“It looks like a car ran over it,” a visiting friend said. But I doubt Definitive Technology employed that technique in the creation of the Mythos XTR-SSA3 soundbar.

The XTR-SSA3 is the latest in a line of speakers that I thought were too skinny to work. Definitive Technology designed the ultra-thin Mythos XTR models to hang next to today’s ultra-thin TVs, and this soundbar is just a little more than 1.5 inches thick — so slim that it sticks out less than a typical inch-thick TV and its mount. The XTR speakers are so thin, it seems impossible that they could sound any better than a $49 iPod dock. But they do.

The new soundbar picks up where the XTR-50 left/center/right speaker (read the review here) left off. It combines left, center, and right speakers into one enclosure. Each channel gets two 3.5-inch woofer/midrange drivers and a 1-inch tweeter. Unusually, the midwoofs use tweeter-like dome-shaped diaphragms rather than cones.

Mount the XTR-SSA3 under your TV, add a couple of surround speakers and a subwoofer, and you’ve got a full 5.1 home theater. You’ll need an A/V receiver to power the system; unlike many other soundbars, the XTR-SSA3 has no built-in amplification.

At just 43 inches wide, the XTR-SSA3 easily fits under flat-panel TVs with 46-inch-diagonal and larger screen sizes. This places the tweeters for the left and right speakers 32 inches apart, nowhere near enough distance to get a decent stereo image. To help the sound break free of the little bar, Definitive employed its Spatial Array technology. Spatial Array uses interaural crosstalk cancellation: It sends a filtered, phase-inverted signal from the left channel into the right and the right into the left. In essence, it prevents your left ear from hearing the direct sound from the right speaker and vice versa, so you get a broader stereo soundstage.

Definitive has also created a new surround speaker for the Mythos line. The XTR-20BP is a bipolar model with two of the same 3.5-inch midwoofers found in the XTR-SSA3, but they’re pointed at angles to spread the sound out more. It’s got the same tweeter, too.

I knew the XTR-SSA3 wouldn’t give me any bass, so I was happy to see that Definitive sent along its new SuperCube 4000 subwoofer. The latest SuperCubes look a lot like the old ones, but they have a new feature: a digital signal processor. Definitive uses the DSP to smooth the SuperCube’s response, and also to offer four special EQ modes. The internal crossover can be adjusted from 40 to 150 Hz. All this is controlled through a tiny remote, and you can monitor your adjustments on a bright red alphanumeric display that’s visible through the grille.

Setup

Everything you need to mount the soundbar and surrounds any which way you want is included in the boxes. If you want to wall-mount them, as I did with the soundbar, you just screw the included mount into the wall. (The mount adds only 1/8 inch of depth to the speaker.) If you want to place the speakers on a table or stands, as I did with the surrounds, you attach the included foot that lets the speakers stand on their own.

One nice twist I noticed on the XTR-BP20: The Definitive logo is magnetic, so you can place it along the long or short edge of the speaker. Thus the logo can be turned upright if you mount the speaker horizontally instead of vertically.

To keep the speakers slim, Definitive used terminal block connectors for attaching speaker cables to the soundbar and surrounds. They’re easy enough to deal with: Just strip the wires ¼ inch or so, put the wire ends into the blocks, and tighten them down with a small screwdriver.

Because the SuperCube 4000 sub is just a tiny 1-foot cube, it’s easy to place almost anywhere. I connected my Denon receiver’s subwoofer output to the sub’s LFE input. One note of caution: The LFE input does not bypass the sub’s crossover, so if you use it, be sure to set the sub crossover to its maximum frequency of 150 Hz. Based on my prior experience with the XTR-50, I set my receiver for a relatively high 120-Hz crossover point.

Performance

When I first fired up this system, my ears braced for the impact of subpar sound. Even after my positive experience with the Mythos XTR-50, I didn’t know what to expect from three speakers crammed into such a tiny volume of space. My experience with inexpensive soundbars and slim speakers led me to expect the worst. But what I got was close to the best.

It’s truly amazing how Definitive’s engineers managed to get such clean, uncolored, and dynamic sound from such a small enclosure. Yes, the XTR-SSA3 has its limits, and you will probably find them in time, but for 95% of typical home theater use, those flaws will never intrude. The best part is that voices sound so natural. The second-best part is that you can play the system loud without distortion.

The Blu-ray of Thor showed the strong and weak points of the whole system. When portraying the characters’ voices, the XTR-SSA3 sounded more like a high-end stereo speaker than a soundbar; there was no bloating, no excessive sibilance, nothing significant to complain about. An imperfect mating between the subwoofer and the soundbar’s little woofers made male voices seem ever-so-slightly thin, but I can’t say they sounded colored. “Less than robust” would be more like it. I was shocked by how loud I could play the action scenes in Thor without distortion. At very high volumes — higher than most people will tolerate for long — the soundbar’s woofers start to compress and the sound thins out, but it never seems harsh. The surrounds kept up just fine, although their output wasn’t particularly enveloping, with the mild angling of the midwoofers doing little to diffuse the sound.

I did reach the Def Tech subwoofer’s limits a couple of times, most notably in the scene where Thor and his compatriots battle a giant robot/demon/whatever sent by his brother Loki. The deep, deep bass in the robot/demon’s footsteps made the SuperCube 4000 distort. I didn’t notice this distortion in most other action movies, however, and to my surprise, the sub handled my “torture test” Blu-rays just fine.

I liked only two of the sub’s EQ modes. EQ2 provides a fairly broad midbass boost, amping up the bass a bit and giving music more groove. I used it often. EQ1, which boosts the extreme low frequencies while limiting dynamic range, sounded awful and made my head hurt. However, I suspect husbands could use EQ1 as a sort of “bass force field” to deter a nagging wife from coming anywhere near the living room. (It may come as little surprise that I no longer have the means to test this capability.)

Perhaps the biggest shock, though, is that the XTR-SSA3 sounds pretty good with stereo music. When I played jazz guitarist Spencer Katzman’s 5 Is the New 3 CD, I was surprised to hear how enveloping his reverb-basted (as opposed to reverb-drenched) Fender Jazzmaster sounded even though the speakers were effectively just 2.5 feet apart. Not surprisingly, the vocals on all my CDs and MP3s sounded especially natural and clear.

Bottom Line

Even after my super-positive experience with Definitive Technology’s Mythos XTR-50 LCR speaker, I’m completely blown away by what the Mythos XTRSSA3 soundbar can do. Compared with a good, conventional 5.1 speaker system, the XTR-SSA3 and its accompanying surrounds and subwoofer look so much nicer, install more easily, and ask you to give up almost nothing when it comes to performance.

Test Bench

Frequency response

• soundbar 160 Hz to 20 kHz ±6.7 dB, 300 Hz to 10 kHz ±2.9 dB
• surround 144 Hz to 20 kHz ±14.1 dB, 300 Hz to 10 kHz ±6.4 dB
• subwoofer 29 to 89 Hz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.83-volt signal)

• soundbar (center) 78.1 dB
• soundbar (center) 78.3 dB
• surround 81.0 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)

• soundbar (center) 3.3/6 ohms
• soundbar (left/right) 3.2/5 ohms
• surround 3.6/5 ohms

Bass limits

• soundbar 125 Hz at 91 dB
• surround 80 Hz at 91 dB

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)

• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 88.7 dB

20 Hz: 78.5 dB
25 Hz: 86.5 dB
31.5 Hz: 101.2 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 115.7 dB

40 Hz: 114.5 dB
50 Hz: 119.1 dB
63 Hz: 113.5 dB

From a technical standpoint, speakers have hardly changed since I went to my first CES back in January 1990. Yet each CES is still jam-packed with new speaker designs. Some are merely modifications on the classic black box. Others are aesthetic flights of fancy intended to captivate those who really don’t much like audio gear. Regardless, listening to new speakers is my favorite part of CES — or of any audio show, for that matter.

