Product on Review: Rockus 3D
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Soundscience
Street Price: £150
Rockus 3D Technical Specifications
To many Soundscience will be a name unheard of, they are a subsidiary of Antec. It was formed in 2010 with the intention of bringing dedicated audio products to the PC and home entertainment markets.
Rockus 3D is a 2.1 sound system by Soundscience and promises to provide an immersive home theatre experience. Here is what Soundscience have to say about this setup:
The rockus™ 3D | 2.1 speaker system creates a personal home theater experience that brings the power and realism of 3D audio together with the clarity and accuracy of high-fidelity music. 3Dsst™, soundscience’s 3D technology, actively analyzes incoming stereo audio signals and intelligently places them into a 3D sound field. The results are a personal theater experience with realistic, immersive 3D sound for your movies and games from 2.1 speakers - whether it’s the impact of an explosion, the snap of a baseball whizzing by a player’s face, or the thunder and fury of a videogame gunfight. The rockus also features a dedicated music mode optimized for superb stereo sound reproduction, letting you hear your music with deep, visceral sub-bass and spacious crisp, mids and highs. soundscience puts 3D cinematic sound and high-fidelity music in its place: Your room.
So let’s take a closer look at the Rockus 3D 2.1. To begin with the Rockus 3D is presented in a very eye-catching package with depictions of the speakers on the front and around the back an insight into the significant features. Inside, the Rockus 3D is very well packaged in order to keep all items protected whilst in transit.
Packaging for Rockus 3D
With all of the items removed from their packaging we can take a look at the bundle. This comprises of:
• 100W Subwoofer (13.8” (H) x 7.7” (W) x 10.6” (D) – 8.5KG
• 25W Satellite Speakers 5.7” (H) x 4.7” (W) x 6.3” (D)
• Remote Control
• Cables -.5mm to 3.5mm cable, speaker cable - speaker cable - 2 x RCA to open end, RCA to 3.5 mm cable, remote cable
• Instructions sheet
Rockus 3D bundle
The build quality for each of the items is actually very good. The only item that is plastic and lacks the premium feel is the remote control. The satellite speakers are steel construction and each have a foot that causes the unit to face upwards, this is not adjustable. The body of the unit has a matt finish whilst the circular discs are shiny metal. Each speaker is capable of 25W and is connected to the subwoofer via an RCA cable.
2x Satellite Speakers with very good build quality
Around the back of the subwoofer are a range of jacks, ports and buttons. Each speaker must be connected via RCA to open end – the open end meeting the “To Speaker” ports. Though this is easy to do this method of connecting the speakers is quite archaic. Other options on the back include both analogue and digital input jacks giving plenty of flexibility.
The bass control is rather odd – Soundscience have included a 3-switch button on the rear of the sub to allow 3 different modes of bass. Usually this type of option is available on the remote or is a rotating nob – this method implemented restricts us to only 3 fixed states.
The back of the sub-woofer with options for various types of input
Finally onto the remote control. This is plastic, fairly lightweight and provides some control for the sound system. By turning the top the volume can be increased or decreased – though there is no indication of what level this is actually positioned at. Pressing this top section of the remote causes music to pause but there is a 2-3 second delay between pausing and unpausing.
There is also a small button on the remote that allows the user to switch between 3D and music modes – an LED indicator will show above each when selected. As do the Digital and Mute options when used.
The remote control for Rockus 3D
On the next page we will consider the 2nd speaker in our grouptest – the Microlab FC360.
