JBL Creature III Self-Powered Multimedia Satellite and Subwoofer System

I work online, so I spend 30 hours a day on a computer, usually listening to music. I have two other surround sound systems in the house (a Denon 1910 receiver with JBL cs6100bg speakers on a 56 inch Samsung plasma and an Onkyo 7.1 ht-s6200 on a Mac Pro with a 48 inch Sony LCD for a monitor) but I needed something with a small footprint for my second desk to plug into a MacBook Pro with a 32 inch Panasonic LCD for a monitor. These are perfect. Simply perfect. Small, simple, clean and cool looking with crystal clear sound, and so incredibly light that I wondered if there was some mistake when FedEx dropped it off. I'm not a bass guy or audiophile and maybe these wouldn't pass that test, but for simple day to day music, they're everything I was hoping for. That they're only 100 dollars is crazy. If they were three times the price and I knew they'd be this good, I'd gladly have paid it. All you really need to know is that it's JBL, and this is the third incarnation of their creature line. Everything is refined and every problem solved. Highly recommended.

The JBL Creature III Self-Powered Multimedia satellite and subwoofer system JBL Creature III Self-Powered Multimedia satellite and subwoofer systemis simply the best computer accessories investment I have ever made. The sound this system produces is totally unmatched for a computer speaker system. When I finally made the change to MP4 and began the arduous task of converting my audio collection of 500+ CD's to MP4's, I thought that my next task would be to go out shopping for a new home stereo and a MP3 player that could hook up to it so I could utilize the fruits of my labor. Well let's say that I am only in the market now for a MP3 player for remote use but am no longer planning on purchasing a new home stereo for playing my audio files, because I found the JBL Creatures. Hooking these up to my home computer has turned my home computer into a phenominally sounding home stereo in my living room. Everyone that has stopped by my home has their jaws uncontrollably drop to the floor in awe when they discover all of those great sounds are coming from this unique and stylish little set of computer speakers. You have to believe me, this is the best computer speaker system ever invented. I recommend that the JBL Creatures be your next computer accessory investment...or for that matter...your next home audio investment. I know if you do buy these, I will be reading your 5 Star review in here soon too.

I bought the original Creature speakers over ten years ago. Recently I noticed that their sound quality began to degrade somewhat, so I decided to replace them with Creature III speakers. The Creature III's are basically an esthetic change rather than a technical improvement over the original Creatures. They don't sound any better than the originals did when I first purchased them but since the originals sounded very good, that doesn't concern me. What does bother me is that the cables from the Creature III satellites seem to be at least two feet shorter than the cables on my old Creatures. My speakers are at the front of my desk and I would prefer to have the cables extend back to the end of the desk, go down to the floor and connect to the subwoofer on the floor below the desk. To do that, the cables must be over five feet long. These cables are considerably shorter than that, so I first tried to extend the cable to the right speaker which controls the volume. It has what appears to be an S-video connection so I used an S-video coupler and a short S-video cable to lengthen the connection to the subwoofer.Using this S-video extension didn't work very well. I did get sound from the speaker but I couldn't increase, decrease, or mute the volume. The volume controls on the speaker were useless. Extending the left satellite speaker cable may not be a problem because it uses an RCA audio cable and the speaker has no volume controls. But if you want the controls on the right speaker to work properly, you must connect only the cable directly attached to the speaker. You can't extend it.. I found a way around this by re-routing both of the cables. They aren't placed where I would prefer them to be, but they work. If JBL had provided longer cables, hooking up these speakers would have been no problem at all. I would rate the performance and the appearance of the Creature III's at five stars. Because the cables aren't long enough, it can be a problem placing them where someone may want to. For that reason, I downgraded my rating to four stars.