Here’s a roundup of 12 new speakers that caught my attention at CES 2012. Lots of others probably warranted inclusion here, but my two days at the audio exhibits in the Venetian Hotel didn’t give me enough time to visit even half of the audio rooms there.

It seems like there have been Paradigm Monitor-series speakers roaming the earth since shortly after Rice and Kellog patented the dynamic loudspeaker as we know it in 1924. (The original practical design was by Peter Jensen, co-founder of Magnavox, some years earlier.) And as the arrival of its “Series 7” might suggest, the Canadian maker’s Monitor family does in fact date back a couple of decades. Like the speakers that preceded them, Paradigm’s new Monitor models are benchmarks of performance/value quotient in the best Canadian-speaker tradition: rationally priced, excellent-performing, technically advanced designs that compete very effectively with some far more costly “high-end” designs.

So what has changed for Series 7? According to Paradigm, the answer is smaller, deeper, broader: The new models are smaller in size (and so more décor-friendly), yet thanks to redesigned waveguides and the adoption of aluminum bass/mid cones and tweeter domes, they offer improved low-frequency extension and smoother, wider off-axis response. In other words, just like before — but more so.

Setup

Unboxing and setting up any floor-standing tower-based system is a bit of a project; fortunately, the suite that Paradigm assembled is of modest size and quite manageable. Being a three-way design, the Monitor Center 3 is a bit taller and heftier than typical 3-driver centers, and so requires decent support and line-of-sight clearance below the video display, which my low stand provided. The Monitor Surround 3, which Paradigm calls “bi-directional” (they are bipolar), went on my usual high, side-wall shelves, and I placed Paradigm’s DSP-3200 subwoofer in the usual spot just behind and outside of the right-front tower.

The DSP-3200 is a nicely compact 12-incher, with all the usual facilities plus one extra: a USB port. This enables Anthem’s optional Perfect Bass Kit ($299), a computer-driven sub-optimizer and room correction equalizer kit that includes a very nice calibration mike, a mike stand, and Windows software. Connecting the sub to the computer (using the supplied USB cables) and running the entire procedure takes about 15 minutes all told, and will mitigate the two or three most egregious peak/dip errors imposed by the average room. (It did so in mine.)

As Paradigm’s “entry-level” full-size range, the China-made (like virtually all price-competing loudspeakers today) Series 7s are plainly but carefully finished: precisely machined, with nice vinyl exteriors, soft-touch-finished baffles, and carefully detailed grilles. Unpretentious they may be, but the new Monitors neither feel nor look “cheap.”

Performance

Beginning as always with full-range stereo music from the Monitor 9s alone, I was immediately impressed. These are extended, smooth, and accurate speakers — I began typing “unexpectedly so,” but that would be untrue.

What I heard was in fact not in the least surprising: vocal octaves that were impressively smooth, honest, and virtually free of any distinct colorations; top octaves that were evident and “easy,” without any “splash,” “tizz,” or extra sparkle, and bass that extended effortlessly to the lowest bass guitar notes (around 40 Hz) and even a bit further.

In short, as a full-range stereo reproducer, the Monitor 9s are very, very good. My only reservation was that their overall balance in my room was a bit warmer and a bit more bass-centric than I had expected. Pulling them out 4 feet or more from the wall helped this substantially, but the 9s still sounded a bit heavier in the 40- to 160-Hz range than I prefer.

Even so, on bass-rich but complex music like Paul Simon’s “Pigs, Sheep, and Wolves” (from 2000’s You’re the One), the Paradigms still sounded “quick,” detailed, and agile — even while producing playback levels that offered sternum-smacking kickdrum. (In fact, the Monitor 9s played ridiculously loud and clean in stereo. In a bigger room, like mine, serious power can be put to serious use without aural repercussions.)

Adding in the DSP-3200 sub, with a crossover of 70 Hz, mitigated the mild bass emphasis I had heard just about entirely — once I’d run the Perfect Bass Kit. A nice feature of Paradigm’s software enables you to fine-tune the “target curve” crossover point, which I lowered a half-octave or so from the automatic finding (to 165 Hz), as a prophylactic anti-bloat measure.

A quick replay of the Simon track confirmed the efficacy of these measures: The slightly “thuddy” character of the big drum (some sort of African hand drum, I imagine) was gone, leaving a cleaner, “quicker,” more pitch-discriminated timbre.

And the DSP-3200 did nothing to detract from the Series 7 system’s musical abilities — though the Monitor 9s go deep enough strongly enough that its only really substantial contribution is the very bottom-most octave and a half, a rare visitor in most music. Nevertheless, combined together in a surround-music showcase such as Hanson’s Bold Island Suite (from a Telarc SACD that’s one of my go-to music surround demos), the bottom line was impressively close to perfect.

The Series 7’s Center 3 proved as close a match to the Monitor 9s as you’re likely to find. Tonal character of both male and female announcers was very similar, and the big center-channel unit promises the kind of dynamic abilities that true, reference-level cinema sound demands: both virtues that, with few exceptions, only bulkier, three-way centers like Paradigm’s achieve. An equally important boon, also unique (or nearly so) to such three-way centers, was the Center 3’s outstanding off-axis consistency. I had to move well beyond the prime listening/viewing spot to hear noticeable shifts in vocal colors.

Putting this all together on film sound proved profoundly satisfying. Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith is a true reference-quality Blu-ray. The battle scene spanning Chapters 3 to 5 or 6 — oh, hell, the whole damned movie — is thus a hoary chestnut of A/V demo rooms, but I can’t dispute the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack’s success in packing every sort of effect, plus a superbly recorded orchestral score — and some of the clunkiest dialogue ever written — into a 10-minute serving.

I deliberately sampled this sequence before running Perfect Bass, and it sounded big, clean, and dynamic, but weighted by a tablespoon of the dread “home theater boom” that plagues so many installations, including, depressingly, many high-end ones. Post-Perfect Bass this was gone, and the Sith sequence sounded reference-quality top to bottom. I’ve screened these scenes in Skywalker Sound’s own 300-seat Stag Theater on a couple of occasions, and while I’m not saying that the Paradigm setup equaled the experience (not much could), the resemblance was sufficient to raise occasional goosebumps on even these thoroughly jaded forearms.

Bottom Line

Paradigm has remained in the loudspeaker performance/value forefront for decades, a position that’s not going to change with the Monitor Series 7. Most people wouldn’t consider a $3,400 speaker system “cheap” by any definition, but we’re not most people, and the Paradigm system reviewed here is ridiculously good for that figure. It delivers natural tonal balance, serious bass extension, impressively clean dynamic range and transient punch, and tight, stable imaging in generous, well-balanced measure, with cosmetics and fit’n’finish that will satisfy most and should offend none. Unhesitatingly recommended.

