Kenwood CL-701 3-piece Multimedia Speakers

Sound Quality

This is most likely the most important area to consider when choosing a speaker set, whether for the computer or a home theater. Once again, the most important thing to keep in my mind when buying an audio equipment is that your ears are always the best judge because everyone has different musical tastes. It is also necessary to keep in my mind what you plan to use the speakers for. Just about anything will get you by if you just want Windows beeps and dings, but if you plan to listen to music 6 hours a day, you are going to need much more. With that in mind, not many people by three piece speaker sets for beeps and dings, so the focus here will be on music and (to a lesser extent) gaming.

This is where the Kenwood CL-701's get themselves in major trouble. Listening to just about any music with any semblance of bass produces obvious distortion that comes primarily from the satellites, even at low volume levels. There are a couple possibilities that could be causing the problem with these speakers. Most likely is the fact that the crossover between the satellites and sub is at a relatively low 75Hz. Quite simply, most 2 x 3 inch driver, such as those used in the CL-701 satellites, cannot handle frequencies that low. The other possibility is a simple lack of power, just 4W RMS, going to the satellites, but this is less likely since it occurs even at low volume levels.

Disconnecting the satellites and allowing just the sub to play removes most of the distortion, showing that the sub can handle the bass. In fact, when the satellites are disconnected, the sub thumps very nicely, probably near the specified 40Hz lower limit, but also produces a lot of sound above the supposed 75Hz crossover level. The sub actually goes to quite high frequency levels for a sub and could probably also benefit from a steeper crossover slope as well. Substituting a higher crossover frequency for the satellites could greatly improve sound quality. As it stands now, the aforementioned distortion in the satellites makes the sub's lows nearly imperceptible.

Listening to music with less bass actually produces quite good sound for a computer speaker set, especially in the midrange frequencies. The lack of a dedicated tweeter somewhat limits the upper frequency response, despite the claimed 20kHz limit.

The SRS 3D surround sound feature is an interesting one. In general, the goal of such algorithms is to make the sound from two speakers feel like they fill the room better and remove the listening "sweet spot" as illustrated in the diagram below from SRS Labs.

I have never found the sound from such algorithms to sound better, but rather it seems to produce a sort of "funny" feeling sound that is hard to describe. It definitely helps to eliminate the sweet spot, allowing all listening positions to sound good, but it always sounds "funny." In the case of the Kenwood CL-701, turning on the SRS feature increases the distortion even further from the satellites, and this time from all frequencies, not just the bass. As such, this feature is essentially useless on the CL-701's, even if you do like the 3D effect.