Sony’s latest 2.1 speaker set, the
SRS-DZ10
certainly ticks all the boxes when it comes to style.
It’s a beautiful looking arrangement, finished in sleek brushed aluminium
that carries over from the 25W cylindrical sub-woofer to the pair of 6W terminal
speakers.
A cool blue light illuminates the sub for added impact, although this can be
switched off in dark environments so that it doesn't distract from what's on the
screen.
There’s a control box supplied that houses volume and bass controls, along
with twin inputs so it's possible to can wire up both a dedicated source, such
as a PC or television, and have one spare for occasional use with an mp3 player
or other audio equipment.
Being a 2.1 setup, it’s better suited to PC users with multimedia content,
but it would be a shame to stow such a nice looking unit under a desk. While
it's not the most immersive surround sound kit for home cinema usage, the
SRS-DZ10 would still be fine for adding a bit of oomph to your TV’s speakers,
and it would certainly grace any room in terms of style.
In testing the speakers in a number of environments we found that it seemed
more suited to games and audio playback; while the sound quality is decent
enough, a well-tuned ear will notice that mid-range tones tend to get slightly
lost, particularly at higher volumes and with a lot of bass. There isn’t a lot
of control over fine adjustments to the audio either: a treble setting on the
control box would have been handy for fine tuning.
If the source equipment has a graphic equaliser built in – most decent
equipment should – better sound can be achieved from these speakers by tweaking
the audio from there. These issues shouldn’t prove too much of a drawback for
most users, then, and for anyone looking for something with a bit of aesthetic
merit to complement a high-end setup the
Sony
DZ10 should do the job well. At around £90 they’re also reasonably priced.
If you like the looks you should find that with a bit of tweaking it’ll do
justice to most audio sources.
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