Test Bench

Frequency response

• tower:  47 Hz to 20 kHz ±4.6 dB
• center:  62 Hz to 20 kHz ±4.8 dB
• surround:  81 Hz to16.3 kHz ±4.8 dB
• subwoofer:  32 to 168 Hz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter/1 watt)

• tower:  87.7 dB

• center:  88.3 dB

• surround:  87.0 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)

• tower:  3.3/6 ohms

• center:  3.1/6 ohms

• surround:  3.8/7 ohms

Bass output, tower (CEA-2010 standard)

• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 87.4 dB

20 Hz:  77.1 dB
25 Hz:  86.0 dB
31.5 Hz:  99.2 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 115.0 dB

40 Hz:  115.0 dB
50 Hz:  115.9 dB
63 Hz:  114.3 dB

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010 standard)

• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 97.6 dB

20 Hz:  91.8 dB
25 Hz:  96.6 dB
31.5 Hz:  104.5 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 118.9 dB

40 Hz:  117.2 dB (L)
50 Hz:  119.6 dB (L)
63 Hz:  120.0 dB (L)

Bass limits

• center:  94.4 dB at 40 Hz
• surround:  83.9 dB at 40 Hz

For frequency response above 240 Hz, I measured the Monitor 9 tower, Center 3, and Surround 3 quasi-anechoically using a Clio FW analyzer in MLS mode. Measurements below 240 Hz were made with the Clio FW in log chirp mode; the mike was place d near the woofers and ports, then the results were scaled and summed to get the total bass response. I spliced the close-miked and quasi-anechoic measurements at 240 Hz.

The differing configurations of the speakers required different measuring techniques. For the tower, I placed it directly on top of my measurement turntable and used 2 feet of attic insulation to absorb reflected sound from the ground. I placed the center speaker atop a 2-meter stand and placed the microphone at a distance of 2 meter s, enough to incorporate the contributions of all the drivers plus diffraction off the cabinet edges. I attached the surround speaker to an ersatz “wall” made from a 2x4-foot piece of plywood, with foam on the edges to prevent diffraction, then attached the “wall” to my measurement turntable. For the tower and center, the curve shown here represents the average of responses at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°; the surround measurement shows an average of responses at 0°, ±15°, ±30°, ±45°, and ±60°. All results are smoothed to 1/12th octave. Tower and center speakers were measured without grilles, then measurements with grilles on were made for comparison. The surround speaker was measured with the grille on, which is the way it will probably always be used.

The frequency-response measurements of the Monitor 9 tower look fairly smooth, but there’s a slightly rising treble balance that peaks at what appears to be a tweeter resonance at 14.4 kHz. Off-axis response is excellent; the treble rolls off gradually even out at 60° off-axis, and other than that, there’s no real difference in on-axis vs. off-axis response. The grille adds a few mild response variants in the range of ±2 dB from 2 kHz to 20 kHz.

The Center 3 center speaker’s response is similar, with a nearly identical peak in the treble at 14.6 kHz. Its off-axis response is excellent for a center speaker. With most center speakers, you get a huge 15- to 25-dB dip at 30° or 45° off-axis, which results from interference between the woofers. But the Center 3’s three-way design practically eliminates that. You get little dips of 8 dB at 2.1 kHz and 6.5 dB at 2.7 kHz, at 30° or 45° off-axis, respectively. As with the tower, the grille creates a few minor response differences of ±2 dB, in this case from 1 kHz to 20 kHz.

Most dipolar or bipolar surround speakers show a lot of treble rolloff in the averaged frequency response, but not the Surround 3. Its treble response is excellent, and it measures just about as flat as the tower and center speakers. This should yield exceptionally lively surround sound effects.

Impedance of the tower speaker hits a low of 3.3 ohms at 10 kHz with a phase angle of -18°. For the center speaker, the low is 3.1 ohms at 160 Hz also with a phase angle of -18°. The surround impedance minimum is 3.8 ohms at 280 Hz with a phase angle of -2°. Although the impedance for the tower and center is a little on the low side, the good sensitivity measurements (average of quasi-anechoic measurement from 300 Hz to 10 kHz at 1 meter, at 0° for the tower and center and 45° for the surround) for all models mean you should be able to drive these speakers with practically any A/V receiver on the market.

The DSP-3200 v.2 subwoofer presented frequency-response measurement challenges because Daniel Kumin had already used the PBK EQ system for his review. Thus, the subwoofer was tuned for his room, not for the outdoor space where I do my measurements. My solution was to do a ground-plane measurement from 2 meters, placing the PBK mike at the same spot as my measurement mike and running the PBK EQ routine to optimize the response for that spot, then doing the measurement using Clio’s log chirp mode. It worked perfectly, delivering a textbook flat response. Low-pass function of the crossover when set for 80 Hz was -23 dB/octave.

CEA-2010 output measurements for the tower speaker and subwoofer were taken at 2 meters and then scaled up 6 dB per CEA-2010 requirements; an L appears next to those measurements in which maximum output was dictated by the unit’s internal limiter. The subwoofer’s output is typical for its size and configuration, with lots of power in the low-bass octave (40-63 Hz) but a lot less output (-21.3 dB, on average) in the ultra-low bass octave (20-31.5 Hz). The surprise is the Monitor 9, which approaches the sub’s output in the low-bass octave and has measurable response (although not much) all the way down to 20 Hz. Pretty impressive for a speaker with 5.5-inch woofers. — Brent Butterworth

In part 1 of this article, we discussed the Schroeder frequency — a frequency above which your listening room works primarily as a sound reflector and diffuser, and below which your room works primarily as a resonator. As I showed in part 1, this is not merely a theory, it’s a law of physics, easily demonstrable in any room.

If you read part 1, and you’re thinking ahead, you’ve probably figured out that the existence of the Schroeder frequency has a huge implication for home sound systems. Because bass frequencies react in a room in a completely different way than midrange and treble frequencies do, the place where a speaker delivers the best midrange and treble response in a room is probably not the place where it delivers the smoothest bass response.

The next conclusion you might reach is that it would be a good idea to run the sounds above the Schroeder frequency through speakers positioned for optimal midrange and treble reproduction, and sounds below the Schroeder frequency through one or more subwoofers positioned (and maybe EQed) for optimal bass reproduction. But you’d be only half right.

The human ear can localize sounds (i.e., hear where they’re coming from) at frequencies above about 80 Hz. Thus, if you route everything below 200 Hz to the subwoofer, you’ll have localization problems with your sub. For example, as Ted Nugent works his way from the high notes on his guitar down to the low notes, approaching the guitar’s 82 Hz low E, the sound will seem to move from the midrange/treble speaker to the subwoofer. (I’d prefer to move the sound of Ted’s guitar entirely out of my listening room, but I digress.)

Thus, you’re best off if you route everything below 80 Hz or so to a subwoofer that’s placed to deliver the smoothest bass response in your listening chair. This will mean you’re getting less-than-optimum reproduction of frequencies between 80 Hz and your room’s Schroeder frequency, but I know of no way to avoid that compromise. Besides, the disruptive effects of the room’s resonating properties on your sound system’s performance get worse as the frequency gets lower; above 100 Hz or so, there are usually so many resonances that they tend to even each other out to some degree.

Take another look at my room’s response in figure 1. See that 40 Hz peak that appears in several of the measurements? That’s the primary resonance (or axial mode) of my room at its largest dimension. Using subwoofers and an EQ, I can easily tame it without affecting the midrange and treble. With a typical tower speaker, I could correct the response by running all frequencies through an equalizer, or by using an automatic room correction technology such as Audyssey MultEQ XT. However, most audiophiles who would prefer not to run their music through complicated processing circuitry and algorithms.

