Totally addicted to bass?
When you first hear the FX3022 in action, you'll immediately be reminded of the two subwoofers residing in its unsuspecting shell. The delivery of bass is exceptional for a desktop solution of this size, and the glaring difference between 2.0 and 2.2 becomes instantly apparent.
The cone-shaped design is said to radiate sound from the subwoofers off hard surfaces and reflect audio in a 360-degree field, and that hard-surface reflection doesn't go unnoticed. Placed on a desk, we could feel the FX3022 sending vibrations through the wood, and it felt strangely impressive to find bass emanating from in front, as opposed to the subwoofer-at-the-shins we've become accustomed to.
Spurred on by the generous levels of booming lows, we cranked out some bass-filled tracks such as The Prodigy's "Diesel Power", and the results were stunning. For a system of its size, we simply weren't expecting such clarity and definition accompanied by desk-shaking lows.
Bass, then, isn't a problem and the dual-down-firing subwoofers are a perfectly-capable replacement for a dedicated unit found in messier 2.1 systems.
Moving on from bass, we went for a change of pace and played back Ludovico Einaudi's "Divenire", a soft piano and orchestra composition. Here's where the FX3022 shows its one significant failing - without dedicated controls for bass or treble, we found the bass to be overpowering and ultimately distorting the otherwise crisp mids and highs.
That overpowering bass is evident elsewhere, too. When testing a DVD - The Sopranos in our case - we found speech to be crisp and clear, but move to a scene with music and you'll soon be rushing for the volume control as overwhelming bass blasts in your direction.
Software-based level adjustments can, in most cases, be made from the user's operating system. Unfortunately, when switching from song-to-song and genre-to-genre, it isn't a quick-enough fix. The lack of dedicated controls is hugely evident, and an unfortunate omission on what is otherwise an impressive set of speakers.
To see how the FX3022 fare against the competition, we put them up against Logitech's Z10 - a well-regarded 2.0 solution - and a set of Creative's MegaWorks 550 in a 2.1 configuration. Compared to Logitech's Z10, the FX3022 provide substantially better lows, dwarfing anything the Z10 could produce in terms of bass. Measuring just a touch taller, Altec Lansing's solution shows just what can be achieved in a two-unit desktop configuration.
The Z10's advantage, however, is its built in level-adjustment controls. Finding the preferred mix of bass and treble is easily achieved, and for this reason alone we prefer Logitech's offering.
Compared to the Creative MegaWorks 550 - which, remember, we configured in 2.1 for this test - we found similar results. The FX3022 provided equally impressive amounts of bass - and we happened to prefer having the bass come from the speakers themselves, as opposed to the floor-placed subwoofer of the MegaWorks. The same problem, sadly, persists. Being able to control the bass on the MegaWorks' dedicated sub, we were able to locate our preferred mix - whereas bass continued to overwhelm from the FX3022.