Home : Hardware : Reviews : Logitech X-540 Speakers
Logitech’s affordable 5.1 solution will make your wallet and your ears happy.
I’ll admit it: up until very, very recently (like until Logitech sent me this speaker set), I lived in a world without surround sound; a sad, sad world with reliable but limited stereo speakers where someone could come up right behind me and shoot me in the back of the head without my knowing where they were – in a game, of course. Since we live in times when even built-in sound cards come with 7.1 surround abilities, I decided that I couldn’t put things off anymore; the situation needed fixing.
Logitech, which has been in the computer speaker business for years, has a line of several 5.1 speaker systems and a Logitech rep was happy to send me their newest, the X-540. An affordable solution retailing at $99, the X-540 has a number of nice features that just might make it the speaker solution you’ve been looking for. We do the tests to find out.
Features
Right out of the box, the X-540 is a pretty impressive looking set of speakers; matte black shells, grills on the satellites giving a nice view of the cones inside, a well-labeled bass unit with both a bass port and a built-in woofer, a handy clip built onto the center speaker that makes attaching to LCD monitors a breeze and rotating speaker stands that allow you to go from table top to wall-mounted installations instantly. For those of you who are looking for some sound enhancement for your consoles, the X-540 has you covered too, with an adaptor that you can plug into the audio output of your console of choice.
In addition to the physical features, the X-540 also features two pieces of electronics designed to enhance your listening experience: Frequency Directed Dual Driver Technology (FDD²) and Matrix Mode. FDD² uses two coordinated drivers in each speaker to supposedly even out the frequency response, so the sound doesn’t come at you as two separate pieces of information from one speaker but one full wave. Matrix Mode is a surround emulator for turning stereo into surround sound.
