Creative Pebble Plus

I recently bought a "well known name brand" smart display. The sound quality is absolutely awful. I wanted to use it as a bedside speaker. Because the display has an aux output jack I researched desktop speakers. This one had great reviews from sites I trusted and it was, uhh, inexpensive. Pros: Sound is great for the price. It's better than Bluetooth speakers costing twice as much. It's a great piece of industrial design. The spherical speakers are minimalist modern and functional. The manufacturer's logo could be on the bottom instead of the face, but no marketing department would stand for that. In the '90s I had a Cambridge Soundworks PC Works system. This is not quite as good, but it's close. Cons: Wires. You can conceal them but they're there. Unavoidable. You need a 2 amp 5 volt power supply to get full power. The multi port charging station on my bedside table filled the gap. I've tried them with a variety of music including Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" and some Bach organ. They work well at low volumes, my intended use. The 32K stream on the radio station I wake up to is intelligible, unlike on the smart display through its built in speakers. I'm sparing with 5 star reviews. I'm the kind of person who believes that 3 stars means "meets expectations." For the price this is an outstanding speaker system. It's not a golden ear reference system but it's not intended to be. If you want decent sound quality at moderate volumes you can't go wrong.

I wrote a pretty positive review a few days after getting these, but as I've lived with them a little longer and really thought about it, I'm not as happy with my purchase. If you're looking for speakers that are clear and just want something with good volume and clarity, these are great. They are decent enough and have *some* bass to them. Read below if you plan to listen to music and care what that experience is like. I do suggest scrolling down to the bottom where I've added pros and cons. Every review you see of these sings their praises. Don't get me wrong, they sound "good". Certainly better than the extra-tinny, clearly "there-so-they-could-put-another-feature-on-the-box", sad excuse for speakers that came built into my monitor. But they aren't great. Just good. For $50, I think I could have found better. Speakers have come a long way in the past decade. Your run of the mills bluetooth speaker in the flavor-of-the-week isle at Aldi has passive base reflex and have good bass response. These do not. The little woofer is more of a mid-range speaker with the two satellite speakers acting as tweeters. The sub does not thump or boom. It does a decent job filling out the sound, but there's no wow factor and deeper notes are lost completely. And I'm not even talking about edge cases. I like a song called "Daylight" by Watchhouse. It's a folky countryish song. So it has that classic BUMM bumm BUMM bumm bass line that many folky and country songs have. While these speakers play it, it's subtle to the point that you notice and miss it. Another thing that annoys me more than I thought it would, is that there is a good 4 second delay between the moment you turn on the speakers to the time any sound comes out. This seems minor, but I work from home and listen to music while I work. I get frequent work calls and since I'm logged into a remote computer, cannot easily mute the music with the computer, so I turn the speakers off. Maybe I'm being a bit nit-picky, but waiting for the music to start playing so I can set the volume drives me nuts. PROS * Look good * Clear sound * Good volume * Not "fake bassy" like many cheaper speakers (not muffled or muddy sounding) CONS * Utter lack of real low end * 4 second delay from the time they are turned on to the time they start playing audio * Wires are *just* long enough to reach from the top of a desk to a computer on the floor directly below. If you have a non-standard setup, you may need to get a headphone extension cable

