Creative Surround Station: Late 90s Quadraphonic PC Gaming! 

I got to say, LGR's attention to detail when it comes to the subtitles is unmatched. Somehow seeing [Immature chuckle] makes anything funnier.

You know, I just have to say that as a hard of hearing person I really appreciate that LGR subtitles his videos. RU-vid auto captions can be very hit or miss. Thanks Clint!

After more than 10 years, I still enjoy all your videos!! Thank you Clint!! And thank you for having excellent audio as well!!

Ah the good ole Creative Labs FPS-1000 4 point speaker setup.. Bought one of those back in 2000, and am still using it to this very day, still got the box and everything. It's been hooked up to every PC I've gotten for the past 22 years.. Still work great! I don't use the stands that came with them (never did) i just mounted to two rear speakers to my ceiling a few feet behind my PC station. I know they're old now, but I've experienced the last two decades of PC gaming through these speakers, and I've never felt a need to get new ones, they work and sound great.

I hope someday we get a little tour of your collection...those shelves behind you in your opening shot are very intriguing lol

OMG blast from the past! I had this exact quadrophonic setup with my AWE32. I got it specifically for playing Thief: The Dark Project in glorious positional audio. It worked incredibly well for detecting the position of patrolling guards while sneaking around. Few games, before or after, did 3D audio as affectively.

I remember when we first got these speakers and really noticing the difference when playing Thief... the surround sound made it so moody and actually made the sneaking easier because you could tell where the guards were! Very immersive.

LOL. I had the speaker system you used for this video. Thing had crazy bass and I took a usb light bar that detected bass and would flash to give my room the most insane lightning effect you could see in 2000. Thanks for the memories and the video.

Ahh yeah new LGR as I take a little break at work!! Have a Happy Friday everybody!

Kai is a legend at Microsoft. So active in the tech community.

The sound station was definitely the way to go for that setup. So many times I tripped over the rear tripods when this was set up in my dorm room. The 4.1 became a 2.1 via attrition over the first couple years.

I loved these old Cambridge speakers. Fantastic sound quality from those little guys.

From Quadraphonic LPs in the 70s to Quadraphonic sound for gaming in the 90s. Quad was really the guy that just wouldn't die.

As a kid, I didn't know any of this stuff existed back then. No computer I ever used had sound cards or anything like that. I'd have been blown away by stuff like this.

Cambridge Soundworks was a Henry Kloss company originally and he was a literal audio genius. I have a bunch of Kloss stuff and its all wacky how good it sounds.

Clint i thought i should thank you for being one of the few youtubers i can watch when suffering with very bad anxiety. Most use mics that pick up every bump on the desk they use to record and it sounds like a bang on the wall or something when wearing headphones, but ive never had that issue with your videos, not that i can remember anyway. Plus no overpowering background music with hard beats also helps . Nt sure if it was intentional or not, but thought I should mention it :) Cheers mate, defo my favouite youtuber for many years now. Your videos have that cosy saturday/sunday with your fiends as a kid kind of feeling. Take care.

This set was amazing back in the day! Everyone that listened to it, could not believe the sound from the small speakers

Wow, this is one of the first LGRs where I actually owned and used the hardware in question. I thought those speakers were great -- I used them for at least 10 years until something broke and all I got out of the system was static.

My and my best friend were pioneers in digital music among our friends, and I had this exact installation. Downloading Mp3's, converting to Mp3, making mega albums on Compact Discs to play in our cars, we knew nobody who was doing that in The Netherlands back in 1999.

I love that your family room is a computer warehouse!

I used those speakers for years never knowing there were arms for it! wow.

Bought one of this 4.1 in 99 and still using it. Sounds fantastic and have been in use almost non-stop for about 25 years now. Never saw that creepy Sorroundstation before.

In Massachussetts they actually had a Cambridge Soundworks store where you could demo these speakers with Unreal. It was incredible as a younger person. I think there was a Gateway Country in the same plaza!

Man, my dad totally had a 2.1 setup with these cube speakers and a sub back in the day. Seeing that independent volume knob and the logos on those cubes absolutely FLOODED me with nostalgia. Great video as always.

Hey Clint, I'm really happy to see the Cambridge SoundWorks speakers being presented on your channel! I still have this speaker kit (sub+speakers) set up on my computer station (without the SurroundStation though). I've been using them almost every day for over 20 years now, and they still work fine and sound fantastic. Thanks for the video!

