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Decent sound, but not for music

OK, this was kind of an impulse buy. I’ve had a problem watching TV late at night because if I turn the TV up loud enough to understand voices, my wife can’t sleep. I’d considered headphones (cordless), but ruled them out as I like to lie down to watch TV, and headphones would be uncomfortable. Then I thought about putting speakers in the headboard of my bed, on my side. That way, I could add volume on my side of the bed only. It worked, by the way. If you have a problem with a spouse who can’t sleep while you are watching TV, try a set of small speakers on your side of the bed only.Anyway, I’d go with Altec Lansing speakers for better sound (I already own them, and use them with my computer), but the only decent ones I could find at the CC I shopped in were much more than I wanted to spend. These Cyber Acoustic speakers were well within my price range, so I decided to give them a shot.The cabling of these speakers is horrible. The actual speaker wires are extremely thin and flimsy. What’s worse, is that the speakers are packaged from the factory with about 6″ (six INCHES) of separation between the left and right speakers. I’m not exaggerating. I almost returned them as (at first) I thought this was a factory defect. After all, you couldn’t even use the speakers if they could only be separated by such a short distance. Then I noticed that the clip (which holds the left and right speaker wires together) was adjustable. This isn’t much help, however. After you move the clip, the wires still need to be TORN apart to increase the separation between the speakers. The wires are so flimsy that it would be VERY easy to damage your speaker wires doing this. Another problem with the speaker wires is that they are permanently fixed to the speakers. Why is this a problem? Well it’s not a problem, unless you need to mount the speakers in a cabinet of some kind, and want to route the wires out of sight. See, there’s no way to pass the wires THROUGH a cabinet from one speaker to the other, without having to put a whole speaker through the cabinet. In my case, the areas of my headboard between the left and right speaker are separated by a divider. I wanted to route the cables through the back of the headboard, but I couldn’t. I had to settle for leaving the cables on the headboard with the speakers. This looks ugly, and the cables interfere with my storing other stuff in the headboard. (such as TV remote)On sound quality . . . well, I bought these things to listen to TV with. We have Dish Network satellite service. I used RCA style cables to connect the Dish Network receiver to these speakers, using an adapter that came with the speakers. For TV use, the sound is OK. To get the subwoofer volume control (this is a separate control from main volume) set correctly, I hooked up a DVD player to these speakers and listened to one of my favorite music CDs. These speakers have lots of really low bass. That’s not necessarily good. See, while it has lots of low bass, the mid-bass response is rather lacking. So with these speakers you either have not enough bass, or too much low bass, depending on how you adjust the subwoofer.For the price, the sound isn’t too bad. I wouldn’t recommend these speakers if your primary use is to listen to music though. As I said before, to listen to TV, the sound is decent. I imagine these speakers would be good for computer gaming, also.By the way, Cyber Acoustics claims these speakers are 60W. They could be, but CC seems to think that they are 40W. I like the power switch and ANALOG volume control on the right satellite speaker. These controls are handy, and work well.If you need speakers for music use, I’d recommend something by Altec Lansing. But try to get an analog volume control, if possible. My Altec Lansing three piece computer speakers are simply awesome for music use (mp3 files and such). They sound MUCH better than my new Cyber Acoustics speakers. But I don’t like the digital up/down volume buttons on my Altec Lansing speakers. -Dave

Update (2/6/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen. I also found some auctions for this item here.

The featured review for this product, Cyber Acoustics CA-3550 2.1 Computer Speaker System- Black Electronics, was written by D. Christensen.

The average rating for this item is 3.3 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.