EDIT 1/15: I have done some more experimenting with listening to the original sound and I am unimpressed. The two speakers fall over each other when listening to any music using complex instrumentation. Introduction updated. TL;DR: Too boomy in the upper bass range with recessed treble. Lower bass needs a big boost to bring out the subwoofer's potential. Pretty minimalist, durable (speakers have survived for 2 years through many drops), look good, easy to use. If you listen to FLAC files, you'll notice a steep roll off of treble and absence of air, as Creative claims they can reach 20kHz but it really is 16kHz.. EQ settings posted below. NOTE: Place the two speakers as far apart as possible to maximize its soundstage. A wide soundstage increases depth, fullness and separation of the left and right channels for an engaging experience. Sound: 5/10→8.5/10 w/ tuning Durability: 9/10 Look: 8/10 Value: 6/10→9/10 w/ tuning Let's get into it. INTRODUCTION: I love to tinker with technology. I built a PC as a kid, grew up messing with my parents' internet and computers, and have my own NAS for storing movies and photos. More recently, I took an interest in audio gear. Usually when I want to find a good deal on something I'll use Reddit to see what actual people say; mainstream review sites are bought and paid for. Many on Reddit recommended this system, and I'm a bit puzzled why. While they look fine and still work like new, the sound really isn't great. I suspect people thought of this system AFTER tuning it, like I did. As I said before: if you can't tune these for whatever reason, you will end up disappointed with the sound. However, if you can/have the ability to, you can make this $50 system sound like a $300 system easily. SOUND: The most prominent sound is an unfortunate boom around 130Hz. This is mostly mitigated through equalizer settings as posted below. The lower and upper midrange are well represented without sounding too shouty or causing ear fatigue, but need a slight decibel decrease. However, the treble may be the most disappointing part of this system sound-wise. In the first picture you can see a steep drop after 16kHz, crippling any genre of music that utilizes high frequencies (e.g., EDM or metal). Read the last section for more info. DURABILITY: I have a few siblings who are clumsy and have made these speakers fall a few times, yet they still look and perform good as new. No sound, power or cable issues. Take care of them, and they'll take care of you. LOOK: This is a bit more subjective. I personally am a fan of things that take up less space so I don't have to worry about making room for them. From that end, this system likely beats all others in that category. They are TINY! If you are looking to add some speakers that will complement your $1000 desk made from locally-sourced wood and your $2000 Herman Miller Aeron, I doubt you were ever considering these in the first place. VALUE: I bought these, with tax, for $42. They cost a bit more now at $52 (~$55 w/ tax) as I write this, but I would still recommend them conditionally. They do have a lot of potential, especially in the subwoofer. Just needs to be brought out. SOLVING ITS CONS (the fun stuff): For my fellow audiophiles and anyone who knows how to use an equalizer (or just copy settings) this part is for you. Attached in the photos is a visual spectrum of the frequencies this system puts out. The first photo is with my tuning, the second is without. Parametric equalizers work great, but a graphic equalizer (more popular with many equalizer applications and easier to understand) will work fine. You can still copy my settings into whatever program you use and it should work well enough. I have tested a few genres including progressive metal, EDM, classical, pop, and rock. The frequency response graphs posted is of Echoes in Eternity by Notaker. FLAC audio file, the way music was meant to be heard - lossless. When comparing the frequency responses side-by-side, the 130Hz peak is mitigated (to the extent it can); the 300Hz slight peak is neutralized; the lower bass is pronounced to give the system fuller sound (due to bass enhancement); and the upper treble is boosted to give some much-needed air to the sound. These are my settings — copy them as you see fit. One more thing... the program I use is called Easy Effects, only available on Linux. If you have an Android, Wavelet is quite good though Poweramp has a parametric equalizer. If you're still rocking Windows and are at all tech savvy, what on Earth are you still using that trash heap for? If you need Windows, just dual boot with it and some form of Linux. I'm on Debian and have loved it for years. Hope this helps! Cheers. Also, for those curious, I have since removed the "Crossfeed" effect. I didn't know what it did and when I looked into it I felt like a fool lol (it's for headphones and actively neuters stereo separation intentionally)

The sound quality is very, very good for the price. The subwoofer cable was long enough to run to the floor when my standing desk was at full height, even above what I stand at. Some reviews state issues with volume, and I found them to be quite loud. A few important notes about volume: check 3 places, your computer's volume control, the volume knob, and the volume setting on the media you are playing. Also, because they are USB powered, a underpowered USB port will make them quieter. If all of your computer ports are making them sound quiet, maybe try a 10w (sometimes called 5v 2a) USB a power adapter that plugs into the wall as that was the recommended power input from what I read.