I had exactly the same set, it was such a boomy subwoofer, I loved it at a younger age. Horrible today, but it was amazing back then.

I wanted this! Didn't get my first surround set til COD1. Creative 5.1. changed my life. Never been without surround sound in some form since.

I'm still using my Cambride Soundworks speakers from 2000/2001 right now. Never feld the need to update to other speakers. Every other thing (computer, monitor, mouse,..) on my desk got updated several time. But not the speakers. 😁

This was all quite out of reach for me back in the 90s, but in 2020 I finally got around to building a 1999 rig with a 5.1 set (also from Cambridge Audioworks) and experience the surround sound for myself. My reaction was pretty much the same as yours.. so cool to hear those old games in a different way. I started with my all-time-favourite Half-Life and just hearing doors close behind you is such a great experience. It feels so novel but retro gamers just do appreciate these kind of things.. At first glance that Creative rig seemed a bit weird with the arms and such but I somehow appreciate it now seeing what it brings to the table. Quirky but cool!

Aww yeah! I had that same set of speakers around 1999-2001, the rears sitting on those terrible tripod legs that fell over every time you looked at them! Those were the days!

If you have an Aureal audio card in your system, turn off the EAX effects support in the control panel for it (not just in the game) or else it limits you to like 16 sound channels instead of the 64 the card has because of how it emulates EAX, thats probably why Unreal Tournament sound was cutting in and out because it was probably trying to use more sound channels than you had.

Bought a Creative Inspire 5.1 5300 set when it was released in 2001, and I am still using it today. So usefull in all those FPS games when you could hear what direction people were coming from.

The nostalgia levels are almost lethal for me here! Had the very same 4.1 speaker set, bundled with one of the many SoundBlaster Live! variants (I think that was "Live! 1024" but I'm probably wrong) and despite the speakers being arguably of poor quality themselves (the sub is plastic - come on...) I loved what they were doing. "System Shock 2" with surround sound lives rent-free in my mind to this day. ;) Speaking of Unreal Tournament, I think the weird audio bug is down to the fact that you had "Surround Sound" enabled. You should actually disable that, unless you were using some form of Dolby ProLogic amplituner, or something like that. I remember reading something about it on planetunreal forums back in the day, and I seem to rememeber that the game worked correctly with just "Hardware 3D Audio" enabled. EAX is a separate toggle in advanced options. If you have the time you can try it and see if that solves the issues. ;)

Still got this speakers set on my computer setup and the sound feels really good! Got when i was a kid around 2000 and still in love with this :)

This was a really nice tribute to Sim Wong Hoo, the founder and CEO of Creative. He would have loved you covering his stuff on your channel.

RIP to the Creative Founder / CEO Sim Wong Hoo who recently passed away. I still had Creative sound card in my old pre-2000 desktop

Great Video Clint! I worked for Cambridge SoundWorks starting in the early 2000's while they were a subsidiary of Creative Labs. The Cambridge SoundWorks branded PC speakers were awesome and still a favorite. Haven't seen a system like that all boxed up for many many years. Thanks for this!

This is pretty cool! I used to have a quardophonic setup with pretty beefy speakers in the early 2000's. This brings back memories. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was great in surround!

An Internet Cafe of my area have this speakers, they have many many movie posters and popular music in the SoundWorks FPS1000 4.1, this was in the early and late 2000's, an unforgettable place to be

Your timing is impeccable, Creative Labs CEO Mr Sim just passed away early yesterday morning.

I had that exact quadrophonic set in the 90s! Those were my first speakers ever and i've used them till they broke😂 what a fantastic sound AND memories!

I was always fortunate enough to have a bookshelf or whatever behind my desk for the rear speakers, but I remember seeing these and kept them in the back of my mind just in case I ever needed them. I kinda almost wish I hadn't gotten a surround sound setup back in the day, because I can't live without it now.

We had those speakers when I was a kid. We had a DIY solution instead of those arms. We bent some square tubing, attached them to our desk, ran the wire through, and mounted the speakers on the ends. I remember it being quite cool. Thanks for the memory.

