Creative Labs 5300 Inspire 5.1 Computer Speakers

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great set of affordable surround sound speakers
Comment: These speakers provide the perfect balance of cost and performance. With the proper sound card these provide spectacular sound.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great product, low price, affordable...
Comment: Great sound quality! Great price.
Another thing, there is 5200 series out there same price with 5300. But 5300 is slightly better than 5200. You have to have a 5.1 sound card to get the speakers work.
I love Creative.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good sound but maybe not for everyone
Comment: I have an Audigy and Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers. I thought that getting these Creative 5.1 speakers for their cost would give me more enjoyable game and music atmosphere because of the big buzz about EAX and 5.1 surround sound.

When there is no music/sound piping through the speakers, turning the volume up more than 1/4 of the total causes some very noticeable hissing noise. Once music/sound is going however, the hissing disappears and these speakers do provide good sound even at the 1/4 setting. But I had to turn up the subwoofer bass to almost 75% of its capacity before noticing anything from the subwoofer.

So while I agree the sound can be good, I tried it out with my music CDs and on the Dungeon Seige game. I now had an Audigy, Inspire 5.1, and a game that all supported EAX. I played for about 2 hours, but did not notice anything differently than with my other speakers.

I finally came to the conclusion that this extra center speaker isn't going to get used unless there is this 5.1 sound decoding available in the source media (ie, from DVDs). Other than that, you are getting just 4 speakers + subwoofer in use, and EAX sound didn't use this center speaker and didn't sound any different than on my Klipsch.

The Audigy manual says there is a way to use that extra center speaker with regular music but doesn't go into details and the clues it gave didn't help.

So I recommend these speakers as an inexpensive choice if you dont already have 4.1 or 5.1 speakers. If you want more power, consider the Logitech Z560 or even more power, then try the Klipsch Promedia 4.1. But if you are just considering upgrading from some other 4.1 speakers for gaming, it's probably not necessary. For watching DVDs on your PC? Maybe you can also if you really plan to watch enough DVDs on your PC to make it worthwhile...just remember to make sure your sound card can support the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

Tip: If you have the Audigy card (and probably others too) but only 4.1 speakers, you can achieve this "5.1" speaker setting by plugging in another comparable speaker to that "center speaker" port on the card..that's basically what the Creative Inspire 5.1 set does. Then change your software setting to 5.1.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great speakers for the price....
Comment: I recently did an overhaul of my system(both internally and externally) and I needed to get some new speakers to go along with my audigy card. I decided on going with the 5300 series of speakers and I must say, I was really impressed. I took the speakers through the paces in both gaming(esp. in shooters like MOH:AA,Jedi Knight 2 and Hitman 2)and DVDs(Pearl Harbor,The Mummy Films,And LOTR:Fellowship). I HIGHLY recommend getting your hands on these speakers for not just the quality of the product, but the low price as well.

Customer Rating:
Summary: crisp sound!
Comment: I connected these speakers to my soundblaster extigy sound card, and boy does it sound good. It was fairly easy to put together, but could be confusing for someone who doesnt know what their doing. Even at loud volumes, the sound stays crisp. I cannot compare these speakers to any others, since this is my first 5.1 surround purchase. ... One very clever feature is the remote volume adjustor. It is fairly sensible and takes a tiny degree of a turn to increase the volume significantly, but its much easier than having to fiddle with volume controlers on the computer. I keep my computer volume at a set level, and only adjust the speaker remote. However, there are looooots of cables all around my desk now. :-)