These speakers are pretty good! The sound quality is pretty solid for the price, and the added passive subwoofer is a nice touch. They get fairly loud for their size, and look really cool on your desk. The bronze-on-black reminds me of the classic Klipsch styling, which always looks sleek. I actually caught a painted version of these in the background of Jenna Ortega's dorm in Beetlejuice Bettlejuice which was cool to see, so set designers seemingly like the look too. I bought these as a gift for my girlfriend who had only been using headphones, and she's a fan. While I haven't been the main one using them to really test them out, they sound good to my ears and are definitely good enough for her needs. As somebody who does live sound for my job, I would personally buy something a bit bigger/louder, but for the average user who just wants to watch YouTube and play some games, these work perfectly fine. The subwoofer definitely won't blow you away (it doesn't even have a volume knob), but it does really help to fill out the lower-end of the sound. Just be careful where you put it - put on some bass-heavy music when you're setting it up and move it around to a few different spots and see where it's the loudest. It seems like it gets the loudest in corners, but it'll vary with your room design and floor materials. The cables connecting the speakers could be a bit longer to space them out, but they work for most standard desk setups. I just wish I had more to work with in terms of cable management, but it's not that big of a deal. Otherwise, they're really simple to set up and get running, it's pretty much plug-and-play. My one complaint is that they do not have an integrated headphone jack on the front of the speaker like some others I've used. I had to purchase a 1/8" splitter to have headphones and speakers simultaneously hooked up, which was a cheap fix, but an additional jack would be convenient. Overall, these are really nice computer speakers for the price. Yes, there are plenty of cheaper ones, but if you want some that are small and look nice without compromising on sound quality, these are a great choice.

Headed back to the office after Covid and quickly realized I needed something better than the laptop speakers for some music while I'm working and don't feel like wearing headphones, but it's a relatively cramped desk and I can't setup any good sized speakers in there. It's also a relatively quiet office environment, so I'm not exactly going to be blasting the volume on whatever speakers I use. These Pebbles are USB powered, nice and compact to fit well on the desk, and since my intended listening will be relatively low volume I think they'll be pretty good for that. That said, I decided set them up in my home office to do a reasonable listening test against a few other speakers before they go live at work. My usual home desktop listening is through a Topping MX3 DAC/Amp and a pair of DIY Overnight Sensations, total cost for that setup is about two hundred bucks and some elbow grease. The OS speakers are relatively warmly voiced for non-fatiguing listening during long work sessions, and while they can sometimes sound a little "boxy" at certain frequencies they're pretty good all around speakers. I also have some Wharfdale Diamond 225's across the room with an AIYIMA A07 that I use when I REALLY want music in the office, which is about a four-fifty cost setup. All of that is just to say that I'm comparing them to things well out of their price range; at under fifty bucks the Pebbles aren't really in the same class of audio. The Pebbles are INSANELY bright in comparison, which might be good for conference calls etc. but it's pretty off-putting for any higher volume music listening for more than a half hour or so. The so called subwoofer that comes with the system is incredibly boomy and doesn't dig very deep, but it does at least give some presence under about 150hz which is otherwise totally missing with just the satellites. I tore up some of the packing material and stuffed the subwoofer port, which made it at least listenable, and then stuffed it under the desk on the floor instead of on the back of the desk, which also helped the bass quality. All that being said, these things are: - powered off a USB port, no AC needed - vastly better than the built-in laptop speakers (lenovo carbon X1) - Decent audio quality at low volumes, but very emphasized vocal range and very bright - Small enough to sit under most monitors and be unobtrusive on your desk - Relatively cheap compared to anything better that I've found so they'll suit my purposes just fine for low volume office listening that's better than laptop speakers. If you can cough up some more cash and don't require the compromises involved here, get a 2.1 system from Logitech or similar with a real AC power supply and you'll get much better sound quality.

The cables are a bit much, but for somewhere around 50 bucks you get a lot out of these. I run them through a mix amp and a digital EQ and love the added clarity.

While the price to performance ratio of this item is essentially unbeatable, giving you a subwoofer and speaker combo for an incredible price, I am a bit disappointed with the limited cable options. As in, there are none. The two pebble speakers themselves are hard-wired together and cannot be disconnected or extended, meaning that, with how small the cable size is, they will only be able to fully wrap around 1 monitor. If you want to run a dual monitor (or more) setup, one of the pebbles will have to be partially obscuring the screen since it just lacks the couple extra inches needed to wrap all the way around such a setup. I don't understand why they made the cables so short and also have hard-wired them in with no options. It's a baffling choice to me when the subwoofer's cable IS longer and can be disconnected. The audio quality is good, but not great; it does all it can be being so small and sleek, but there is of course a limit to what can be achieved with such small hardware. If you're expecting this to compete with a full-sized soundbar+subwoofer or surround-sound setup, don't. It can't and that isn't really its purpose. What it can do is be easy to setup (for single-monitor setups), easy to connect thanks to its USB power enabling the back of most PCs to both power it and output audio, and provide good quality sound for an unbeatable price. Don't expect the world, but if you have $50, want the best bang for your buck, and are OK with a couple limitations, this can't be beaten for that use case.