Creative I-Trigue 3400

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Posted on 01-06-2006

I refrain from listening to music during office hours, but there were so many great speaker sets around-and just because they were there, I thought of hooking up a 2.1 set to my PC. Pottering around, I chanced upon the Creative I-Trigue 3400, which the company describes as "Premium Fidelity" and "fashionable and functional.' They were to grace my desk for the next 30 days.

Day 1
This set comes with accessories for connecting auxiliary devices-companies normally don't provide these. At first glance-and at later glances as well-what sets these speakers apart are the beautifully-crafted satellites, each with three one-inch titanium drivers. The wooden sub-woofer sports a milky-white exterior, as opposed to the orthodox black.

Day 3
Visitors to the Test Centre seemed to be turning their heads in the direction of my desk, and I assumed it was because of the flashy speakers. Now what use is a premium speaker set if you don't turn up the volume? So I did, but my co-workers were more than a little irritated. "All right, all right," I grumbled, and turned down the volume down. But at this setting, the tiny drivers don't lend depth to the sound, and the music sounds flat. Not good.

Day 4
The subwoofer is front-ported, and this allows it to be placed close to the wall-good if your room is small. The build quality is excellent, and the satellites even survived a nice four-foot fall.

Day 5
Working late has it advantages: I merrily cracked open the volume knob. The set does deliver good sound at full volume. The bass is overpowering at times, though; with the highs being generally predominant. The set is lacking when it comes to the mid-frequencies, again because of the small drivers.

Day 8
It's been eight days and I'm satisfied with the quality of the set. Not overly so, but in general, yes. Except for some comments being passed about the colour I'd chosen: light pink. The set comes in ten colours, but we only had the light pink at the Test Centre! That in combination with the white of the subwoofer is raising many an eyebrow!

Day 14
Trance sounds great on these speakers. Sphongle and Buddha Bar is what I've been listening to for the past few days. Soft rock as well as pop need a little fiddling around with the equaliser to make the music sound decent-again, not a good thing in general. Rock, on the other hand, sounds great when the volume is set to above 50 per cent.

Day 18
Virus attack! I was forced to take a break from playing music off my PC. But I did have the option of connecting my MP3 player to the speakers! The little round remote control pod for the speakers has a line-in jack that makes connecting any device convenient, and right next to the line-in jack is a headphone jack-again, very convenient.

Day 25
Quake III fever was back at the Test Centre, and we got into some serious fragging post work hours. In the heat of the moment, I fired the speakers to nearly 75 per cent volume and did-they-sound-good! I abandoned the party and tried out the set on a couple of other games. The sound was consistently good, but naturally, there's only this much that a 2.1 set can accomplish in terms of creating an immersive experience.

Day 30
This is a beautiful 2.1 speaker set-but take note: the predominant focus is on aesthetics. The sound is indeed good, but not quite up to an audiophile's standards. Remember that a good part of the money you'll spend on this set-if you do-will pay for the design!

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