Cheap "Studio Monitors"? Creative Gigaworks T40 Speakers: the Best Value for Audio Production?
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2024
- Are you looking for studio monitors, but all you can afford for $100 are lousy sound boxes? Check out the Creative Gigaworks T40 - in production for over 10 years now, and potentially the best sounding, cheap all round speakers and wannabe "studio monitors" you can buy!
Buy from Amazon USA - amzn.to/3di5sKr
Buy from Amazon Australia - amzn.to/3dhrfBY - Věda a technologie
I love these speakers, I have been using my pair of T40s for over 10 years now without any issues with them.
Are they active speakers, I presume so?
@@simontunnicliffe2107 What's active mean?
I have these because they were in my price range and they look like the bee's knee. They sound great from every genre thrown at them.
@@MisterMister5893 Active means with a built in amp so you don't need anything to power'em. Hi-Fi speakers from say 20 odd years ago were passive so you wired them to the hi-fi and the hi-fi had the amp in it to power them.
@@simontunnicliffe2107 I believe they're powered by the plug-in adapter that comes with these speakers. You don't need an external amplifier in addition to the purchase.
Thank for taking the time to make video on T40. After watching your video I decided to purchase the speakers using your link above.
Thanks Minh, glad it helped, and thanks for the support 👍😁
Great video. I really enjoyed. Great song making as well.
Thanks for the video review! Very helpful!
Thanks for the review! Much help :)
I have T20 speakers.
I researched a lot of speakers and finally went for those.
Great speakers with great sound, I would say the clarity and the Bass/Treble -adjustment did it for me.
No speaker is good for me out of the box, I always need to adjust bass/treble to get the best possible sound for my ears.
T20 have enough bass for me for casual listening.
Rocking' a pair of original T-20's, connect to a 3rd gen. Amazon Echo Dot for listening to 'Net Radio, Amazon Music. Still sounding great & goin' strong! 👍
A friend of mine has a pair of those and uses it as his main sound system in his living room, well one night in 2022, in late August, we had a bit of a party on a saturday night. :D We had these cranked up pretty loud and I was suprised on how good the sound quality was, it was really fantastic! Now, we were playing mostly EDM music, techno, trance and repetitive music like that, until pretty much and guess what, after 1 am, we had a visit from the Police, LOL to turn down the music, LOL, yes, the T40 speakers are THAT good, so good they can summon the Police :D
That's a good promotion for the T40s! They certainly are well designed speakers.
I have the edifiers and a pair of series 1 creative gigawork speakers. Edifiers are actually quite heavy in the bass department, though they do lack a tiny bit of clarity compared to the creative speakers. On the flip side, the creatives lacked the bass of the Edifiers.
Mainly use the Edifiers for my gaming rig, set them close enough to where you actually get a kind of "haptic feedback" when gaming, as in you feel the bass. Due to where the base port is on the speakers, you also get a rush of "air" based on the bass, which is quite immersive. For audio production however, none of that is that important.
good speakers, I had them for many years but I sold them and got the Edifier 1700bt. Way better even if they are not as neutral. It is true that the Gigaworks were good for reference, not perfect but good!! Cheers!!!
❤❤❤❤ GREAT REVIEW GOOD JOB ❤❤😂😂
thanks a lot!
thank you
I've had a pair of T20s for quite a few years (prob closer to 10 years), but the last year the headphone port has been a been faulty and sometimes work and sometimes it won't. So as I will be moving in 2 weeks to a new apartment I will try these for some better sound and a general upgrade (even if they are quite cheap it is still better than what I had).
Yes, in MY experience Creative tend to have products that last a long time. Most of my Logitech peripherals fail just outside of warranty...
I've had mine T20s for like 15 years. Still going strong.
Haven't tried the T40, but I bought the T20 for my father as a gift a while ago. They sound pretty decent for the size, but when compared to my old Creative Inspire M80, the sound seemed a bit more artificial and less dynamic. Although it may not be an entirely fair comparison, as the M80 are about twice the size and the cabinets are made of MDF.
It's $850 now. Wow! It's pretty big tbh
Great video, many thanks! I was mesmerised by the song you played on the piano, what was it?
Oh really??? Thanks! That's a song I wrote in 2020, the first month I got a MIDI keyboard. It's called The Grand Plan - czcams.com/video/JoGWHM5Cugc/video.htmlfeature=shared
Note that I have no formal piano training. This song just came to me.
@@innovational Thanks for replying quickly, and for posting your song's link, it is great!! In my honest opinion, the way (the tempo, the simplicity) you played your song on your little keyboard, is way more 'beautiful' and professional, that the way you played it on the link you posted, as it feels like it comes from your heart. I loved it!! Hope you post another version similar to way you play it on your little keyboard. And please keep exploring your talent more and hope you are kind enough to keep sharing your mesmerising melodies with the rest of the humanity! 🙂
@@trelobio thanks for your feedback, I see what you mean. The recorded song was edited and quantized so perhaps it sounds quite artificial and perfect - whereas when it is played live it has real feeling. I will make an effort to record it and also my other songs. Thank you!
@@winstonc5372 I am looking forward to listen to them, keep us updated!
I'll stick with my massive MTX monitor 10s
Hi ! You spoke of the smaller Creative T20 series II speakerset. Since both T20 and T40 are still for sale, would you then not recommend the T20 as a better option than the T40's ? They are in my opinion cleaner, less muddled and more transparent than the T40s, or do you not agree ? Thanks in advance for your response.
