Logitech X-540 Surround Sound Speakers :

I am not an audio fanatic, I admit. In fact, generally when people ask me what kind of speakers and wattage I have, I just snap my gum and giggle. I’m not exactly… educated in the form of which speaker system works with what and how to set them up. So hence, I figured I was the best person to review the Logitech X-540 speakers! I mean, would you rather have someone inept at setting up speakers tell you if it’s easy or not? Exactly, so — moving on.

The moment I opened up the box, everything was laid out perfectly. Wrapped cords, color coded inputs and a rather heavy subwoofer. I have a tiny desktop setup with a subwoofer and so I wasn’t quite expecting the heft of this subby; I was pleasantly surprised and immediately assumed this meant that the bass would be “kicking”, as they say on the streets. Sorry, strizz-eets. My bad.

Anyways, I set them up delicately and placed them around my bedroom but ended up in quite the tangled mess a few times. See, some cords are much longer than others and that’s the one main problem. You have to go in there and unless you’ve got the anally retentive tenacity of Martha Stewart, this might take awhile. So, I gingerly went about untangling myself from all the cords and recentered. Once it was finished, I decided on a few titles to test out on both the DVD player, the Xbox and the PS2. I shall go into now, how these panned out in the long-run.

DVDs:

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — Seemingly good sound, had to tweak with DVD player audio functions a bit though because the bass kept crackling.
• Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring; Extended Version — Amazingly perfect once you set it up on the Dolby 5.1 setting, anything else and it sounded like echoes were ringing through my room. You know, maybe that was meant to happen, but it was kinda off.
• Pride and Predjudice – The orchestra and classical was really nice and seemed to have no problems at all, even without tweaking the sound.

Playstation 2:

• Resident Evil 4 – Let’s just say, I didn’t play this long because once I enabled the Dolby Pro Logic on it, I kept squealing at every sound that I hadn’t previously heard before. Very spooky. This one played niiiiiiiiice.
• Guitar Hero – Oh, come on, like I wasn’t going to at least give this one a go on a new speaker system? Every sound was enhanced beautifully and came out as clear as day. I loved it. Turned up the bass a little and I was having a blast.
• Suikoden 5 – The gorgeous background music in this game always lulls me to sleep and that’s not because the game doesn’t keep you gripped, but the music is enchanting. With the system set up, I was nodding off before I had the game loaded.

Xbox:

• Halo – I don’t even have to get into how good this came out. Cortana’s voice came out right behind me due to my left back speaker. Insanity and the bass kicked right against my bedframe which was quite funny to behold whenever something intense happened. I kept jumping from the surprise and laughing.
• Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay – The tones and orchestra music has always had my interest and every single aspect sounded nice, however there were some crackles in some areas. Seemingly, Vin Diesel’s voice isn’t something Logitech figured into these equations when building speakers. Shucks.

In conclusion, the speakers seem to be perfect for that occasional tech loving gamer but audio-philes might steer clear because there are better systems for a bit more money. While they work perfectly for a gamer and movie loving chick like myself, others might find the crackling bass and seemingly difficult cord scheme a bit tiresome. A few more features and perhaps wireless setups might make this thing amazing, we’ll see what Logitech also has in their hats for us our next go around.