Introduction

Hercules was founded in 1982 in the US and has since become one of the most popular graphics card manufacturers in the world. In 1999, Guillemot acquired a struggling Hercules and since then, they have only gotten bigger and better. Although many people know them for their success in the graphics card industry, Hercules have also been very successful in the audio business as well. The Hercules Game Theatre XP is one of the main competitors to Creative's high-end Audigy sound card, and their Gamesurround Fortissimo II has done extremely well in the budget sound card sector.

With all their success in the audio market, Hercules has recently decided to introduce their new range of speakers. These were named the XPS510, XPS210 and XPS200, with XPS standing for eXtended Personal Sound. We were able to obtain Hercules' high-end, yet low priced speaker system, the XPS 510. At first we were very critical about the performance of this system due to it's low cost; however, as you will see when you read on, first impressions do not always last.

Specifications