This is basically an appreciation post for the incredibly high quality of products in the late 90's early 00's
These are from the first computer my parents had, and that was 25ish years ago, they've been used, kicked, dropped, scratched (cats), and had water, soda on them, tossed around, they've been through 4 houses where my parents and I lived, and they are still kicking and way above the average speakers nowdays, the sound quality is still amazing and I have no intentions of replacing them
They have the old ass plug for audio but somehow every PC recognizes them as headphones so I can just connect them to a monitor that has the connection and that's it, I absolutely love these bad boys
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they also have never had any kind of cleaning product touch them as far as I can see
Product Designers in the late 90’s: “Let’s make it look like it’s upside down.”
you will need a tetanus shot after handling those /S
That’s just a property of good speakers, it’s not really because of a quality difference back then. Speakers are just a linear motor that runs at a usually fairly low duty cycle and at a low stress level. So good speakers stay good for 20-40 years until the surround material degrades, and bad speakers stay bad.
I’d be shocked if my inexpensive particle board bookshelf speakers lasted less than 20 years.
Take them apart clean them lightly sand them and paint them some cool bitching color to match your rig
any chance they came with an aldi PC? i think i remember them, and at the time we had one of those at home
I had them too in 97, great speakers
When eventually we bought a new computer in the early 2000 the new speakers sounded like crap so we kept these ones
My grandma has the same speakers. Also still working 😀
bzzt-clicka-click-clicka-errrt-bzzt-clicka-click-clicka-errrt-bzzt-clicka-click-clicka… (cellphone interference)
I had them from 2 different brands
Ap power: they sounded great, with lots of deep bass
And a other brand with clear highs/mids but lacked bass (added a small sub and still was great)
Instantly made me think of this
https://youtu.be/sC8qtyGoGZw?si=f4KVYuThOqyAKD9d
Fucking dead 🤣
Do you live in a coal mine?
I had some old speakers that lasted a good 15 years, thought they were awesome until I bought a new sound bar and realized that they were absolute shit and I had just gotten used to it over the years.
https://preview.redd.it/s5mom3pq2pef1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bb069874023523410982a98c78b7519ed6c7999
These are still going for my father’s computer. They are 18 years old and still sound like new. Altec Lansing AVS 300. Their predecessors were originally made in the 90’s these were the refresh of those.
I have an advent set like that and old bose ones I gave my twin brother that are still cranking.
I hate to break it to you but being ‘multimedia speakers’, with a frequency cutoff of 15kHz, and being a commonly rebranded generic product, they are really really awful. They are not at all above the sound quality of modern speakers, even el cheapo monitors like the presonus eris 3.5s are so far ahead of these in audio quality it’s not even a competition.
I’m rocking my Boston acoustics, not dinosaurs like these but they’re close to 20 years old now. Perfectly fine except the plastic got that tacky/sticky quality.
No they’re not.
They’re better than other “PC speakers” alright, but any actual speaker-amp combo makes their 5W RMS sound like you’re scratching your fingernails over rusty styrofoam blackboard.
how many generations of microorganisms have these speakers spawned. lol if they get the job done, that’s all that matters I guess.
I had those back in the day, Bangers!
You ever stuck anything in that hole?
Hey, 4KB of RAM got people to the moon so hell yeah
I have the exact same pair, they’re branded as “ACTIVE 95”. They’re on their fourth amplifier, the grilles are rusty, but the hell do they work.
My speakers (Benwin S90 from 2001) and keyboard (1993 IBM Model M) are the only things I’m not replacing until they’re dead.
OP: make sure you’re plugging into the line-out and/or check the audio driver settings to see if you can manually set it to speaker output.
They do sound amazing. I did notice the sound is somewhat directional on these, so for best sound try to angle them toward your head both in rotation and elevation
10,000 W PMPO 🤸🏾♂️
are they Labtec’s?
I used to have a set just like this. I gotta say though, OP — even a cheapo pair of 2.1 speakers (two satellites and a sub) will absolutely knock your socks off in terms of quality. These can be easily found for under $100 and I guarantee you will notice a difference. I replaced my beige whatevers with Logitech’s old garbage-can looking sub with basic satellites.
I then replaced THOSE with Klipsch’s 4.1 system which was…amazing.
Holy god I have the SAME speakers! They were my dad’s from the mid 90s and I still use them.
At least give them some love and clean them. That shit looks like it’s on a mechanics shop.
>I absolutely love these bad boys
But not enough to keep them clean
I had those 99-2007!!
Back when treble and bass dials were straight up either on the subwoofer or the speaker.
Shit, I had the exact same ones. Bought them in 1996. They were awesome. Only just got rid of them about a year ago.
My friend and I drove to Gävle just to pick one of these up, along with an old PC and monitor. Was one hell of a ride. Like 4 hours of driving or some shit