Design & Features

First thing I noticed was the size of the subwoofer…It’s pretty tall. I’m not sure that it’ll cram underneath a desk with drawers like the one in my office.

The woofer is upward firing into an inverted parabolic dish to create the low frequency vibrations required of it. I’m not a fan of this setup, as it tends to demand a lot of the speaker, and in computer systems the woofer itself is fairly small. Downward or forward firing would probably have been better, but we’ll have to hold judgment until we hear it.

**click to enlarge**

The sub is powered, and provides the signals for the rest of the system. The plugs are arranged down the back of the sub, with the power on the bottom. The sub is also ported, at the very bottom of the output panel.

Five satellite speakers are provided in this system, and to me they look like an antique microphone. The wire is attached at the bottom of the central unit, and the unit itself is capable of rotating all the way around. The speaker is also visible behind a simple plastic grille. I found that the swivel does not hold the speaker well, and they tend to angle upward due to the weight of the input wire.

This system also comes with a wired remote, which plugs into the subwoofer. It’s a very simple affair, with a large red LED display and just five buttons. One neat feature is that there are two headphone jacks on the remote itself, meaning you don’t need to run another wire back to the sub in order to use them.

Installation

The Juster 5.1 system comes with a complete set of cables that allow you to hook it up to either a RCA or 3.5mm audio output. All the wires are neatly color coded, to allow for easy assembly. I found that the wires on the front three satellites were pretty short, and did not allow me to install the speakers where I wanted to. The rear set was much better off, with longer lines.

I had some issues with the bases during the setup. There is no real good way to attach it to a wall, and the center speaker is a bit ungainly to sit on top of a monitor. A little more work could have gone into their design to fix this.

Sound Testing

I ran the JUSTer speakers through a wide array of media. This included CDs from all the major genres – Country, Classical, Rock, R&B, Rap, and Pop. I also watched two movies (The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan) as well as played three games (Max Payne 2, Hitman 2, and Grand Theft Auto Vice City). All of this was done after calibrating the speakers with the Creative EAX console provided with my Sound Blaster Audigy 2.

The only area I particularly found deficient was the high frequency sounds when there was a lot of it going on. For example, it was not bad on simple acoustic tracks or games, but in some classical passages and in action sequences in the movies the high treble would start to blur a bit. The bass response was not bad, but not stellar either. I still would prefer to see a downward firing setup in this sub. I own at least one of each type, and it’s certainly the best sounding with comparable woofer size.
 

Next: Conclusions