Several years ago, we attended a talk given by a notorious political filmmaker. He said that, if you want to make and finance your own movies, you can’t skimp on the sound. Picture, he said, sure. Don’t go broke on the cost of film and processing. Use a video camera or whatever. (This was before digital video got so nice.) But the sound? You can’t cheap out on that. You’ve got to do it right.

Audiences, he claimed, will sit and watch a picture that looks slightly crummy. But if the sound warbles, or is too quiet, or goes out—well, you’ll have ticket-buyers storming the box office immediately, demanding the price of admission back.

Is it true? We decided to test his assertion by hooking this nice Philips 5.1 speaker set up to a crummy, 15-inch TV we installed in one of our two employee lounges. In the other, we hung a huge plasma screen with shorted-out speakers that got busted up in a shipping mishap. Which setup would attract more Woot employees shirking their responsibilities?

Our money was on the Philips room. These speakers offer what sales types call an “immersive sound experience,” which basically means a couple of them are behind you. But they do sound nice. For listening to music, watching movies or playing games, they’re just what we’d want in our own homes. And we’re not just saying that because we could be fired for telling you otherwise.

The speakers have the same open-faced design we employ in sandwich construction, which is purported to improve the clarity and reduce distortion. The subwoofer’s got a unique octagonal wood design and dynamic bass boost, which we appreciate. Because we like the sound, the sound that goes that goes boom to exactly the appropriate degree and not more than that.

As it turned out, though, our experiment was a failure. On breaks, Woot employees eschewed both rooms, instead sneaking into the warehouse to wager on illegal Roboreptile fights. Rest assured that we have put a stop to these activities, and that our next experiment will be better controlled.

Maybe we’ll try a simpler one next. Ooh, how about: We could print rock stars’ photos on sheets of toilet paper for our office restrooms, and see if we can predict the Grammys!

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