It’s also worth noting that using two or preferably four subwoofers, placed along the walls or in the corners and properly EQed, has been shown to deliver more consistent performance across a wide range of listening positions than a set of full-range speakers can. By the way, here's an article with more about placement of subs and use of multiple subs (PDF link).

God vs. audiophiles

What I’ve prescribed here flies in the face of typical practice among two-channel audiophiles. Most of them prefer to run all the sound — bass, midrange, and treble — through a pair of large, full-range tower speakers without equalization. It should be obvious, though, that God — or whatever or whoever created the laws of physics — would not consider this to be the optimal arrangement. A typical pair of tower speakers, placed in the spots that deliver the strongest and most realistic stereo image in the midrange and treble, is not placed for the smoothest bass response.

(That said, as I implied before, all tower speakers can be equalized, and a few can be equalized in just the bass without affecting midrange and treble. Any tower speaker with a built-in subwoofer that includes a line-level input, or any tower speaker with speaker-cable binding posts that allow the bass section to be separately amplified, can be optimized for smooth bass response in your listening chair even if the speakers are placed for the best midrange/treble performance. All you have to do is connect a low-frequency equalizer such as the Velodyne SMS-1 or the MiniDSP, then dial in the EQ for flat bass response. Talon Audio demoed such a system at the CES show in January.)

Thus, most systems running well-engineered, full-range tower speakers produce great sound above the Schroeder frequency, but uneven response below it. So why haven’t audiophiles junked their tower speakers and embraced subwoofers? For lots of reasons, some good, some bad.

1) Some complain that it’s too difficult to get a smooth transition between the subwoofer and midrange/treble speaker. My admittedly flippant response is, “Well, too difficult for them, maybe” — the implication being that they haven’t tried very hard. With so much good, low-cost measurement gear available nowadays, it shouldn’t be all that difficult for anyone to set up a subwoofer crossover. Besides, the logic that says the transition between the subwoofer and midrange/treble speakers must be flawless but that colossal dips and peaks in the bass response are somehow acceptable completely escapes me.

2) Some associate subwoofers with low-quality, boomy bass. Back in the mid-1990s, when only a few companies had figured out how to make good subs, there might have been some truth to that assessment. But now there are countless subwoofers — most notably those from specialists such as Hsu Research, SVSound, and Velodyne — that can outperform the bass sections of most tower speakers. The best bass I heard at last year’s T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach came not from a $20,000 tower speaker, but from Hsu Research’s $879 VTF-15H subwoofer. Dr. Hsu was, of course, free to place his sub at whatever spot in the room gave him the best bass performance — a freedom that the guys demoing tower speakers didn’t have.

3) Most stereo audio preamps and integrated amps don’t incorporate a subwoofer crossover. This is a pathetic state of affairs, especially when you consider that a fixed 80 Hz crossover requires just a few simple active filters, each of which is composed of a basic preamp stage (or a single channel of an op amp) plus a handful of inexpensive capacitors and resistors. Fortunately, good line-level crossovers are built into many high-end subwoofers, and they’re readily available in the pro audio market.

4) Tower speakers are easier and more convenient to install than subwoofers. Can’t argue there.

5) Tower speakers look nicer than a big subwoofer. Well, beauty is in the eye and all that.

6) I’ve saved what I think are the most important reasons for last: tradition, orthodoxy, and anti-science bias, all of which hold power over some audiophiles.

If you want to learn more about the Schroeder frequency, read the book by the guy who’s arguably done the most to call Schroeder’s work to the attention of the audio industry: Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers in Rooms by Dr. Floyd Toole.

Some home theater enthusiasts see automatic equalization as a sonic savior. They believe it guarantees great sound. But it doesn’t.

Auto EQ technology automatically optimizes your sound system by measuring, then compensating for, the acoustics of your room and the performance of your speakers. It runs test tones through your system, measures the levels of the tones through a microphone, then analyzes the results and creates EQ settings that in theory make your sound perfect. If the auto EQ works well, you can optimize your system’s sound in a minute or two with the push of one button.

There are all sorts of auto EQ systems out there. Some are powerful, allowing the creation of multiple filters to correct almost any conceivable room acoustics problem. Some are simple, with a small number of filters and a limited range of correction. Some let you average the results from multiple seating positions in your room. Some let you measure from just one position. Some are created by engineers with decades of experience and hard-won wisdom. Some appear to have been created by DSP code-slingers who don’t know much about audio. Some make the sound a lot better. Some make it worse.

Thus, when I heard the news that Velodyne was incorporating auto EQ into a new line of affordable subwoofers, I was excited but wary. Would the new EQ-Max line be like getting one of Velodyne’s beyond-awesome Digital Drive Plus subwoofers at a bargain price? Or would it be yet another auto EQ system that accomplishes little?

As Velodyne’s Chris Hagen explained to me, the EQ-Max line is in essence a stripped-down version of the auto EQ function in Digital Drive Plus. It employs 1/3-octave-spaced infinite impulse response (IIR) filters at 40, 50, 63, 80, and 100 Hz. There are no filters below 40 Hz because the box resonance of the EQ-Max subs runs between 32 and 38 Hz, depending on the model, and attempting to apply correction at frequencies so close to the box tuning could cause distortion or damage the driver. According to Hagen, the correction range of the filters is limited to ±3 dB because more extreme correction could cause excessive phase shift.

I was eager to snag a sample of the biggest sub in the line, the $879 EQ-Max 15, but the Sound+Vision editors decided maybe we’d hold off on that one and put it in some sort of subwoofer mega-review at some future date. But when I suggested getting in the the $459 EQ-Max 8, just to see how good Velodyne’s auto EQ implementation was, they let me off my leash.

With an 8-inch driver and a 180-watt RMS amplifier, the EQ-Max 8 ain’t a powerhouse, but it is the first sub-$500 sub I’ve seen with auto EQ. It’s also probably the snazziest sub-$500 sub I’ve seen, period. Besides auto EQ and a tiny calibration mic, it comes with a remote control, four EQ presets, a front-panel numeric LED display, and line- and speaker-level inputs and outputs.

Setup

I connected the EQ-Max 8’s line-level LFE input to the subwoofer output of my Denon A/V receiver. I used it with a set of Sunfire Cinema Ribbon speakers: three CRM-2s in the front, plus two CRM-2BIP speakers in the back for surround. I chose a crossover point of 100 Hz, which works well with the Cinema Ribbons.

As with all the subwoofers I test, I placed the EQ-Max 8 in my room’s “subwoofer sweet spot,” a place along the wall under the screen, about a third of the way from the right side wall. This is where a single subwoofer usually sounds best in my room from my usual seating position. However, I also tried it in a couple of other locations: in the left front corner, tested from my usual listening seat; and in the sweet spot but with my listening chair moved to a spot where I’d measured a huge response hump at 47 Hz. I chose the other positions because they’d present a greater challenge for the auto EQ.

Running auto EQ is really simple. Plug the included mike into the jack on the front of the sub. Hold the mic near your head. Now hold down the EQ button on the remote down for 3 seconds. The sub automatically plays a series of test tones and adjusts itself. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.

Performance

Before I tried auto EQ, I played the EQ-Max 8 on its own just to find out what I was starting with. And what I was starting with is a real good little 8-inch subwoofer.

When I played a swordfighting scene from The Last Bladesman, included on the latest Dolby TrueHD demo Blu-ray Disc, the EQ-Max 8’s impressive punch led me to believe I was hearing a much larger subwoofer. In the fight, the impacts of the swords against masonry walls produces a powerful (although absurdly unrealistic) boom, each of which filled my room with slamming bass.