I recently found my 4.1 system just like that one you have and I was really surprised how loud and good the sound was. I've got rid off the yellowish residue and they are now proudly surrounding my pc setup. For 20+ speakers they really rock

These are great speakers! I bought the 2.1 set new back in the day for my office at work and then years later gave it to a friend and he's still using it to this day.

I had that speaker setup for years and years. The power supply even turned brown I ran it so long. Loved it so much. The sound of you tapping on the sub set off memories for me. So much Unreal Tournament ran through that setup.

I use a similar method to the Quadrophonic to mount the rears for my SteelSeries Arena 9, I use a pair of camera boom arm mounts and I got it say it such a joy for immersion in PC Gaming.

This existed!? I would have been too young to ever buy these, but I did always want to make something like this and never got around to it. Glad to hear it actually works well in practice too. Thank you LGR and Kai for this!

The genuine joy you had at playing the games with surround was great to see!

Still running my FPS1000 4.1 speakers, not using the stands. Nice to see other people still use them.

I’m 31 now but my dad has these when I was younger. I’m glad to see they were as good as I remember.

I remember that monstrosity! I had a set of the 2.1 Cambridge speakers that look just like the 4.1 system you showed. Actually I still have them, they're just in storage. They still work 24 years later, although there is a hum from what I suspect is a failing filter cap in the wall-wart power supply. Cambridge Soundworks was founded by Henry Kloss, an audio giant who also founded KLH, was a co-founder of Advent and Acoustic Research, and who invented the projection television!

I bought these speakers in the 90s and had them setup in quad configuration, complete with the best Soundblaster card you could get at the time. Used EAX to make things sound weird at times. Still the best-sounding computer speakers I've ever heard and I'm still using them today. Just in stereo these days, or 2.1 if you will.

Thanks for all your content!, I wish you a nice 2023!!

I have this same set and have been using for 20+ years. Awesome speaker set!

I'll have you know that I'm still using these exact speakers today! Swiped them from my fathers office 6 years ago and I'm listening to your voice through these 4.1 beautiful speakers :) Music sounds really awesome with them :D You can see their age, though. Two out of the four speakers have lost their Cambridge logo and EVERYTHING is yellow xD

Oh god... I had something very much like this. Loved the quadrophonic at the time. For me, the games that stood out at the time Unreal and Alien Vs Predator

I had the arm thingies and the Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 surround set with the wooden-ish sub and cool control box. Loved it and it sounded great!

I had that exact Cambridge system (or a similar one) in black. Served me until the early 2010s when the subwoofer finally gave out. What a great set.

Sim Wong Hoo (founder of Creative Labs) passed away Jan 4th -- likely as you were filming one of his wacky creations. Great vid as usual!

Would love to see an episode with this and the 3D shutter glasses. I know you can't really show the effect but some commentary on it would still be neat. Maybe throw an Aura Interactor in there for maximum immersion.

Cambridge Soundworks sold a 2-channel version of this, which is the model you usually end up seeing at thrift stores. It had to be one of the first affordable subwoofer + satellites products available. I bought one in 1999, sophomore year in college, and remember being very excited about it. I was big into subwoofers and car audio at the time. In addition to PC duty, we often used it for watching movies on VHS, spanning them out as far as they could go on either side of my sweet 20" CRT TV. At loud volumes the bass didn't sound too great so we stuck a sock in the port and that helped. Good times! Thanks for the memory!

Thanks for another great video Clint!

I still have this speaker system in use today, minus the stand/arms. Has never let me down and continues to produce great sound!

I bought it in the 2.1 Version in the 90's when it was still labeled "Cambridge SoundWorks" and it's still going strong. Never needed any other speakers.

BRO! I had this same exact setup except it was only two speakers with the subwoofer. Made my Tribes games all that much more epic.

i still have my Klipsch THX quadro setup i bought in the late 90's and they still rock the house. great video!

this was the bee's knees back in the day, i thoroughly impressed some friends with this and Winamp never sounded so good without this!

