Spherex Xbox 5.1 Digital Speakers Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,760 words · ~8 min read
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today I'm going to be unboxing something that is of interest to me and absolutely
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nobody else this is the legendary spherex Xbox 5.1 surround sound system
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it is no longer available but as you can
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see by the very old and very beat up box
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I managed to find one in our warehouse
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and I bought it because I happened to
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need some speakers I'm planning to move my cat
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speakers that are on my computer over to my TV and so I needed
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something for my computer and since it has a digital
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input um I can make use of this so in
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terms of the overall specs and features why don't we go over what's on the front
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here so we have five omnipolar satellite speakers so these use a pretty cool
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technology that actually only sends some
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of the sound directly to your ears the rest of it it bounces so you actually
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hear it indirectly off the walls and off the uh the obstacles in the room and the
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theory and from what I've heard it works really well is that it sounds much more
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natural that way all right we have a powered 8 in subwoofer which uses some
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kind of other technology to produce sounds that are uh as far as your
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perception goes much lower frequency than what an 8 in subwoofer can normally
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do we have a 300 W RMS digital 6 channel
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amplifier so like I said digital which means Optical input and uh I don't
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believe it accepts any analog input at all other than no it does it does it
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accepts like RCA cables or something so nothing from a computer and certainly
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nothing 5.1 it has a headphone output which is Handy USB connectivity future
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expansion capability yeah I don't think that's going to be happening based on
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how out of production all of this stuff is uh remote control and IR receiver
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included all speaker wearing included yeah like check this out the warranty is
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also uh penned out on the box awesome so
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I don't think I'll be getting any kind of warranty support on this whatsoever
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and here actually here's something else that's on the outside of the box a little bit more detail about these
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speakers so it creates a much larger Sweet Spot rather than having a very
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very narrow place where the uh where the listening position is optimal so inside
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we find a lingual setup
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guide the paper's still white so it's uh
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it's not that old I guess you guys should have seen how dusty this was when
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I uh when I first opened it up all right
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we've got speaker cables which I will
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need so one end is terminated in oh
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these are both ends are terminated in uh
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RCA cables so we have uh how many of
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those five of those
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so there's the five cables H they're kind of thin gauge but
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uh reasonably flexible so should be should be not too bad uh it looks like
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there's two longer ones and then three shorter ones so that would be for the
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front channels and the rear channels okay next we've got a packing
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foam and then we find the speakers so like I said these are really old like I
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think this is a several years this inventory it was so dusty when I found
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it uh but they are in brand new condition so I uh will show you guys one
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of the satellites I'm not going to bother unboxing them all because they
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are identical to each
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other and I just want to show you guys the speaker design now I'm no um you
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know speaker engineer but I can try and
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explain the basic principles and show you guys sort of what I meant before
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so if I could get it out of the bag I mean okay here we go so that's the front
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of the speaker so you can see there's a here I hope you can see I think this
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comes off yeah there we go okay so that's the front of the speaker so the
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way it's designed it actually reflects
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the sound off of this uh kind of cone
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shaped Dome shaped thing and it reflects the right amount of sound directly at
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you and the rest of it to the walls so that proportionally you hear I think
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it's something like 70% directly and 30%
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reflected at you by your surroundings and you can see there's another dome
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right there for the Tweeter so that's um also reflecting that
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sound towards you and also at the wall so actually here the speaker itself has
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a nice like if you don't mind the Xbox branding I've heard they're just great
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speakers although I haven't had a chance to listen yet so we've got a removable
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grill there than just the uh speakers themselves okay on the bottom we've got
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uh screw in for a stand as well as
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uh I wonder what that could be used for hard to say but there's our connection
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for the audio cable all right so there's
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one speaker let's see what else we've got in here in terms of
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accessories so I actually haven't quite decided if these ones are going to end
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up downstairs or if these ones will end up
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upstairs and I move the receiver and uh ke speakers downstairs I guess it
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depends on how everything sounds what looks
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better not sure I bought these on a
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recommendation uh so I'll have to kind of play around with them myself and see
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what I think before I make any decisions so this looks like some more accessories
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and whatnot here we find an optical audio
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cable noodles certified gaming gear okay
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cool next we find uh yes the front control
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pod oh okay doesn't seem to have any controls on it just is a dis oh okay
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it's a display and an infrared receiver so you actually have to control these
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with the remote they don't have any buttons right on the front so uh there
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you go you can see all the stuff it says on there there's a bunch of
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certifications uh Dolby Digital pric 2 DTS surround Texas Instruments of all
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things on the top here all right you know what I'm going to turn these lights
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around so hopefully you guys can actually see what I'm doing a little
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better down here there we go maybe that'll help all
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right next we've got uh kind of what
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looks like kind of an S video cable but it's probably some proprietary thing for
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the control pod yep so that plugs into the control pod and then presumably the
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sub and amp next we've got
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uh oh okay so that's just a coaxil digital cable which is just like any
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other coaxil cable and then we have this is for using with your computer if you
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only want to use two channel sound I'm guessing it'll up miix to 5.1 if you
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want to go that route and then finally we have the Xbox
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remote you know it's too bad that products like this are kind of dying out
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like uh stuff that's designed for gamers but actually delivers excellent sound
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quality like we used to have so many options you know creative clip Monsoon
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if you want to go back a little bit further than that uh you know you've got
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companies like this doing stuff and uh
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now we just have here's a couple AA batteries these are probably like
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expired let me see if there's a an expiry date on them but uh they the cold
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hard reality that I've come to face is that Gamers don't know the
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difference between good
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audio and Loud audio and they aren't willing to pay for it so that's why we
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see products like this just go EOL uh razor moo is another another great
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example of just a phenomenal set of speakers that was marketed at Gamers but
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actually was just a a really neat audio
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set but wasn't successful because uh
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people weren't willing to pay the premium for something that's uh truly
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wellmade and uh sounds really good in everything not
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just you know Boom game so I'm trying to get this sub
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open all right the Xbox branding I have
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to admit is a bit of a bit of a turnoff cuz it's kind of like a it's a weird
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looking style and uh it's actually designed to match the old original Xbox
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not the Xbox 360 okay so here we go try
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to clear some room here so there's the
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sub uh kind of got your standard audio
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equipment finish on it okay it comes with these little silver legs that are
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going to lift it up off the ground a little bit so that as you can see if I
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tip it a little bit further the 8in subwoofer down here will have a little
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bit of room between itself and the ground all right I'm going to turn it
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around show you guys the back okay here we go so we've got our
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power switch got a fuse here okay cool
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then we've also got the infrared receiver in USB in I don't think this
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does anything I think it was one of those for future expansion things but
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this product disappeared so clearly there was no future for it then we've
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got speakers only so this plugs into all of our speakers front left right
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surround left right and Center then we've got Optical in up to two sources
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coaxial in as well as left and right analog in and we've got a power plug and
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that's about it so thank you for checking out my unboxing that is
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uh of interest to nobody but me and don't forget to subscribe to Tech tips
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