W
e’re consistently amazed by how companies such as Logitech can jam
so many features into a set of speakers that sell for $200. And Logitech’s
new G51 system is a good value if $200 is the absolute top of your budget and
you must have a 5.1-channel system.
Some great new games with awesome positional audio are now avail-
able—BioShock being just one example—so we understand why many
people will sacrifice audio fidelity in order to afford inexpensive surround-
sound speakers like these. BioShock is a blast, and it’s even better in sur-
round sound. But with games, your attention isn’t focused entirely on the
audio. Listen to CDs on the G51s and you’ll immediately hear the speakers’
flaws. The subwoofer pushed a good amount of tight bass on Paul Thorn’s
“That Ain’t Nothin’ but the Devil,” for instance, but the jangling sitar on
“Sister Ruby’s House of Prayer” (both from Mission Temple Fireworks Stand)
struck us as listless and drab.
We dig case mods, so we applaud Logitech for providing a means of
decorating these speakers. You wrap paper cutouts, which you can download or
design yourself, around the shell of the satellite speakers to give them a custom
look. Logitech also came up with a brilliant solution to the problem of where to
put the center channel: You can either set it on top of your desk or clamp it to
the top of your fl at-screen monitor.
But if Logitech insists on hardwiring the speaker cable to the satellites,
it needs to provide enough cable to reach the subwoofer: Five feet doesn’t cutit—we had to place the sub between our feet in order to situate the front satel-
lites on either side of our desk. The 9-foot cables for the surround channels, on
the other hand, were plenty long.
We haven’t heard a better 5.1-channel system in this price range—
and we’re happy that Logitech resisted the temptation to route audio over
USB—but if music is your top priority, there are plenty of better-
sounding 2.1 and 2.0 rigs to
be had.
—MICHAEL BROWNLogitech G51 Surround
Sound Speakers
Yes, you can have 5.1 on a budget
O
ur hearts were ablaze with excitement when we busted open the chunky
Buffalo TeraStation Live. And with good reason: On paper, the four-drive NAS
device looked like it was going to be an easy winner—its two terabytes of total
storage in a RAID-5 confi guration made us smile.
As it turns out, we celebrated prematurely. The Buffalo TeraStation Live per-
forms about as well in a fi le-transfer test as it would in a foot race. Surprisingly,
it had slower read times than write times. At 5:16 (min:sec) to transfer a 3GB fi le
from the NAS to a PC, you’ll be in for a bit of a wait should you decide to use this
device as a media hub.
Write speeds were marginally bet-
ter but still not fast
enough to catapult
the TeraStation Live
ahead of its com-
petition. That said,
the TeraStation Live
offsets the pain by
packing a few neat
features into this
otherwise plain-Jane
device. We love the
TeraStation’s user-
management set-tings—a handy web interface makes it easy to add new users, assign users
to groups, and control fi le-access operations.
Also handy is the TeraStation Live’s built-in media-server feature. We were
able to pull up a shared batch of MP3s on iTunes with no problems whatsoever.
While these features are nice, they don’t distance the TeraStation Live from its
competitors, and its slow transfer speeds further reduce its allure. We’d recom-
mend the TeraStation Live for its data redundancy and ease of use, but
like this device, we simply run out
of steam for further praise.
—DAVID MURPHYBuffalo TeraStation Live
This slow-moving bovid can’t keep up with the pack
reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
7
BUFFALO TERASTATION LIVE7
LOGITECH G51
$200, http://www.logitech.com$1,300, http://www.buffalotech.comLogitech’s innovative G51 speakers are almost cheap enough for
us to forgive their sonic shortcomings.The enormous
TeraStation
Live should be
called a net-
work-attached
bunker. It’s
a veritable
subwoofer of
storage!72 MAXIMUMPC | FEB 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
BENCHMARKS
Best scores are bolded. We used the contents of Maximum PC’s November 2007
CD for the small-file testing and a single 3GB file for large-file testing. All scores
are averages of three transfer trials. *Scores for this enclosure were obtained
using a provided 750GB Seagate 7200.10 Barracuda drive.BUFFALO QNAP TS-109
TERASTATION LIVE PRO* RE
READ
SMALL (MIN:SEC) 1:20 0:36
LARGE (MIN:SEC) 5:16 2:27
WRITE
SMALL (MIN:SEC) 1:05 0:39
LARGE (MIN:SEC) 3:50 2:44