today I'm going to be unboxing something that is of interest to me and absolutely
nobody else this is the legendary spherex Xbox 5.1 surround sound system
it is no longer available but as you can
see by the very old and very beat up box
I managed to find one in our warehouse
and I bought it because I happened to
need some speakers I'm planning to move my cat
speakers that are on my computer over to my TV and so I needed
something for my computer and since it has a digital
input um I can make use of this so in
terms of the overall specs and features why don't we go over what's on the front
here so we have five omnipolar satellite speakers so these use a pretty cool
technology that actually only sends some
of the sound directly to your ears the rest of it it bounces so you actually
hear it indirectly off the walls and off the uh the obstacles in the room and the
theory and from what I've heard it works really well is that it sounds much more
natural that way all right we have a powered 8 in subwoofer which uses some
kind of other technology to produce sounds that are uh as far as your
perception goes much lower frequency than what an 8 in subwoofer can normally
do we have a 300 W RMS digital 6 channel
amplifier so like I said digital which means Optical input and uh I don't
believe it accepts any analog input at all other than no it does it does it
accepts like RCA cables or something so nothing from a computer and certainly
nothing 5.1 it has a headphone output which is Handy USB connectivity future
expansion capability yeah I don't think that's going to be happening based on
how out of production all of this stuff is uh remote control and IR receiver
included all speaker wearing included yeah like check this out the warranty is
also uh penned out on the box awesome so
I don't think I'll be getting any kind of warranty support on this whatsoever
and here actually here's something else that's on the outside of the box a little bit more detail about these
speakers so it creates a much larger Sweet Spot rather than having a very
very narrow place where the uh where the listening position is optimal so inside
we find a lingual setup
guide the paper's still white so it's uh
it's not that old I guess you guys should have seen how dusty this was when
I uh when I first opened it up all right
we've got speaker cables which I will
need so one end is terminated in oh
these are both ends are terminated in uh
RCA cables so we have uh how many of
those five of those
so there's the five cables H they're kind of thin gauge but
uh reasonably flexible so should be should be not too bad uh it looks like
there's two longer ones and then three shorter ones so that would be for the
front channels and the rear channels okay next we've got a packing
foam and then we find the speakers so like I said these are really old like I
think this is a several years this inventory it was so dusty when I found
it uh but they are in brand new condition so I uh will show you guys one
of the satellites I'm not going to bother unboxing them all because they
are identical to each
other and I just want to show you guys the speaker design now I'm no um you
know speaker engineer but I can try and
explain the basic principles and show you guys sort of what I meant before
so if I could get it out of the bag I mean okay here we go so that's the front
of the speaker so you can see there's a here I hope you can see I think this
comes off yeah there we go okay so that's the front of the speaker so the
way it's designed it actually reflects
the sound off of this uh kind of cone
shaped Dome shaped thing and it reflects the right amount of sound directly at
you and the rest of it to the walls so that proportionally you hear I think
it's something like 70% directly and 30%
reflected at you by your surroundings and you can see there's another dome
right there for the Tweeter so that's um also reflecting that
sound towards you and also at the wall so actually here the speaker itself has
a nice like if you don't mind the Xbox branding I've heard they're just great
speakers although I haven't had a chance to listen yet so we've got a removable
grill there than just the uh speakers themselves okay on the bottom we've got
uh screw in for a stand as well as
uh I wonder what that could be used for hard to say but there's our connection
for the audio cable all right so there's
one speaker let's see what else we've got in here in terms of
accessories so I actually haven't quite decided if these ones are going to end
up downstairs or if these ones will end up
upstairs and I move the receiver and uh ke speakers downstairs I guess it
depends on how everything sounds what looks
better not sure I bought these on a
recommendation uh so I'll have to kind of play around with them myself and see
what I think before I make any decisions so this looks like some more accessories
and whatnot here we find an optical audio
cable noodles certified gaming gear okay
cool next we find uh yes the front control
pod oh okay doesn't seem to have any controls on it just is a dis oh okay
it's a display and an infrared receiver so you actually have to control these
with the remote they don't have any buttons right on the front so uh there
you go you can see all the stuff it says on there there's a bunch of
certifications uh Dolby Digital pric 2 DTS surround Texas Instruments of all
things on the top here all right you know what I'm going to turn these lights
around so hopefully you guys can actually see what I'm doing a little
better down here there we go maybe that'll help all
right next we've got uh kind of what
looks like kind of an S video cable but it's probably some proprietary thing for
the control pod yep so that plugs into the control pod and then presumably the
sub and amp next we've got
uh oh okay so that's just a coaxil digital cable which is just like any
other coaxil cable and then we have this is for using with your computer if you
only want to use two channel sound I'm guessing it'll up miix to 5.1 if you
want to go that route and then finally we have the Xbox
remote you know it's too bad that products like this are kind of dying out
like uh stuff that's designed for gamers but actually delivers excellent sound
quality like we used to have so many options you know creative clip Monsoon
if you want to go back a little bit further than that uh you know you've got
companies like this doing stuff and uh
now we just have here's a couple AA batteries these are probably like
expired let me see if there's a an expiry date on them but uh they the cold
hard reality that I've come to face is that Gamers don't know the
difference between good
audio and Loud audio and they aren't willing to pay for it so that's why we
see products like this just go EOL uh razor moo is another another great
example of just a phenomenal set of speakers that was marketed at Gamers but
actually was just a a really neat audio
set but wasn't successful because uh
people weren't willing to pay the premium for something that's uh truly
wellmade and uh sounds really good in everything not
just you know Boom game so I'm trying to get this sub
open all right the Xbox branding I have
to admit is a bit of a bit of a turnoff cuz it's kind of like a it's a weird
looking style and uh it's actually designed to match the old original Xbox
not the Xbox 360 okay so here we go try
to clear some room here so there's the
sub uh kind of got your standard audio
equipment finish on it okay it comes with these little silver legs that are
going to lift it up off the ground a little bit so that as you can see if I
tip it a little bit further the 8in subwoofer down here will have a little
bit of room between itself and the ground all right I'm going to turn it
around show you guys the back okay here we go so we've got our
power switch got a fuse here okay cool
then we've also got the infrared receiver in USB in I don't think this
does anything I think it was one of those for future expansion things but
this product disappeared so clearly there was no future for it then we've
got speakers only so this plugs into all of our speakers front left right
surround left right and Center then we've got Optical in up to two sources
coaxial in as well as left and right analog in and we've got a power plug and
that's about it so thank you for checking out my unboxing that is
uh of interest to nobody but me and don't forget to subscribe to Tech tips
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