I’d always used the Philips Fidelio wireless soundbar for my home entertainment system in the last few years and I was quite satisfied with the product. However, it started showing the limitation when I moved to a larger apartment. It’s underpowered and sometimes I can’t hear vocals clearly.
When I received the Creative E-MU XM7 bookshelf speakers, I didn’t expect much because they look fairly small. How do the speakers perform? Let’s find out in the review.
Unboxing Video
Design
There is nothing special about the design of the Creative E-MU XM7. The product includes a pair of speakers measuring 9.14″ x 6.85″ x 11.7″. Inside the box, you can also find a pair of 2.5m speaker cables.
The speakers are significantly smaller and lighter than my previous bookshelf speakers from Polk Audio, each of them weighs less than 10 lbs.
The Creative speakers feature a traditional design, they look like most other speakers on the market. The front of the speaker sports a custom-designed 5-inch woofer and a 1-inch silk dome tweeter covered in a soft grille.
On the back, there are a port tube to boost the lows and a pair of gold-plated binding posts.
The whole speaker comes in a wooden enclosure that feels so classic and sturdy. My speakers come in black wood grain, you can also get the version in light brown and metallic gray finish.
Audio Quality
You can use your own receiver to drive the Creative E-MU XM7 speakers. However, if you don’t have one, I’d recommend you to buy the Creative Sound Blaster X7 DAC/Amp. They are a great couple and you will save a lot of money buying this bundle.
I hook up the speakers to the X7 and turn them into a wireless system, then I can easily stream music from my smartphone to the system. I still remember the moment I hit the Play button on my phone, I was totally impressed with the sound coming from the 2 speakers. I kept enjoying the music for the next few hours until I realized it was time for dinner. You can check out the sound test in this video.
At the time testing the speakers, I was also trying some other wireless speakers and soundbars. The E-MU XM7 immediately stood out of the crowd because of its amazing level of details, clarity, and accuracy.
On the first few days, I just played some Pop/EDM music from my Google Play Store library. I was so addicted to the accurate reproduction with a slightly boosted bass response. Many other bookshelf speakers will require an additional subwoofer in order to create a respectable bass but you don’t need one in this case. I place the speakers in a 450 sq. ft apartment and the amount of bass is admirable. It is deep and tight enough for those EDM tracks and I can hear thunderous sound when watching movies.
Meanwhile, the mids are present and I can hear the vocals more clearly than ever while the treble is totally clean and doesn’t cause any spike. The soundstage is fairly good, especially when I sit in front of the 2 speakers.
There is no distortion and hissing sound. The speakers are also quite powerful as they can deliver up to 60W per channel.
Conclusion
Pros
- Classic design
- Powerful and accurate sound
Cons
- Nothing
Although I’ve just used the Creative E-MU XM7 speakers for a few weeks, they’ve already become my favorites and deserve a place in my living room. I highly recommend the product.
Buy Creative E-MU XM7 Bookshelf Speakers on Amazon
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David Aguirre says
Greetings.
I think I am somewhat late on this post, but anyway I had to make some comments… my experience actually. I think this post gets a bit short for what these passive bookshelf speakers have to offer, and also think it is kind of an unfair rating over here.
Creative has always been a company with a variety of products for every consumer level. And these speakers were, on their launch date, the top of the line speakers available from Creative, though this was a design collaboration with E-MU.
I have been a very proud user of these beatiful, discontinued, pair for over 3 years now. I chose the vintage looking style, clear oak and silvern finish, to make them stand out from others. Personally, if it is a wooden speaker then ¿why would you cover (not show) the essence of acoustics? Black just ressembles a standard look as any other “plastic”, commercial, low end branded speakers. These speakers’ casing is made of fine wood, which actually is the base of its great acoustics and sound performance, and having in mind that each one of these speakers weights around 8 lbs. these are some serious “kickers”.
