Whilst the technical specifications of the S362s aren’t exactly ground-breaking with a total of 75W RMS - the idea for this system is to accompany a media PC or even a TV itself. So to test the audio performance for the ARCTIC S362’s we will be reporting back on movies, general usage with TV and hooked up to a PC for gaming. I’ve had these speakers now for approximately 3 months+ and so my findings should be fairly conclusive.
Obviously the quality of audio from a consumer-level speaker is always going to be somewhat subjective; what may be near-perfect for one set of ears could be just a little off for another.
Movies
Having the S362s configured with a Full HD TV really does provide a more fulfilling experience. Over the standard audio from inbuilt speakers on the TV ARCTIC’s offerings significantly boost performance.
It’s immediately obvious that the sub-woofer with S362 provide a substantial bass resonance. During action movies the knob indicator was set to around 60% for best results – anything over this caused the bass to overpower everything else.
Even with treble control the S362s handled all aspects of movies from character dialogue, to music, action and explosions very well. Tones are not too tinny or too low either. Tones are crisp, clear and bass reproduction is fantastic, this system is actually a great accompaniment for any home theatre/TV setup.
Music
To test the music performance for each of our speaker systems I ran the following music tracks. The tracks tested offer a variety of different tones, treble and bass due to them being featured across a range of different genres.
3OH!3 - STARTRUKK (Feat. Katy Perry) *R'n'B*
Thriving Ivory - Angels on the moon *Pop/Rock*
Armin van Buuren ft Sharon den Adel - In and Out of Love *Dance*
Lacuna Coil – Trip the Darkness *Rock/Metal*
The S362s fared well during our music tests. Clarity, crispness and bass are all aspects that the this system score well with – for some genre’s (particularly dance) the bass had to be altered and reduced slightly. At low, mid and high there was no distortion whatsoever and considering the specifications of the bass and satellite speakers – the system in general handles music very well indeed.
Gaming
For the gaming section I played a variety of titles including The Walking Dead, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.
Sound is accurately reproduced via the satellites and bass. Explosions and projectiles create quite an atmosphere. Of the different scenarios I would say the S362’s are better suited to movies and music than gaming.
