry about this however beyond the Audigy
2, I don’t own any other 6.1 (or greater) capable
soundcards so I’m not quite sure about connectivity issues
you may experience when trying to couple the Inspire system
with other soundcard.
One nice addition to
the package was including a headphone connection on the
Remote controller which should be quite useful for some. I
gave the headphone output a quick testing with my Aiwa
HP-X222’s and it worked as expected, muting the speakers
when connected and having the volume controlled by the
remote control.
*Depends on the
model.
You can read full system specifications
on next page, if you want to skip that, click
here.