First, about the Audio Quality score, it is quite a relative rating and very dependant of the sound system, or Amp, that is being used. I really would crank this up to a clean 10/10 score. I started matching these speakers with an old Sony sound system console, obviously an integrated amp pumping 60W @ 16 Ohms per channel, and the sound was way better than the default Sony speakers. Yes, I acquired the speakers separately first, and I also knew about the best couple for these speakers, which at first was the Sound Blaster X7, by the time I acquired them. So the upgrade was decided, and around a year later I opted for the Sound Blaster X7… Limited Edition. ¿Why? Yes, I knew there was this bundle including the SB-X7 (with the standard adapter) and the speakers, but it would be better if I could improve the amp’s performance pairing it with the high power adapter. Technically it is an adapter which delivers higher power to the main unit, but behind that “futile” technicism lies a huge difference in audio performance from which the speakers can take full advantage of, and it really makes the difference. Maybe I was not able to have such savings buying them separately, but I really care about audio performance, and budget was no excuse for good quality audio. Long story short, I have never heard any other speakers, on this price range, perform better than these, and they can even outperform more expensive ones. The sound quality is just delightful, it blew my expectations far away. Their overall sound range is really wide, they have a very natural and tight bass/lows, warm mids, and detailed highs, but, most importantly, their harmonic balance among these aspects is perfect, no detail is overlapped by any other more than the way a track was originally intended to be heard. Many speakers tend to exagerate bass and have poor mids and highs, or viceversa, loosing the true essence of what your are listening to.
Pairing the E-MU XM7 with the Sound Blaster X7 Limited Edition, pumping 60W @ 8 Ohms, opened a whole world of possibilities for testing them, so I just “overwhelmed” the setup with every kind of media available, playing games, watching movies and listening HiFi music tracks over every input available. And I have to say that the “worst” method to play media through is via Bluetooth. As posted in the main article the speakers were tested wirelessly via bluetooth, which can really downgrade audio quality. The recommendation for playing audio is always with a wired analog connection, or at least digitally via optical cable, to get the best audio possible of a device, which is primarily intended for wired connections. So I can not agree with the score given, as it was tested over a loss-intended setup. By the way, they can be connected not only using a bare copper wire, but also banana plugs can be used. And taking further advantage from the Sound Blaster App to fine-tune the Amp makes it even better, and I recall on balanced audio calibration style, leaving the full equalizer curve flat and untouched at 0dB gain/loss, and optimizing for room setup and acoustics; if a speaker setup is really well developed and manufactured then there is no point in “playing with sliders”, it should be already factory fine-tuned, and that is exactly what the E-MU XM7 speakers are.
Now talking about the Design score. Design is an abstract concept which depends on a personal point of view, mainly concerns to the one of the designer of the speakers, and I really trust Creative’s decision on choosing such design over any other, because they really are concerned about their products’ performance, so it is designed for the best audio experience possible. In this case the E-MU XM7s have a 10/10 Design score. About the physical design, the spacing between the twitter and mid emitters are well located to easily locate the acoustic sweet spot, and also locating the port tube behind really makes low frequencies sound as natural as can be. If you take the time to look at the booklet included with the speakers, Creative recommends the optimal positioning to be as: “For optimal sound dispersion, maintain the same speaker-to-speaker and speaker-to-listener distance for both speakers (that is a nice triangle). The acoustic axis of each speaker falls on the mid-point between the speaker’s high frequency driver and low frequency driver. Position your speakers such that the acoustic axes are at the same height as your ears (that is the sweet spot). Place the speakers at least half a foot away from the wall behind them.” And such recommendation is no joke, as even some of the most renowned high end speaker manufacturers recommend such setup, and also stating an optimal distance of 3 meters between speaker-to-speaker and speaker-to-listener.
As for Pros and Cons for the E-MU XM7, as stated on the main post, it has no Cons, it is just a bunch of Pros. And nowadays, after being discontinued, their value has really gone sky high. If you are lucky to be one of the owners of these speakers, you should better keep them as long as you can… Or at least until you want to look for something better.