Another scene from the Dolby disc, the train crash from Super 8, pummeled me with similar impact, although the deepest bass tones from the crash were absent. In my favorite deep bass test scene, the spaceship flyover and explosion in Chapter 3 of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the EQ-Max 8 gave a strong sense of the ship’s powerful vibrations, even if it didn’t shake the floor as a good 12- or 15-incher would.

With music tracks, I got very smooth, grooving, tuneful, and surprisingly powerful response. Tony Levin’s Chapman Stick and electric bass lines on the 40^th anniversary of King Crimson’s Discipline came through with the precision, punch, and subtlety for which Levin is famed. In a few cases, I felt almost as if I were Levin himself, feeling each tap of my finger on the Stick as it came through the bass amp.

I listened mostly in the Jazz/Classical EQ mode, but also found the Movies mode useful to amp up the bass for action flicks. To my ears, the Games mode sounded crazy-boomy (although I don’t play games to my opinion shouldn’t count for much here), and the Rock mode just seemed to add a little excess punch.

So we’ve got a nice little 8-inch sub here. But what does the auto EQ do for it? Not a whole lot, at least in my room. My notes were filled with phrases like “about the same,” “maybe slightly tighter,” and “maybe a bit more impact.” (Bear in mind here that I couldn’t do an A/B comparison; I had to listen to a few tracks in factory reset mode, run the EQ, then listen to the tracks again, so there was a delay of a few minutes between the pre-EQ and post-EQ runs.) Overall, the auto EQ never hurt and sometimes seemed to tighten and smooth the sound subtly, but its effects were never readily apparent.

Measurements

Frequency response

33 to 105 Hz ±3 dB (Jazz/Classical mode)

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: NA

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 113.1 dB

I measured the frequency response of the EQ-Max 8 by close-miking its woofer and port, then scaling and summing the results, all using my Clio FW in log chirp mode. Measurements were done at factory default before auto EQ was activated. All four EQ modes are shown here. Jazz/Classical delivered the flattest, most even measured response. Relative to the Jazz/Classical mode, the Movie mode boosts a max of +6.2 dB at 40 Hz in a broad, low-Q band. The R&B/Rock mode boosts a max of +5.5 dB at 53 Hz, again in a broad, low-Q band. The Games mode boosts by a max of +5.6 dB in a high-Q, narrow band centered at 61 Hz, but has a steeper high-pass roll-off function below 44 Hz.

With the crossover point set to 80 Hz, the low-pass crossover function measures -10 dB/octave to 120 Hz, then -21 dB/octave at higher frequencies.

I performed the CEA-2010 output measurement before activating the auto EQ function, using the jazz/classical mode. Measurements were made at 2 meters; I added +6 dB to scale the measurements to the 1-meter reporting standard mandated by CEA-2010. An L appears next to measurements in which the results were dictated by the unit’s internal limiter.

The CEA is adjusting the CEA-2010 standard slightly; the revision wasn’t available at the time I did these measurements, but I did learn from the CEA that the revision mandates averaging by converting the dB values in the measurements to pascals for averaging, then back to dB. Averaging in pascals gave me the 113.1 dB low bass (40-63 Hz) average shown here. Averaging in dB, the previous method, gave me a result of 113.0 dB. Regardless, that’s good output for an 8-inch sub. Output at 31.5 Hz was 95.3 dB, but the EQ-Max 8 doesn’t produce measurable output below that frequency.

I also measured the effects of the auto EQ technology, using a calibrated Dayton Audio EMM-6 microphone, an M-Audio Mobile Pre USB interface, and a laptop running TrueRTA software. (Read more about this DIY measurement rig.) I used pink noise as the stimulus, with TrueRTA set for 12 averages to minimize measurement-to-measurement variation. I measured in four different combinations of subwoofer and microphone positions, in each case attaching the EQ-Max’s included mike directly atop the EMM-6. For each measurement, I reset the subwoofer to factory conditions, measured the response, ran the auto EQ process, then remeasured.

Only two of the four graphs are shown here; results were similar with the other two. The measured effects of the auto EQ technology are visible, but subtle. It was usually able to find and attenuate the biggest response peak, but in my room the maximum correction was on the order of -2 dB.

Bottom line

If pure power for a paltry sum is your desire, you can easily find a more potent sub for the same price or less, such as the Cadence CSX-12 Mark II. But I’m guessing if you’ve read this far, you’re more into finesse, features, or compact size, in which case the EQ-Max 8 is a nice choice. In small media rooms, bedrooms, and budget audiophile stereo systems, this little sub will be right at home.

The name Mark Levinson is familiar even to those who couldn’t care less about audio. It’s been mentioned in numerous Lexus commercials, because Mark Levinson audio systems are an option in the higher-end models. Audio enthusiasts know Levinson as the founder of the company that still bears his name, and that 40 years later still makes some of world’s finest audio electronics, although under different ownership.

Levinson has been a prominent figure in the audio biz since 1972, but he’s been fairly low-key for the last 10 years. Now he’s coming back with what he says will be his last audio company and his last audio system. A couple of weeks ago, I got to be one of the first in the U.S. to give it a lengthy audition.

The new audio company is called Daniel Hertz. If that name has a familiar ring, it’s because of the 19^th-century physicist Heinrich Hertz, who first confirmed the existence of electromagnetic waves and for whom the unit for cycles per second is named. But Levinson isn’t just borrowing a famous-sounding moniker. “He was my great uncle,” Levinson told me. “Hertz is my mother’s maiden name, and Daniel is my father’s name.”

Daniel Hertz products are for the most part made at the company’s headquarters in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The exceptions are the speaker cabinets, which are made by the Petrof piano factory in the Czech Republic.

Prospective customers will be able to audition the products in showrooms the company is setting up in New York City and San Francisco, as well as in cities in Asia and Europe. Levinson said he may work with independent audio dealers in the future.

The core concept

The Daniel Hertz line comprises three speaker configurations, one preamp, and one monoblock amplifier. There’s no esoteric engineering here; the focus is on time-proven technologies.

“When I started in the audio business, Paul Klipsch [the literally legendary founder of Klipsch Speakers] asked me, ‘Young man, have you read the 1936 papers from Bell Labs?’” Levinson remembered. “I hadn’t, so he sent them to me. Of great importance in these papers is the subject of efficiency in loudspeakers. So I decided to explore high-efficiency transducers.”

Levinson then explained that when you put power into a speaker, you get two things out of it: sound and heat. He feels that considerable fidelity is lost when much of an amplifier’s power is wasted by generating heat in a speaker’s voice coil. Thus, Daniel Hertz speakers are all designed to deliver 100 dB sound pressure level at 1 meter with just 1 watt of power. As a result, they require only about 6% as much power as a typical speaker.

Obviously, most speaker designers don’t feel efficiency is all that important, especially when powerful amplifiers are so readily available. But there’s no denying that Paul Klipsch would have agreed with Levinson on this point; the Klipsch brand has always been known for high efficiency.

Daniel Hertz speakers are available in three configurations: the massive, 330-pound flagship M1 tower speaker; the M2/M3 satellite/subwoofer system; and the M7, a midsized full-range speaker. All configurations share the same horn tweeter and 12-inch midrange/woofer. The M1 tower and the M3 subwoofer add an 18-inch woofer.