Wow this Cambridge was my first surround sound setup way way back. I remember buying it at CompUSA when I was working there in my teens. Oh the nostalgia. It sounded phenomenal for the time and price point

Iv'be been rocking those speakers continously and the two speakers + bass combo since 1999 and they are still going strong and yellow, got the quad as a gift with a desktop and the dual as a gift with a laptop, a good old Compaq Presario running Win ME .. Kudos from Mexico

Love the thumbnail. That was one of my favorite expressions to make for pics taken at parties back in the day

That's a pretty neat hardware to put the speakers, I always wanted something like it. I own the PC Works 2 speakers model! They were finally replaced with the Creative Inspire 5.1 5200, quite an upgrade for sound quality in my room. I used the Inspire speakers through the years with a SB Live! Gold, Audigy2 ZS, and finally a X-Fi Xtreme Music card with the Elite Pro's external I/O console. Years of music and movies have been enjoyed on this setup. =)

Wow this looks neat 😊 I had two amplifiers from thrift stores and two sets of speakers connected to a SoundBlaster Live in 1999. I still think my four beefy speakers sounded better then the tiny satellites from Cambridge, but it took up a lot more room (filled my entire bedroom actually)

somewhat comical that Clint puts so much effort into his subtitles on a video about surround sound, thanks a lot for that, man

relaxing and soothing vid ! The 90s Full of crazy accessories, PC, gaming all electronics !!! 🤟🤙

i don't know why but I loved this video

A little LGR before I have to join my weekly work meeting is exactly what I needed.

Did not know about this.. Looks awesome and amazing that the quality is so good that it works 20+ years after.

It's crazy seeing old CS played and the gameplay looks SO SLOW. I remember that game being reasonably fast paced for the time, but compared to what came later and watching modern COD play it looks leisurely. It was so much fun back then.

Oh I see... The heavy CRT monitor will balance the thing and keep it from tipping over... Surely nothing will ever change there that could make this useless in the future.

Oh, man. I was using headphones in the last ~15 years, and somewhere in the meantime the support for my Audigy 2 died off for the newer Win versions - but I still have my old Genius 5.1 system (I do recall _loving_ how the autocannons in Il-2 Sturmovik shook the room), and this video made me kind of want to kick it into life once again somehow.

I’m going to comment before I even watch this!! My Dad still has that speaker system, without the arms, working and sounding amazing on his new setup!! He bought it new, mom was not happy, but it made my early years of PC gaming very enjoyable!!!

I had those speakers in 2000. Great quality for the price like you don't find today!

The timing to talk about Creative could not be better. You need to make a retrospective of Creative in honor of the recently deceased founder.

Still using the 2.1 version of the Cambridge Soundworks set to this day on my main PC. I've never had room for a proper surround sound setup and use headphones when I need "good" sound so these ancient Cambridge Soundworks things were and still are fantastic.

That room you’re in looks like my personal heaven… There’s just…. so many awesome things!

WOW, I remember that. Great video. Thank you.

Quadraphonic sound was a huge game changer in the 90's! For my 14th birthday I got the Klipsch Promedia 4.1 with a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum complete with Live! Drive 5.25" drive bay component. It made music and games sound EPIC!

I love your channel please keep being yourself and sharing with us.🎉

I'm not sure why but this is the best video you've done in awhile.

Nice Creative Labs surround station. Great Sounding Cambridge Soundworks 4.1 speaker system! Great Video! I still have my Cambridge Soundworks 2.1 speaker system from 2003 and still sounds great! The speaker cubes may sound tinny but when the sub is active, it makes them sound seriously complete. I had me speaker system at my former employer for a few years and the bass of the subwoofer resonated through the wood desk. Love that thing!

I still have my Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000 purchased in 1999. It still works and still sounds great. Using them now while watching your video as part of my newly built PC, but without my Creative Soundblaster Live! Value soundcard that I used to use with...

Holy crap LGR! I am using that classic Cambridge Sound Works 4.1 speaker kit right now, it still works!

Oh man! Totally had those speakers back in the day. Takes me back. :)

This channel is like therapy to me.

This definetly bring back memories. My early 2000's setup was a 2.1 cambrige soundworks speaker set with a soundblaster audigy 2, and next to my computer i had my big mid 90's modular hifi sony stereo system, so i plugged all together and listen to music and play doom 3. good times!. Greetings from Colombia.

Creative founder and CEO sadly passed on 4th January 2023, just 4days ago, attended his wake today I'm glad you're showcasing an early product of theirs and his legacy can live on in your videos ❤

I remember seeing this beast when I worked for Creative Labs! I would have LOVED to have this thing!

I got this in use to this day! I love it!

never even seen this until you got it clint! i still have my creative gigaworks t-100 speakers hooked up to my main rig right now and they still sound amazing after all these years!