Creative Inspire P7800 8-Piece Powered Surround Sound Speaker System -- Not Amazing, but Certainly Does Improve One's Movie Watching Experience

The Creative Inspire P7800 sound system makes a great home-theater audio get up, but leaves audiophiles somewhat disappointed.

For eighty bucks, the Creative Inspire P7800 seemed like a cheap way to put a great deal to put more quality sound into my life. Knowing that doing any serious research into surround sound systems would only leave me feeling unfulfilled unless I spent a thousand bucks, I bought the Inspire P7800 on something of an impulse. It seemed like a simple way to make movie watching a much more enjoyable activity.

And it did. Before I could find this out, though, I had to put the everything together. Upon opening the box, I found nine pieces-eight speakers and a console, equipped with a volume knob, which connected the whole business to the audio source. There was one subwoofer, a central speaker, two front satellites, two side satellites, and two rear satellites. None of these came with stands. This would be my first warning: Do not get the Inspire P7800 unless you are happy either mounting the speakers on the wall or setting them around on things. Or, perhaps, unless you are willing to invest a great deal of time and money in coming up with seven appropriately-sized speaker stands. In my case, I mounted the speakers on the wall and carried on.

After setting up all the potential tangled messes of cables, I had the whole thing set up. I connected it easily to my DVD player, but in the process discovered another potential pitfall: The necessity of 7.1 channel audio. Although you can still use the speakers with fewer channels, you would be missing the surround sound that is the whole point. Although most DVD players come surround sound-ready, many computers do not. If you plan to use the Inspire P7800 with your computer, make sure that it has a nice sound card that is up to the task.

When everything was put together, I found that the Inspire P7800 added all sorts of new life to movies, but was somewhat underwhelming for music. Granted, if I was not familiar with my friend's Bose system, I probably would have thought the music sounded fine, but instead I found it to be lacking the clarity, definition, and force of better speakers.

For the vast majority of home users hoping to put together a bang-up movie watching set up, however, I would have to recommend the Creative Inspire P7800.