Because these speakers consume only a few dozen milliwatts at normal listening levels, the M5 amplifier is engineered specifically to sound great in such lower power ranges. (As you can see in distortion-vs.-power output measurement curves, many amplifiers produce fairly high distortion and noise at very low power levels.) Yet the amplifier’s maximum output is rated at 200 watts into 8 ohms, which Levinson says allows the company’s speakers to hit 126 dB SPL. Each amp has a built-in 80 Hz, 18 dB/octave filter that can be set to high-pass, low-pass, or bypass; this filter is used to create the crossover for the 18-inch woofer. Levinson said the amp is biased so that it runs in Class A at levels up to about 118 dB SPL, and in Class B above that.

The M6 preamp looks as simple as a preamp can. There’s nothing there but an input selector, gain and power switches, and the smoothest-turning volume control I’ve ever encountered. There is one concession to modernity, though: an integral digital-to-analog converter with USB input.

The sound

After Levinson and I talked about his products, he gave me free run of the only Daniel Hertz system currently in the U.S., installed in a home in Marin County, Calif. The system comprised two M1s, each with its horn tweeter and woofer/midrange driven by a single M5 amp and its 18-inch woofer driven by a separate M5. The M6 preamp fed the system, and we used Levinson’s MacBook Pro laptop, connected through USB, as the source. We played my own “torture test” CD of tunes chosen specifically to reveal a system’s strengths and flaws, and we also played several of Levinson’s recordings, stored as WAV files on the laptop.

Frankly, I harbored some trepidation. In my opinion (and in the “opinion” of my speaker measurement gear), crossing a tweeter over to a woofer any larger than 6.5 inches in diameter almost always causes dispersion problems and nasty “cupped hands” coloration, as if singers had their hands cupped around their mouths. To my shock, I couldn’t hear any cupped hands coloration in the M1 at all, despite its 12-inch midrange/woofer. Every singer sounded completely natural.

“You don’t often see a 12-inch woofer crossed over to a tweeter now,” Levinson commented, “but you used to, with the old JBLs and Altecs.”

(I have a crackpot theory as to why the midrange sounded so good. Start with the idea that at high frequencies, most of a driver’s back-and-forth movement occurs near the center of the cone, and the parts of the cone toward the outside don’t move so much. My guess is that the low mass of the 12-incher’s treated paper cone and dust cap allows the large dust cap to act as a midrange driver, much as a dust cap on a small full-range speaker tends to act as a tweeter. The old-school pleated surround, as opposed to the half-roll surround found on most 12-inch woofers, may also play a role.)

There were so many things I liked about the system it’s hard to know where to start, but let’s begin with Steely Dan’s “Aja,” one of my favorite test cuts. Even with some of the world’s finest speakers, the piano in this tune tends to sound hard and brittle — like a cheap upright model — and rather monophonic. But through the Daniel Hertz system, I got a true stereo perspective on the instrument. It sounded smooth, organic, and natural, more like a baby grand.

Indeed, the M1 seemed to create numerous “micro-soundstages” within a larger soundstage — the piano in its own acoustic space, the drums in their own space, Wayne Shorter’s saxophone in its own space. And that’s the way most multitrack recordings are made, combining stereo recordings of instruments like piano and drums with mono recordings of guitar, voice, sax, etc.

I literally cried a few tears when Levinson played an old recording of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker that he had remastered. Parker’s recordings usually sound awful, partly because of the primitive recording technology of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and partly because any decent saxophone in Parker’s possession was usually hocked quickly to support his heroin habit. But Levinson had found one of Parker’s few serviceable recordings, and his remastering and the extraordinary fidelity of the Daniel Hertz system showed me, for the first time in 34 years of listening to Parker, that the guy really was capable of getting a great sound out of his instrument. His alto had some of the full, smooth, gutsy sound of Ben Webster’s tenor but with Parker’s characteristic subtle upper-midrange edge intact.

Hoping to find the limits of the 18-inch woofers’ capability, I played the Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3, better known as the “Organ Symphony.” It was easy to believe what I heard; lots of good 18-inch woofers can reproduce the recording’s 16 Hz deep bass tones. But I couldn’t believe what I saw. I could easily see movement in the 12-inch woofers, but the 18-inch woofers barely seemed to move, probably partly because they’re so large and partly because the big, ported speaker enclosure is tuned to a low frequency.

A 1978 Levinson recording of drummer Bill Elgart — one I’ve heard on lots of systems — blew me away with its dynamics when Levinson played it through the M1s. As anyone who’s played in rock or jazz bands knows, drum kits can be shockingly loud at close range, but such dynamics are seldom captured by home audio systems. With this system, it sounded like I was sitting about 6 feet from Elgart’s kick drum. I have to admit it was actually a little painful, but there’s no denying it was realistic.

Over my objections, Levinson played an Usher tune called “Burn,” just to show me that the system worked as well with hyper-artificial modern pop recordings as it did with audiophile recordings. It did — especially in the bass, which sounded massive yet completely tight and well-defined. I’m confident that even Usher never heard his own tune sound this good.

The cost

Levinson is famed as much for his systems’ cost as for their quality, and the Daniel Hertz gear is no exception: An M1-based system starts at around $150,000. I can almost see the Comments section start to fill with derisive posts as I write this.

Yet Levinson’s goal isn’t just to sell ultra-expensive gear. Even more, he wants to bring great sound quality to low-priced products. (About 20 years ago, Levinson was the guy who turned me on to the $279/pair Acoustic Research M1, the first good speaker I ever owned.) After playing the Daniel Hertz system, he demoed how the digital mastering technology he created in conjunction with digital amp chip supplier D2Audio could make an inexpensive set of Logitech desktop speakers sound like — well, not like the Daniel Hertz system, but a hell of a lot better than the speakers sounded on their own. But more on that at a later date; Levinson’s still in the process of commercializing the technology.

GoldenEar Technology may have had the fastest rise to the top of any speaker manufacturer in history. The company started less than 2 years ago. Yet its very first product, the Triton Two tower speaker, was named Sound+Vision’s 2010 Audio Product of the Year — and practically every other audio publication raved about it, too.

It shouldn’t have come as too big a surprise, though. GoldenEar is the creation of Sandy Gross, a co-founder of Polk Audio and Definitive Technology, and engineer Don Givogue, the other co-founder of Def Tech. Still, to have people comparing your $2,500-per-pair speaker to $10,000-per-pair models is an accomplishment.

GoldenEar designed the new Triton Three for those who found the Triton Two too large or pricey. At $999 each, the Three sells for $1,000 less per pair than the Two (which just went up to $1,499 each) and stands 4 inches shorter. So it’s not a radical change from the original.

Nor do the guts represent a radical change. The Three uses the same High-Velocity Folded Ribbon tweeter found throughout GoldenEar’s speaker lineup. The HVFR employs a thin ribbon diaphragm that’s folded about 20 times. It works sort of like an accordion, squeezing the folds in the diaphragm to force air in and out, thus making sound. The midrange driver is the same 4.5-inch cone, but where the Two has a pair, the Three has just one.

Like the Two, the Three incorporates a powered subwoofer, although it’s got less oomph. The Three has just one oval-shaped woofer to the Two’s two. Also, the Three’s dual passive radiators are smaller, and its 800-watt internal amplifier is only two-thirds as powerful.

