Sound quality

Sound is crisp and clear - and when I first played an MP3 through the system I was pulled up short and had to sit back and admire it. But tweaking will be needed. The speaker positions have to be played with to get the best results, and the subwoofer's bass level will need to be carefully adjusted to suite the source. Trouble is, as we've already said, adjusting the satellites or, rather, finding the right position for them, could turn out to be problematic.

The subwoofer is powerful. The bass micro wheel on the side of the controller has a scale from zero to ten and the floor was shaking and the door rattling before it was turned past four.

But the sub-woofer's strong bass output coupled with the overall system power is likely to expose the poor quality of some, maybe most, of your MP3 music files. CDs, DVDs and games, though, are quite another matter and will benefit massively from a good set of speakers.

For our gaming test the subject was Brothers In Arms, by Gearbox Software. This produced the sort of ‘hairs on the arms standing ovation’ that caused the neighbours to bang on the wall and the plaster on the ceiling to crack. Stunning!