Date: July 9th, 2003
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Altec Lansing
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COMPANY PROFILE

Altec Lansing's early technological developments in acoustical and electronic components have earned a place of prominence in sound reproduction few companies can match. The predominance of Altec's name over the years in sports stadiums, arenas, theatres, airports, auditoriums, churches, amusement parks and more recently on desktops within homes and at the workplace attest to this fact. Altec Lansing speaker systems have formed the backbone of the sound systems in such world renowned places as The United Nations Building, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Disneyland and Disneyworld, New York's Lincoln Philharmonic Center and the Schubert Theatre, MGM's Grand Hotel, The Singapore National Stadium, and The Sydney Opera House, to name a few. Today Altec Lansing speakers appear in myriad environments, addressing the wide array of needs for quality audio among diverse professional business people, musicians, families, students, music connoisseurs and gaming aficionados within their respective milieus.

PRODUCT INTRODUCTION

Lately, surround sound is becoming more and more of a standard in the computing environment. Standard two channel stereo soundcards are more or less extinct other than a few remaining models from earlier years still floating around the reseller channels. High Fidelity 5.1, 6.1 and even now 7.1 soundcards are bringing affordable home theatre sound to the consumers workstation and turning a basic music capable computer to the realm of full multichannel audiophile bliss.

Following in the footsteps of the soundcard evolution is the surround speaker system manufacturers grasping at a market that is blossoming and proving to be a very successful. But as these speakers get more and more popular, new companies are starting to flood the market with speaker systems that are just absolute trash. Sure they are surround capable, but the sound quality produced is borderline better than the sound radiating from your TV set.

Altec Lansing is no upstart company in the speaker industry and has been in the business for a long time and for good reason. They produce great speaker systems for their price point that perform and sound much like systems of twice the price.

Today, I will be looking at their six speaker system, the XA3051 that is not only targeted at the computer market, but more so to the console gaming consumers owning a PS2 or an XBOX.