All your sound problems - solved (From The Northern Echo)

All your sound problems - solved

9:44pm Wednesday 13th January 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

SANDBERG STREETGEAR STREETBLASTER HEADPHONES/USB SOUND BOX 7.1.

PLAYING a CD or watching a DVD on a laptop can be a disappointing affair.

Even the best multi-media portables, like the Toshiba Qosmio range, can't get round the physical constraints imposed by when trying to fit meaty speakers into a small chassis.

Luckily there are two solutions to this problem.

The first is the most obvious: forget the speakers and buy a set of headphones.

The Sandberg Streetgear range are aimed at gamers aged from 12 to 29 but the white and black colours don't look too garish so even granddads can wear them without embarassment.

They are full width cans that cover your ears, effectively sealing out extraneous noises without resorting to dubious "noise cancelling" technology - just put them on and revel in your own personal soundspace.

The beauty of headphones is the immersive experience they provide - even the most subtle of sounds can be heard clearly.

The Streetblaster headphones (RRP £35.99) are particularly sensitive and even modest soundcards (the sort most commonly found in laptops and netbooks) will have no problem driving them to high volumes. Distortion is good at these kind of levels, too.

A detachable audio lead (a short one for your MP3 player and a longer one with a microphone for gaming) means cable strain shouldn't be an issue and the single-sided design means there's no spaghetti trail of wires to deal with.

I'd have liked a slightly longer connector for watching DVD movies, my head was tethered too close to the screen for my liking even using the longer 2.5 m cable, but an extension lead only costs a couple of pounds, and the self-adjusting headband needed careful placement if the cans weren't to squeeze my glasses.

If you prefer external speakers then Sanberg have just the device. The USB Sound Box 7.1 is a tiny box that plugs into a USB port and acts as an external soundcard - only one that's a heckuva lot better than the one inside your laptop.

This little beauty has output for a full 7.1 surround sound system, an optical output for DVD soundtracks and an optical input for perfect digital copies. It also has analogue line inputs perfect for recording LPs or tapes.

The Sound Box comes with drivers for XP, Vista and Windows 7 that provide a host of DSP sound effects. You can even use it with the Streetblaster cans to recreate headphone surround sound.

Plenty of PCs these days come with the sound mixer control disabled - the result of over zealous lobbying by music companies. Internal soundcards, particularly those integrated on a motherboard, are also plagued by electrical interference that degrades their performance. The Sandberg USB Sound Box solves both these problems at a stroke.

I was really surprised by the high quality output, my speakers had never sounded better, and the optical output wasa cinch to hook up to my Minidisc recorder. If you are unhappy with your internal soundcard then this could be the best £36.99 you ever spent.