Frisby FS-5011 Review

Komms Frisby are freshmen in the home theatre arena but are trying to make their mark with inexpensive yet feature rich speaker systems for the living room, computer room and every other room in the house. Having recently completed the assembly of a fairly high end multimedia PC system, I was fairly desperate to compliment my new rig with boom-bastic speaker system but sadly found both the savings and checking accounts quite empty so the hunt for budget/mid-range systems was on. My needs were simple enough, I wanted to be able to hook up a 5.1 audio panel to a receiver and have additional inputs for the optical output of my PS3 and stereo RCA jacks for my Wii. A coaxial SPDIF connector was also desired as the motherboard in my new rig has optic, coaxial and standard stereo outputs for those fancy high end receivers. I was convinced a Google search would yield something to fit the bill, under $200, within 30 seconds or so. I was so very wrong. After 3 solid days of roaming the bowels of the net, I settled on a neat little find through Komms Frisby - their FS-5011 system.

Here's the front of this bad boy:


The LCD panel cycles through lots of psychedelic colors and can be controlled via a remote or a multi-function wheel/button on the front. Inside the enclosure is a definitely boom-bastic subwoofer and on the back you'll find this:




Yes, that's right, it has absolutely everything I was looking for. This is, as far as I can tell, a completely unique offering and I as very excited to take it out for a spin. In addition to the subwoofer, you get five 10 watt satellite speakers, a remote and lots and lots of cables:




The total price tag for the FS-5011 ranges from $79 to $119 plus shipping which sealed the deal for me. As stated above, I completely blew my load on the multimedia PC rig so a speaker system with everything I wanted for a little over a Ben Franklin was enough to cause actual salivation. So I pulled out the plastic card and placed my order , starting the waiting game began for my coveted system to arrive. Sadly, I waited and waited and waited for nearly 2 weeks before my big box arrived but it did arrive and I immediately tore it open and plugged it in. It was time to take my visually delicious speaker system out for a test drive. What follows amounts to nothing less than a 12 car wreck with flames, metal, glass and blood all over the road.

The FS-5011 allows you to plug in each of the separate 5.1 channels from your motherboard right into the rear subwoofer panel via any number of connector options. I began by running everything through my HDTV and ran a single stereo input into my PC's line-in port. Since the FS-5011 can take any signal and gorgeously break it out into 5.1 signals, I wasn't overly concerned about downgrading any digital signals to analogue stereo through the PC. I was not disappointed. The output of the 5.1 audio from my PC and through the FS-5011 was crisp, incredibly boomy and simply sounded amazing. However, I did notice a weakness is certain stereo channels routed through the HDTV (a weakness in the HDTV decoder actually) that caused a breakout to 5 speakers to require quite a bit of tweaking with the rear and center volume on the FS-5011. This was extremely undesirable so I decided to take advantage of all those ports on the back of the FS-5011 and moved all the cables from the HDTV to the back of the subwoofer. That's when it all fell apart.

I plugged in the Wii to the Aux 1 port and tried out the stereo setting. The "stereo" feature on the FS-5011 revealed a small amount of electronic noise throughout all the satellite speakers. This feature is what you should select when you want a stereo signal to break out to 5.1. I removed all the input cables so I could figure out if I had bad signal, bad speakers or some other problem. The noise was barely noticeable when no input to the subwoofer was present at all but that's when I became concerned. Again, there was no audio input to the system at all, not a single cable plugged into any of the input ports and yet there was a steady, high pitched electronic pulse emitting from the speakers on the stereo setting. I tried some spare speakers lying around and found it wasn't the speakers at all, it was the output from the back of the subwoofer regardless of what was plugged into the speaker ports. I then switched to the Aux 1 setting to get just what was coming out of Aux 1 and the noise disappeared on every channel but the center channel and it was noticeably louder. The center speaker shouldn't have been active at all as it expects only a left and right channel. I then tried Aux 2, Coaxial and Optic and with each setting the noise got louder and faster until the Optic setting became completely unusable because of the noise coming out of the center channel. So I stopped my test drive, packed up the entire system and got an RMA to send it back believing I just had a defective board or power supply in the subwoofer.

2 weeks later, I was still waiting for a replacement system so I called the seller. I sent them an email asking for an update. 3 days later there was no answer so I called and had to leave a voicemail as they apparently don't have regular tech support staff available to assist. Another week with no answer so I contacted my card company and asked them to intervene. I was finally contacted and informed I had only sent back the subwoofer so that was all they were sending back and that is what arrived 72 hours later. A huge fight ensued which eventually I won and the missing parts mysteriously reappeared! They promised to send the remaining parts. 2 weeks later, a box arrived and I felt some sense of relief until I opened the box and found.....another subwoofer. So now I had 2 subwoofers and nothing to plug into them or any remote to run the system were it up and running. More angry emails and calls, including one to an attorney. Eventually I triumphed and I was made whole, even heavy one extra subwoofer. Excited, the test drive was on again.

Knowing what to look for ahead of time, I powered up the first subwoofer with just the speakers attached and no audio input. On 5.1, there was nothing but silence and I felt a little relief. But then, on the stereo setting, noise in the center channel. Switched to Aux 1, Aux 2, Coaxial and Optic and each time the center channel noise got louder and louder with the Optic setting being completely unusable. So I unplugged the 2nd subwoofer and tried out the 3rd subwoofer. No change - noise all over the center channel on every setting but 5.1.

I've given up any hope of making this particular system work and have finally learned my lesson which is, you do indeed get what you pay for. So, dear readers, if you're in the market for an audio system and you are compelled to cheap out like I did, prepare to find out what the full and hard meaning of cheap is. I'll give you a hint. It's 4 letters, rhymes with "pit" and smells like the swampy crack of a plumber's butt. Cheap will yield you s$%&. Sorry, but that is the sad and true fact. Do two things to save yourselves and lot of time and frustration. First, find a way to route all those devices into a single input channel on a receiver. My HDTV has an optic out and I should have just hooked up all the sound to that and got a receiver with a single optic port on it. Second, don't cheap out and prepare to pay at least $200 and do so at a retail outlet. Then you can drive any problems back to the store and get immediate satisfaction. Able to try out all the systems live before you buy though, you should be able to get exactly what you want and exactly what you pay for. Some things you can buy online but audio systems are just not one of them.

Final Analysis: The FS-5011 is a fatally flawed system with something broken by design on the electronic controller in the subwoofer. It is irreparable by the home user or by the manufacturer. Perhaps some of the newer, more expensive and less featured systems from Frisby lack the pitfalls of the FS-5011 due to improved design and manufacture but once bitten, twice shy so I cannot speak to that and have chosen not to even if that were possible. None of this came as too much of a surprise after seeing the end product of the manufacturing process. The ports are ham-fistedly attached and all askew. The wooden case appears to be covered with black contact paper, the same type you'd put on the bottom of your cupboards. The screws are all hand tightened, often too much or too little. Most comically, the red and white connectors were assembled in the wrong locations on the back of the subwoofer resulting in no clear indication of what the right or left channels actually were. This was true of all 3 subwoofers I received.

So now I sit in front of a home theater system I can only use with 5.1 input and the 5.1 output setting and only from analogue signals. I could have accomplished more with piece parts from yard sales and freecycle...and that makes me very sad. I will let everyone know when I have a paypal account for donations to get me a system I can actually use. Please donate when I do! :)