Testing Methodology

For the purposes of testing I have several systems around my home to provide an adequate representation of where these speakers stand, all things considered. I think that when evaluating speakers in general, it's a very good idea to try and listen to the same piece of music through several different systems.

In fact, owning a 'test' CD that is known to the listener like the back of his/her hand can be a usual thing when testing speakers because it will soon become apparent as to what strengths and weaknesses are evident across different systems.

Of course, this is the challenge of a good engineer, to be able to produce a mix that sounds good on anything from $100-$10,000 which is a far harder task than one might've first imagined.

My current test bed features an ASUS Xonar sound board and also an Auzentech Prelude based on Creative labs X-Fi chip, all running the latest drivers for XP Pro. I also use Winamp and PowerDVD for testing.

First Impressions

Generally speaking, the VS3251 is a rather bright chirpy system that takes quite instantly to vocal work and brings out human voices very well. This is probably due to the full range drivers here being better suited and more 'at home' within the 1-5KHz range that the human voice falls into.

Unfortunately, I cannot simply say that the rest of the frequency spectrum is brought out equally here, as there is a real hump around the aforementioned range, heavily contributing to the sound being completely devoid of any timbre and tonality, so to speak.

To illustrate; try and imagine those annoying megaphones we all remember from the high school days that would cut through us like a knife through butter and leave our ears a little worse for wear.