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Wavemaster designs speakers in Germany and then manufactures in the Far East. It's a clever partnership that allows them to get the best of both worlds: Teutonic desire for engineering perfection with a Chinese love of cost control and affordability. In 2013, that resulted in the most impressive set of speakers we saw all year – the Stax. The product has evolved and today we listen out for improvements in the Second Generation model.
The most impressive thing about the original Stax is the audio quality offered at the price. The launch price was £59. Right now, the Second Generation Stax speaker set is available for just £44.99 on Amazon.
On that basis, if the audio quality is anywhere near as good as the original, Wavemaster has a serious proposition on its hand. Styling is slightly different from the original – the contrasting silver satellites have been replaced by all black units and everything has a slightly soft touch to it.
Naturally, it is 100% compatible with anything that has a 3.5mm jack. On paper, the only feature ‘missing' is Bluetooth. This is how Wavemaster lays out the full set of what Stax V2 does have:-
- Sound
Powerful, dynamic stereo sound powered by 3 separate amplifier modules (incl. bass and treble control) - Satellites
Slim and elegant shape with integrated driver protection and wall mountable metal stand. High value wide range drivers with mylar membrane - Sub-Woofer
High performance long stroke bass driver in wooden cabinet with bass reflex technology - Control
Integrated within the remote control unit are ON/OFF (standby), volume control, line-in (optimized for mobile sound sources) and headphone-out (amplified) - Line-In x2
Connect an additional mobile stereo source (e.g. smartphone) to the dedicated socket on the control unit, without disconnecting your main source - Headphone Jack
Stax offers an integrated headphone amplifier. Simply connect your headphones directly to the control unit and the speakers will mute automatically - Eco-Standby
Stax consumes less than 0.5 Watt during standby. Moreover there is a mains power switch located on the subwoofer.
The contents of the box is almost identical to what we found last May – with a sub-woofer, a pair of satellites, volume control with integrated headphone socket, microphone input and alternative input alongside cables and instructions.
Putting the speakers together is simple and, once assembled, we lined them up against the old Stax and a set of similarly priced Creative Labs units.
The box is almost identical, but we have been assured by Wavemaster that all of the stock presently in the channel is the latest version.
The box contains everything you need to set up the speakers, including the handy remote which lets you control the volume as well as plugging in headphones, microphones and an auxiliary source – without the need to scramble around under your desk/TV.
The sub-woofer dominates proceedings, housing the weighty, high performance, long stroke bass driver.
The satellites are cool looking, solidly built with a neat hinge mechanism to let you get the optimum angle for your listening environment.
And here's the competition.
Now on to the test environment.
This time, we added in a new dimension alongside the pure music and gaming tests, a real world living room scenario.
We've linked in the YouTube versions of songs here, but you will need a higher definition source if you want to do any testing of your own.
First up, music and we started with some heavy rock favourites with tracks off Heaven & Hell by Black Sabbath. While the older and newer Stax speakers dealt with the dynamics on track like Die Young easily, the Creative speakers started off well enough, but turned into literal boom boxes when the bass and drums kicked in. This was true for Lonely is the Word and any other track where there is a definite ‘kick' in the track. Essentially, the Stax speakers deal with a full range of sounds well, but the Creatives get sluggish when there's too much to do.
On the quiet and melodic side of things, the Johnny Cash version of Hurt played out well on all three sets of speakers and the same was true for Comfortably Numb by Floyd – although a booming/muffling was still noticeable when volume peaked on the Creatives.
One area where the Creative speakers drew level, was on a track where a certain amount of distortion at high level actually feels right, and that's First of the Year by Skrillex.
To be honest, with the Stax speakers it was hard to tell the difference between the old and new model during our music testing. We did a simple ‘blind test' with the subject facing away from the speakers as we switched them around a few times during a track and they were unable to give us a clear distinction. Try this between the Stax and Creatives and the difference is clear.
Next was the in game testing and this proved a lot closer. Sure, the ‘punch' was a little sluggish from the Creatives in a combat FPS situation, but with all of the explosions that were going off, the difference was not noticeable.
So far, if you're into hardcore dubstep and first person shooters, then any of the 3 options on test will do what you need.
That moves us onto the ‘Home Theatre' test. We swapped the speakers out in the corner of a living room, using Star Trek: Into Darkness as our Blu-Ray test source. From the ‘ship in space' with orchestral backing, through to ‘deep voiced' conversations in quiet rooms to full blown battle scenes, this film offers audio challenges across a full spectrum of wavelengths.
After spending over an hour swapping back and forth, we can tell you up front that a low cost set of speakers is way better than the tiny units that will be integrated into your TV, but that a true home cinema will need a lot more money to be spent.
The challenge for all 3 sets was the low end of the mid range – from a deeper human voice to the top end of a bass instrument. While a sub woofer will give you a pleasing room shake and the satellites can punch out volume toward the top end of human hearing, there's something missing.
Try as we might with the TV's equalizer etc, we could not stop a boom creeping in, somewhere in the 100-500Hz range. At low volume, it wasn't noticeable, but then the ‘experience' was lacking.
As the volume began to get pushed up to the kind of level where the film became ‘immersive', there was a definite resonance effect between the speakers and the walls in the corner behind the TV – in a way that was not clearly noticeable from our in-game and music testing.
Companies like Q Acoustics are not going to be threatened in the home cinema space by Wavemaster or Creative, but – as we said – adding any 2.1 speaker set to a regular TV is going to improve your life.
In some ways, speakers like the Wavemaster Stax are so useful that you almost forget that the Second Generation model only costs £39 and you begin to demand much more from them – feeling a strong sense of disappointment whenever the results aren't stellar.
And the results are not always stellar. While they dealt with music challenges with poise and delivered a great gaming experience, they became noticeable during quiet dialogue sections of the film. Something which you'd never want. Speakers should be, effectively, transparent. You should be 100% focused on the visuals and the audio should be so spot on, that you don't think about it at all.
Comparing to the Creatives, they look nicer and deliver a much better audio experience. The gap from the first generation Stax to the second is negligible.
Sure, there is a styling change, but that's purely a matter of personal taste. We actually preferred the metallic contrast look of the older design, the new all-black seems too generic.
Available from Amazon, at the time of writing, for £44.99 with free next day delivery if you are a Prime customer.
Our guess is that Wavemaster has managed to shave costs somewhere in the manufacturing process, but it's not clear where. To all intents and purposes, they seem to be of the same quality as the original Stax speakers.
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Pros
- Audio quality is great.
- Deals well with a variety of music and gaming demands.
- Solid build quality.
- Competitive pricing.
- Desktop Remote control with on/off is handy.
- Additional Line-In on Desktop Remote means you can connect your iPad/Phone etc without disconnecting something else.
Cons
- We preferred the original Stax colouring.
- You'll need to spend more for a true home theatre experience.
- No Bluetooth.
KitGuru says: Even if the price had remained the same, these speakers would have been contenders for a KitGuru ‘Must Have' award. With the price drop to just under £45, the Wavemaster Stax option becomes impossible to ignore if you're looking to give a sub £1,000 PC a solid audio boost. Conclusion? KitGuru's speaker of the year for 2013 just became much more affordable.
