Altec Lansing / DELL ADA995 6-piece Speakers THX ?

Altec Lansing / DELL ADA995 6-piece 5.1 Dolby Digital THX Computer Speaker System
If you are a bargain hunter like I am, you know you sometimes stumble onto treasures. My cousin and I "found" this system minus the center speaker at a Goodwill Store. We had no prior knowledge of this particular system. My cousin bought it and was more than pleasantly surprised at its performance. Truly magnificent, powerful sound ...not just loud! Crystal clear highs and smooth super bass ( capable of vibrating the floors) were the norm and the volume wasn't even turned up high on the bass. This was a steal of a deal for $29.00! If you can find one in good working order you won't regret it.

Have earplugs on hand if you turn it up high...protect yourself!

For under $150 they are pretty decent.

The highs and mids are about as good as you can get with a PC speaker set such as this. However the bass and the sub are less than stellar, but passable. The only competitor that goes for less is the Logitech 540 set which has even worse bass. The Z-5300 series, however, has much better bass than both setups, it uses the same speakers as the much more expensive Z-5500 set but with less features. All in all, the Altec Lansing ASA-995 set has possibly the most natural highs of all three, but the lows are way too inaccurate and boomy for me to truly recommend them over the Z-5300s whose bass is too a little boomy, but PC speakers aren't great to begin with. For less than $150 they are decent, for more they are too expensive, that is my take.

Note that I have tested all of these at a local audio shop.

I'm a little more late, but same story as above had these speakers 7 years and as an aging headbanger I blasted these speakers almost daily and can't believe their still working. Ordered new gaming rig with sound blaster X-Fi gamer sound card. Can't wait to see what sound improvement I'll get. My daughter says that card has a lot sound adjustment possibilities. I'll post in when my new computer comes.

I bought this set several years ago closeout on eBay for about $150, I believe. I had somewhat satisfied with them. I like that thee sound reproduction is very accurate and clear. All speakers have a midrange driver and a tweeter unlike most sets available today. Bass reproduction is okay for me too for a set of computer speakers. If you are looking for audiofile quality, I recommend that you use a dedicated home theater receiver purchase your home theater speakers to suit your environments. But again, for computer speakers that will be in a bedroom or office, this set is about as good as it gets for the money. My only complaints are that the sets lacks either a wired or wireless remote control, it has a slight hum at idle, and it picks up pops from surrounding electrical interference.

I have not auditioned the Klipsch set, but it was priced at about 3 times as much and it has received some negative feedback. My second favorite computer speakers are now hard to find Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 Surround. Not the 5.1 plastic Creative Soundblaster ones. The 4.1 Surround was still made by Henry Kloss' Cambridge Soundworks. Cambridge said that since computer speakers are so close together, you don't need a center channel to accurately reproduce the soundstage. I agree, but these do not have tweeters and there is some missing clarity in the highs.