Hi Sophie, thanks for your message. Because I had the T20 many years ago, I could not do a direct comparison. I would say that if you want portability, definitely get T20. For higher power, get the T40. Do you know of a direct comparison video or review showing the sonic differences?
@@innovational I have found and "studied" one comparison video, this one: czcams.com/video/orRVNNbNEQ4/video.html , but while the comparison would make me tend to say "Keep or newly acquire the T20's" I now ahppen to have both here at home (thanks to Amazon) and it would seem it is not as clear cut in real life as from listening to the video comparison. One thing I noticed is that it would appear the two sets of speakers are tuned a bit differently. Or worse, maybe there are differences between production runs of the T40 making the ones I now have sound much less muddled and boomy than the comparison is demonstrating so convincingly. I'm inclined to say "crap"... in direct response to these findings as it complicates my choice. On one level the speakers sound so much alike that I don't think there is a point in getting the bigger brothers (T40), but then in real life noticing that the main gripe with the T40's being the muddled, boomy sound with sometimes recessed mids and highs is not that apparent on my actual set of T40's. I don't know what to make of it.
Hi again ! A quick follow up on my previous post. For starters, it is difficult to compare speakers even when you have them both at home, the plugging in and unplugging of them is tedious and makes you forget how the sound was when the other ones were plugged in. And because of the different tuning of the electronics (the internal actual speaker hardware is almost identical and can't be held responsibel for any difference in sound I think) you have to work a lot with different posistions of the treble and bass potmeters, but I have reached a verdict: the T40's are going back to Amazon. Meticulously cleaned and repacked of course. It was confusing at first, but in the end the comparison video I referred to above is right: Mids and highs are so much more pure and up front compared to the recessed soundstage of those frequency ranges on the T40. Boomy is not the problem of the T40 - you just turn the bass potmeter down, but recessed mids and highs, yeah, you do not get that issue fixed with any setting. It is how they are made off factory. I do tend to like maximum treble settings on my amps, so this may not be as great an issue for others who are the opposite and favour bass prominence. I hope this helps as well. Take care !
Nice review. How would these work for watching films, compared to something like the Creative Stage V2, in a small room?
I have both the Stage V2 and T40. Sound quality wise the T40 is vastly superior, but you'll have to connect to the headphone output of your TV or use an external DAC to be able to easily control the volume via a remote. The T40 already has a great power off feature when not in use, and automatically comes on when there is an audio signal.
@@innovational thanks for that. Already ordered the V2 but maybe I'll get the 40s too when I can.
i just want a good metal sound and to hear movies that youtube splice up and cant hear on laptop
Hey! Nice review, are the speakers connected to an audio interface? Or maybe directly to the pc? I own a pair of these speakers and I'm wondering how to connect them to an audio interface..
These receive signal through a single 3.5mm stereo plug. You can just output from your headphone jack in your audio interface. Alternatively, use a Y splitter cable, two 6.35mm male mono connector to 3.5mm female stereo connector to output from your audio interface monitor out.
@@innovational yeah! I thought just about that, the "easy" one is output from headphones, but I'm afraid it'll damage my headphone preamp in a long term situation (not shure about that thou) the "y splitter" solution seems more fit to my needs..but as I'm not an expert in all these, I'm happy you just cleared my doubts! Thanks a lot!
Good point, best to check out the impedance output of your audio interface if going with that option, otherwise it's better with the monitor out on the audio interface.
I want to buy a set of these speakers but someone told me that they shut down after a few minutes and then you have to turn them back on or there's a delay of them coming back on how often do they do that and do they do that at all I would hope that people were being honest and letting other people know and their reviews please get back to me and let me know thank you
Hi, honestly speaking this has never been an issue for me. I actually really like the fact that they go to sleep, which means I'll never have to turn them off and on, just like my KRK studio monitors. I believe it turns off after 10-15 minutes of no input. In what situation would you be in that this would happen to you and it becomes an annoyance?
I want to use these speakers for my 55 inch OLED TV but my OLED has no RCA out only optical out/HDMI eARC out. How do I connect my TV optical out or eARC to these stereo 2.0 speakers?
You will need a digital to analog converter (DAC) that has optical input and 3.5mm stereo output.
@@innovational would you say that these speakers would make a significant improvement in sound quality over the stock TV speakers? Also if you know of any such optical to RCA DACs, please feel free to suggest them with links.
while I generally agree with you these are strongly overlooked, the mackie cr3 / cr4 are like the budget king.
The cheap behringer genelec ripoff actually sound pretty amazing. The Mackies are great too
Which are better for music and gaming? T40 or R1280DB. Managed to buy the T40s for about €60 but wondering if the R1280DB would be better value at €110?
Definitely the T40, I had both. T40 wins by a long way.
Here in Australia you can get the R1280DB often cheaper than the T40.
The R1280DB has the advantage of multiple inputs and remote control, which the T40 doesn't have, but the sound of the T40 is much better.
@@innovational Thanks. Although I did find the R1855DB on sale for €120 so ordered that as well now. Just need to decide which one I keep, the T40s or R1855DBs.
@@ivo001which one you kept?
@@Pirate85getready the R1855DB. Although the T40's were very nice, I liked the look of the R1855DB more and it had some more connectivity options
@@ivo001 Thx man :)
Have you got those T40s the right way round? Mine has the controls on the right speaker.
Controls are on the left speaker