The powered sub section presents some advantages over using a separate subwoofer. Because the woofer has its own amp, Givogue and his team could use a digital low-pass filter on the woofer to fine-tune the blend between the woofer and the midrange driver. The digital filter is a complex series of first-order filters at different frequencies, while the midrange uses a passive, second-order high-pass filter. (The midrange/tweeter crossover is also passive.) A knob on the back lets you adjust the level of the subwoofer section so that it balances perfectly with the midrange and tweeter, and an LFE line-level input lets you get optional added oomph when playing movies.

The disadvantage of the powered sub section is that you have to position the towers where the midrange and tweeter drivers work best, at least a couple of feet from any nearby wall. (With a subwoofer, you’re free to position the sub as well as the satellite speakers wherever they work best with your room’s acoustics.)

If you’ve hung on my every word here, you now know what a fascinating and complex engineering exercise the GoldenEar Triton Three is. Now it’s time to take a seat in the listening chair see if the engineering worked.

Setup

Incidentally, those who want to expand the Triton Three into a full home theater system can add the matching SuperSat 50C center speaker and SuperSat 3 surround speakers.

Performance

I didn’t have some grand plan in mind when I chose Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly LP as the first thing to play through the Triton Threes; it just happened to be the first record in the stack. But The Nightfly turned out to be an ideal test of GoldenEar’s claim that its internal subwoofer integrates better with the midwoofer than a standalone subwoofer could. Bassist Anthony Jackson’s lines in “I.G.Y.” sail above and below the Triton Three’s crossover point, yet no matter what notes he hit, his playful timing subtleties came through perfectly.

As the record continued to play, I noticed that all the instruments in the lush production were reproduced with unusual specificity — i.e., they seemed to come from more precise positions than I’m used to hearing. In “I.G.Y.,” for example, the background vocals were spread from speaker to speaker but no further, while the synthesizer washes wrapped around and behind me. Fagen’s voice and the cheesy-sounding “synth blues harp” he plays on the track sounded as perfectly placed as they would have if I had gone into the studio, pushed engineer Elliot Scheiner out of his chair at the mixing board, and done all the panning of each voice and instrument myself.

I suspect the Triton Three’s broad soundstage will help it blend well with center and surround speakers in a 5.1 or 7.1 setup. In fact, when I streamed the racing documentary Senna from Netflix, I heard sound effects of racing cars coming from the sides of the room several feet behind me, even though only the Triton Threes were playing. I also noticed when streaming Flat Top, an old mono WWII flick, that the dialogue centered perfectly in the midst of my screen, even when the Threes were 9 feet apart.

Seems time to add some comments about voice reproduction, but even though my test CD is loaded with vocal tracks chosen because they reveal flaws in speakers, I found little on which I could fault the Triton Three. I did note that the speaker added a little emphasis to Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto’s voice in the lower treble, around 3 kHz, and the same held true for Chancellor Palpatine’s voice in Chapter 4 of Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But by and large, the vocal reproduction is so good that you’ll probably never even notice this. And that’s the way it ought to be.

The bass delivered by the 5-by-9-inch woofer isn’t going to knock you out of your chair, but it’s deep and satisfying enough that I think most people would be happy without a sub. Home theater enthusiasts, though, will almost surely want to add a sub or two. As I stated above, the middle and upper bass registers were beautifully blended and flawlessly tuneful. However, the bottom octave-and-a-half wasn’t as smooth and even as I can get it in my room using standalone subwoofers. Such is the nature of tower speakers.

Bottom Line

Whenever I strongly recommend a product, I often worry that a Sound+Vision reader might buy it and not like it despite its strengths, but I have no such concerns with the Triton Three. It’s simply one of the best tower speakers I’ve reviewed at any price. The fact that it sounds this good at just below $2,000 per pair makes it a truly outstanding buy.

Test Bench

Frequency response
29 Hz to 20 Hz ±3.6 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter/1 watt)
85.9 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)
3.4/6 ohms

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 97.5 dB

20 Hz, 92.1 dB
25 Hz, 98.9 dB
31.5 Hz, 99.7 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 108.7 dB

40 Hz, 109.4 dB
50 Hz, 109.5 dB
63 Hz, 106.9 dB

I measured the GoldenEar Technology Triton Three’s frequency response above 220 Hz using a Clio FW analyzer in quasi-anechoic MLS mode, with the measurement mike at a distance of 2 meters and signal level of 2.83 volts (1 watt at 8 ohms). I placed the speaker directly atop my measurement turntable and used 2 feet of attic insulation to absorb reflected sound from the ground. The measurement you see here is an average of responses at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°, smoothed to 1/12th octave. The response of the subwoofer section was measured using close-miking, with the results of the woofer and the two passive radiators summed. To get the approximate sum of the subwoofer section and the midrange driver, I ran a ground-plane measurement, with the mike on the ground at a distance of 2 meters, then experimented with the subwoofer level control to get the flattest possible response. The curve you see here represents a splice of those three separate measurements. The frequency response measurements of the Triton Three are very smooth. Even way out at ±60°, there are no significant changes in response up to about 15 kHz. Above 15 kHz, there’s a heavy treble roll-off at angles of ±45° and greater (about -30 dB at 20 kHz). But for that little (and probably inaudible) dip at 4.5 kHz, the response would be within ±3 dB.

Minimum impedance is 3.4 ohms at 128 Hz with a phase angle of -31°; and the impedance runs below 5 ohms between 220 and 930 Hz. Impedance rises rapidly below 100 Hz as the signal is handed off to the internal amplifier. Still, using at least a decent midpriced receiver or amplifier rated into 4 ohms would be a good idea. Sensitivity (average of quasi-anechoic measurement from 300 Hz to 10 kHz at 1 meter at 0° with a 2.83 volts RMS signal) is 85.9 dB.

CEA-2010 output measurements for the subwoofer section were taken at 2 meters then scaled up +6 dB per CEA-2010 requirements. Averages are performed in pascals as per upcoming revisions to CEA-2010 that had not yet been published by our deadline. I tried measuring from the LFE input and from the speaker input (driven by a Krell S-300i amplifier); I got about 3 dB more output from the speaker input so those are the numbers I include here.

The output of the Triton Three’s subwoofer section is a little unusual, limited at the top end by its small woofer but reinforced at the bottom by its relatively large cabinet and dual passive radiators. Thus, it doesn’t deliver a lot of energy in the low bass (40-63 Hz) octave, yet it does have usable response all the way down to 20 Hz. Here’s the pascal averages (the new method) and the dB averages (the old method): low bass 108.7 dB/108.6 dB, ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) 97.5 dB/96.9 dB.

These subwoofer section output numbers are for one Triton Three only. Adding the second tower should increase overall bass output by an average of +6 dB, although because of room acoustics the boost provided by the additional tower will vary with frequency. — Brent Butterworth

It seemed that audio companies had surrendered the home-theater-in-a-box concept to the TV manufacturers. But the introduction last year of three world-beating mini speaker systems — the Cambridge Audio Minx, the Polk Audio Blackstone TL3, and Sound+Vision’s 2011 Product of the Year, the Paradigm MilleniaOne — showed a renewed interest in this seemingly abandoned category.

The latest well-regarded audio company to get (back) into the HTiB business is Wharfedale, which announced its $799 DX-1 system at last September’s CEDIA Expo. The DX-1 is a classic HTiB: four 7.5-inchhigh two-way satellites, a matching horizontal center speaker, and an 8-inch subwoofer. True to form, the whole system ships in a single box.

Wharfedale didn’t go out of its way to make the DX-1 look stylish — but it did build the speaker enclosures from relatively non-resonant MDF rather than the usual flimsy plastic, and used curved sides to stiffen the cabinets. The system’s available in gloss black or gloss white, and it’s designed to look good with the grilles on or off.

