Speakers

If there is one thing that has set FiringSquad apart from our colleagues, it is our multimedia expertise. We were one of the first websites in the gaming community to bring attention to the still venerable Klipsch Promedia v2.400 speakers and to our knowledge, the first and only website to document the differences between high-end and generic cables for videogame consoles. For this ultimate gaming system, we searched everywhere for the multimedia speakers with the best bang for the buck possible and settled with the Swans T200a.

Close Up of Drivers

Sleek looking setup

Never heard of them? Don’t worry – that’s because their products have primarily been the realm of do-it-yourself audiophiles. Swans Speakers are developed by an engineering team in the United States, but the drivers themselves are produced by the “Hi-Vi Research” division in China. The drivers and enclosures are all CAD engineered with the use of finite element analysis and can compete with the likes of Dynaudio, SEAS, and Vifa. In the US, Swans Speakers are pretty much distributed exclusively through the Internet at http://www.theaudioinsider.com. Like Cambridge Soundworks in the early days, Swans hopes that their 30-day money back guarantee will help them sell speakers without needing costly showrooms. Vertical integration allows the company to provide excellent loudspeaker engineering since Swans is able to cut on the middleman, and have direct communication between all engineers.

Swans’ flagship 2.2 speaker costs a staggering $68,000.00/pair and even at that price, it was a Best of CES 2003 finalist. The T200a I selected for this project is a much more palatable $480/pair and represents their flagship powered speaker. For those with a smaller budget, Swans has their M200, an affordable $250 2.0 setup whose competition includes the Sirocco Spirit, and the $280 T120, a gaming-oriented 2.1 setup.

The Budget M200

Obviously, one of the key selling points of the Swan speakers is their excellent build quality. The T200a features a high-gloss piano black lacquer. Our impression is that while the finish is not on par with the best Japanese urushi furniture lacquers, it’s still nicer than anything I’ve seen in the price range. The unique geometry, champagne anodized aluminum, and bright blue LEDs give the Swans T200a’s a perfect balance between an elegant but aggressive finish. These are speakers that will certainly draw attention.

Blue LEDs are always cool

Note the quality of the high-gloss finish

The design of Swans speakers goes beyond improved aesthetics. By avoiding a “rectangular box” enclosure and having non-parallel edges to the aluminum baffle, diffraction is reduced – it’s not just about the look. The aluminum baffle itself and lacquer finish also increase the stiffness of the enclosure, reducing audible resonance.

Sound Performance

These speakers are so exciting that Alexis is working on a dedicated review of these speakers (along with the Swans M200). As nice as these speakers look, they sound even better. These speakers will draw attention for their sound quality. There is an uncanny transparency with these speakers offering life-like midrange purity, and detail – all while providing a musical neutrality that is never fatiguing. The speakers are just slightly bright (in a good way – it’s not harsh), imparting a flavor along the lines of Dynaudio Audience speakers or the Sennheiser HD590 headphones. We have never reviewed better loudspeakers at FiringSquad.

Think back to when the Klipsch Promedia’s first came out. That’s the sort of experience I’m getting with these Swans T200a speakers, except now it is the T200a’s bringing audiophile grade speakers to the PC. We still love and recommend the Klipsch and Logitech line-up for games, but anyone ready to move onto something more luxurious and true-to-the-music performance, the 2-channel Swans are your next bet. Of course, keep in mind that the better your speakers, the better your source needs to be. This is not because the speakers do any worse with low-quailty recordings, but because high-quality recordings will sound that much better on T200a.

So why did you need the Audiophile USB?

When it comes to connectivity, the T200a’s roots as a professional studio monitor show. The rear offers two inputs (balanced XLR, and standard vanilla unbalanced RCA) and a volume knob. There are no bass or treble knobs to be found here.

In a real studio, the speaker equipment is kept at a fixed volume. When you record a 100 dB signal at your mixing console and set the master volume to +0 dB, you want to hear the results as 100.0 dB. You’d want to set it once and never touch it again. Consequently, the T200A studio monitors are not designed to have their volume regularly changed. This is evident from the fact that a) the speaker knob is located on the back, and b) each speaker has its own volume knob (just as studio amplifiers have separate volume knobs for each channel).

If you were to run this on your desktop PC, you’d want to have a way to change the volume easily without having to reach behind both of your speakers. You can get a separate pre-amp if you really wanted to, or you could use the built-in pre-amp on your sound card. In the case of the Audiophile USB, there is a master hardware volume knob to make things easy.

You would also do just fine with the software Windows volume control, after all that’s how headphones work. In this system though, we’ll also be adding a Griffen PowerMate. What is a Griffen PowerMate? Well, read on to find out…