Cygnett Groove Base

Hey, at least the iPod felt snug and secure when docked.

This is Cygnett’s Groove Base. It’s competing, at less than half the price, with the iPod Hi-Fi. The problem is that it doesn’t sound very good, even against other $200-ish speakers. It costs $250, but we lowered our expectations by $50 because of its inbuilt radio functionality, and because we were feeling generous.

As a pair of speakers, they’re somewhere between rubbish and sub-standard, so we kept looking for other redeeming qualities. Like the Apple Hi-Fi, the included IR remote controlled a docked 5G iPod, and not surprisingly didn’t control an older 3G iPod. It appeared to have an ace up its sleeve, as it can be powered from C batteries. As it turned out, the ace was stolen from another deck. It needs twelve (12) of them.

Connectivity wise, there’s a 3.5mm jack on the back that lets you can plug in another music source with one of the two included leads (which give you both a 3.5mm and RCA plugs). There’s a loop antenna and a wire provided for the AM/FM radio. There is a composite video output, but that’s really nothing special, because the 5G iPod drives this directly, making the connector nothing more than a simple wiring job.

There’s a USB port to connect the docked iPod to your PC, but even if you don’t, the iPod will still charge if the Groove Base is plugged into the mains via its 18V, 2.5A in-line power supply. Bizarrely, the USB socket on the back is type-A, instead of type-B.

It’s really just a glorified clock radio, and it’s not even very good at that (the snooze button is on the remote control). Speech sounds far better than music, as if it had been geared towards John Laws listeners who have been given these new-fangled iPods by their family in a desperate attempt to try and get them on the technology bandwagon.

The rest of the music sounds hollow and limp. We thought we could pick out an instrument from the mush of sound it created for just a moment, but it turns out someone in the office turned their speakers up briefly. $250 should buy better sound than this.

You will get better sound out of computer speakers less than half its price. The good news is that that Cygnett makes a lot of other cheap, low quality gear that will do its job and appeal to people who don’t care about their music one way or the other. There are a lot of these of people out there, and this kind of gear will appeal to them. They can look forward to seeing the Groove Bass on the shelves in early October.