Product Reviews

Philips is known as a great innovator in the worlds of music and computers, and its latest bright idea has a foot in both camps. The DSS370 is the first set of digital speakers on the market that connects to your PC using a USB port, eliminating the need for a sound card.

The USB (Universal Serial Bus) was first introduced in 1995 to try and standardise the way peripherals are connected to a PC. If you bought your PC within the last two years, it probably has one or two USB ports at the rear, but it's equally probable that they are, as yet, unused. However, over the past six months more and more USB devices have begun to appear, including digital cameras and scanners, as well as monitors incorporating USB hubs to connect to yet more gadgets. USB is now ready to take off in earnest because Windows

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98 has built-in support to make the hardware work properly.

As with all USB devices, the DSS370 is easy to set up. All you need to do is install the drivers from the CD, plug in the speakers and off you go. My only real concern is that to listen to audio CDs from your CD-ROM drive you have to enable digital audio in the Control Panel, a procedure that is only hinted at in the documentation.

As the DSS370s connect to your PC through the digital USB port; background electrical noise is immediately eliminated from the equation. A standard set of analog speakers produce a lot of background noise, which can significantly reduce your listening pleasure. Not so with the DSS370s, even when set to maximum volume, only a minimal hiss could be heard, and that was when I pressed my ear to the speaker! When fed a signal, sound quality was very clear and solid. And if you choose to use the subwoofer unit, action games and dramatic music both improve enormously in quality. The only real disappointment comes from the playback of audio CDs. Even at low volumes, audio CDs sounded too scratchy, as if the treble was set too high.

If your current speakers are poor you'll be blown away by the DSS370s, and pleasantly surprised by the ease of installation. And if you don't have a sound card, they are even more attractive, allowing you to add sound to a PC without opening the case!