Boston Acoustics BA635 Speakers

[archie]

After debating whether to get Boston Acoustics BA635 or Cambridge Soundworks speakers, I ended up with the Cambridge [2 sattelites and a subwoofer]. This is after reading favourable reviews on both of them. Well, sadly enough, the Cambridge do not meet expectations.
For price comparison, the Soundworks cost $55 and the BA635 are priced at $100. Finding either was a bit of a challenge.
I would especially like to hear from those who have the BA635 and have compared them to the Soundworks.

[Floppyman]

I don't have any experience with that specific brand of BA's but we got some BA's with our Gateway when we bought it a while back. They actually sound pretty good for their size (2 sattelites and a sub) and we haven't had any problems. I'm currently using the Altec Lansing ACS 56 5 piece gaming system (about 1 1/3 year old now) and these things have impressed me. Great sound and great bass. I guess the bottom line when talking about speakers is that the best speakers out there are still the $249 Klipsch's.

[archie]

You may very well be right about the Klipsch, of which I've never had an opportunity to hear. For the time being, I'm using these on another system and use the Altec Lansing ACS44, which sound better IMHO.

[Floppyman]

I got a pair of ACS 43's sitting here that I've heard and they sound pretty decent (just 2 speakers, no sub, do the 44's include a sub?). The only these don't really have is a bassy sound, which would make sense since a sub isn't included but I guess can be added. I like these ACS 56's, as they seemed a good buy pricewise little over a year ago, for $100. Sure there are better speakers out there, but I think for a $100 5 piece speaker system they sound pretty good.

[archie]

The ACS44 have a subwoofer. One of the unique feature about these is that they have two mini inputs. I've set one input to come from the PC and one to come from the Koss boombox via the bare speaker output.

[Smoke24]

You must have bought the cheaper PC Works at that price. Cambridge has three different ones, I think the Soundworks are the bigger ones and they cost about $100 plus. I had a set of the big Soundworks on my old Dell but with my current machine I am using two pair of JBL's; one pair of Media 200's and one pair of Media 100's and a Media sub and they will blow away anything except my Boston Acoustics that are in my Truck. I have some more Media 200's and 100's but the 100's add some of the highs that you don't get with two pair of 200's and give a fuller sound.

[pa]

the ba7500 rocks i have them and there great quality and sound
http://www.gideontech.com/reviews/ba7500/

[archie]

What I didn't like about the soundworks is that the bass is not tight. Anything above a 9 o'clock setting on the bass is sloppy and distorted. These are not being used beyond what would be reasonably expected from any set of speakers in that price range. I just want to listen to the new Sade CD and have it sound as great as it should be. The Altec Lansing speakers, IMHO, are better speakers than the Creative Labs speakers.

[Parangles]

Does the sound card have any effect on the quality of radio
music ? It's Rockwell Riptide combo/AMC97 Codec controller.
Playing mostly old Jazz/Blues with little bass. Don't want to upgrade the speakers if the card is too old. Thanks.

[archie]

The sound card makes a very significant difference as far as sound quality goes but I really don't know how much it would for the limited bandwidth of radio nor how this particular rockwell soundcard performs. Soundcards more of less provide the pre-amplification to the powered speakers ... their importance is too oftentimes overlooked.
In my particular setup with the AltecLansing/CreativeLabs comparison, nothing too fancy was used. It was a PCI SoundBlaster CT-4810.