Wavemaster Stax 2.1 Speaker Review

Performance

To put the Wavemaster Stax through their paces I hooked them up to my PC, they seem well suited to desktop use as the speakers themselves don’t take up a lot of real estate on your desktop, allowing more freedom for your monitor and peripherals, while the subwoofer is slim enough to sit alongside your desk without causing too many issues. The hard-wired design means that setup is really easy and with just a single 3.5mm jack needed from your computer to the speakers there is really no tricky setup procedure to get in your way.

I fired up a few of my favourite albums and decided to annoy anyone who lives near me by pushing the volume up as far as I could. The half way point on the volume dial offers a lot of punch and more than enough to leave your ears ringing after a few minutes listening. Sound quality is superb, but push the speakers to far and you will notice a drop in quality from the satellite speakers and the bass will be come a little muddle, but these issues are only apparent at volumes beyond what I would call reasonable. Treble is pin sharp and it should be given that both satellite speakers are for the most part just powerful tweeters. The sub takes care of a good chunk of the mid tones as well as the bass, but get the tone dials tuned to your liking and you can get a nice and rich, room filling sound from the Stax. For listening to most kinds of music you’ll have no issue with the Stax, however if you’re looking to thump our some bass dependant drum and bass at high volume, then you’ll be wanting to invest in something designed to run at high volumes (see: more expensive).

The headphone and line-in ports on the wired controller are a big bonus, as the headphone port is driven by the volume dial meaning you don’t have to rely on system volume to make adjustments. The line-in is direct to the speakers, so it’s no good for a microphone hook up while gaming / making Skype calls, but for playing music from your phone or MP3 player it’s a nice shortcut.