The core of the system, the DX-1 Satellite, is a two-way minispeaker with a 3-inch midrange/woofer and a 0.75-inch tweeter. What most distinguishes it from a mass-market HTiB speaker is inside. Where mass-market HTiB speakers tend to use just a single capacitor (and maybe a resistor) in the crossover, the DX-1 Satellite uses three capacitors, two chokes, and two resistors.

Why should you care? Because a more complex crossover tailors the signal better for each driver. A single-capacitor crossover gives you a first-order (6 dB/octave) filter on the tweeter, while the woofer runs full-range. The DX-1’s crossover provides a third-order (18 dB/octave) filter on the tweeter and a second-order (12 dB/octave) filter on the woofer. The result is less low-frequency signal into the tweeter (thus lower distortion) and less high-frequency signal into the woofer (thus better dispersion).

Similar story for the DX-1 Centre, which sits horizontally and adds a second midrange/woofer. Besides the extra driver, the big difference is that the Centre’s cabinet is ported while the Satellite’s is sealed.

To fill out the low end, Wharfedale includes the DX-1 Subwoofer, a minisub with an 8-inch woofer powered by a 70-watt rms amp. Its back panel includes volume and crossover frequency controls, a phase switch, power and auto-on switches, and stereo RCA line inputs, as well as dual ports for the woofer.

Looking over the DX-1 system’s specs, like any audio aficionado would, I thought, “Probably decent sound but low output.” Let’s give a listen and see if that guess is correct.

Setup

The Satellite and Centre both have plastic keyhole mounts on the back so you can hang them on the wall. I figured most people would put them on stands, though, so that’s what I did: two Satellites and the Centre in front, and two more Satellites to the sides of my room just behind my listening chair. The curved bottom of the Centre made stand-mounting difficult, and my search of the box revealed no rubber wedge or similar device to prop it up, so I wadded up some Blu-Tak poster adhesive and shoved it under the back of the speaker. Toeing in all the speakers to point straight at me gave the best sound. The grilles sounded fi ne with movies but dulled the treble a bit with music, so I tossed them back in the box.

I connected all the speakers to my AudioControl Savoy amp, which was fed signals from a Denon A/V receiver. I then connected the Denon’s subwoofer output straight to the subwoofer’s line input.

Sadly, like almost every other manufacturer, Wharfedale fails to specify a subwoofer crossover point in the manual. A little experimentation showed 120 Hz to be a reasonable compromise.

The bright blue LED on the front of the sub proved annoying when I turned down the lights to watch movies, but a piece of electrical tape fixed that.

Performance

When I’m faced with a small speaker system, my first instinct is to find its limits. So I loaded the Captain America: The First Avenger Blu-ray and skipped to the scene near the end where Cap fights his nemesis, the Red Skull. In my roughly 3,000-cubic-foot listening room, the DX-1 system sounded pretty good at 98 dB peak level, measured from my listening chair. At 100 dB, though, I got too much distortion. So the DX-1 is adequate for a bedroom or small den, but not for full-bore listening in a large room. No surprise there. What did surprise me, though, was the fidelity of the sound. I’ll get my complaint out of the way right now: Male voices lacked that last bit of body when heard through the DX-1 Centre. Except for that small fl aw, though, the system rendered voices impeccably. All of the voices in Captain America, from the German-accented growling of the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) to the soft tones of Cap’s love interest, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), sounded incredibly natural.

The DX-1 system even handled one of the toughest voice tests on DVD — singer Arnold McCuller’s solo at the end of “Shower the People” from James Taylor’s Live at the Beacon Theatre — as perfectly as I can remember hearing it from an affordable speaker, with none of the distortion or strain that McCuller’s voice often causes in inexpensive systems. The excellent timbre matching between the Satellite and Centre produced a huge sound field with 5.1 material, making movies and music videos especially immersive.

The system’s performance with music was even more impressive. The second movement of the Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra from David Chesky’s String Theory (available on CD or high-rez download at hdtracks.com) blew me away. The violin and cello imaged impeccably among the speakers, while the orchestra stretched out all the way across the front of my listening room. This is the kind of performance I associate with good $3,000-per-pair bookshelf speakers, not with an HTiB system. Still, the DX-1 system’s limited power handling prevents it from delivering orchestral works and big-sounding pop/rock recordings with the sense of majesty you’d hear from larger and more expensive speakers.

Although the subwoofer sounded tuneful and satisfying, its deep bass output was limited. For example, the bass notes that kick off Holly Cole’s rendition of Tom Waits’s “Train Song” elicited chuffing noises from the sub’s ports, and the driver bottomed out a couple of times when trying to reproduce the powerful synth-bass lines in electro-pop band Olive’s “Falling.” You can’t expect much from an 8-inch driver and a 70-watt amp, but this sub needs a limiter.

Wondering how the DX-1 compares with the HTiB systems listed earlier? I didn’t have them on hand for direct comparison, but I can make a few comments based on what I said in those reviews. I’d say the DX-1 sounds better and plays louder than the Cambridge Audio Minx; sounds slightly better than, but doesn’t play as loud as, the Polk Blackstone TL3; and sounds almost as good as, but doesn’t play as loud as, the Paradigm MilleniaOne.

Bottom Line

In the DX-1, Wharfedale seems to have put fidelity first and foremost, without making any of the compromises that could have gotten greater output from the system. If you’re looking for an inexpensive yet extraordinary system for a bedroom or small den, I can’t think of another I’d recommend more highly. Just don’t push it beyond its limits.

Test Bench

Frequency response
• satellite 100 Hz to 20 kHz ±2.8 dB
• center 100 Hz to 20 kHz ±5.1 dB
• subwoofer 37 to 122 Hz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.83-volt signal)
• satellite 80.7 dB
• center 82.6 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)
• satellite 3.7/7 ohms
• center 82.6 dB

Bass limits
• satellite 80 Hz at 81 dB
• center 80 Hz at 84 dB

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010 standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: NA

20 Hz, NA
25 Hz, NA
31.5 Hz, 88.9 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 108.3 dB
40 Hz, 103.7 dB
50 Hz, 110.1 dB
63 Hz, 109.8 dB

I measured the Wharfedale DX-1 satellite and center speakers atop a 2-meter-high stand with the measurement microphone at a distance of 1 meter from the fronts of the speakers. The curves you see here represent an averaged quasi-anechoic frequency response from 0° to 30°, smoothed to 1/12th of an octave. To get the low-frequency measurement for the satellite, I close-miked the woofer. For the center, I close-miked the woofers and port and summed their responses. I then spliced the bass responses to the averaged responses at 240 Hz. I measured the response of the subwoofer by close-miking the woofer and ports, then summing their results. Frequency response curves for the satellite and center are normalized to 0 dB at 1 kHz, and the curve for the subwoofer is normalized to peak at +3 dB.

The satellite speaker measures great. In my opinion, anything that measures with less than ±3-dB variance on our averaged response curves is a well-engineered speaker, and the satellite measures ±2.8 dB. The only major response error is a 3-dB dip at 2 kHz. Off-axis response is also great. At 45° and 60° there are no major response anomalies, just a very gentle treble rolloff. Adding the grille caused only subtle response changes, except for a reduction in treble averaging 2.5 dB between 9.5 and 15.8 kHz. Bass output isn’t great, but it’s adequate to blend with the sub; turns out 120 Hz was a good choice of crossover point.

The center’s on-axis response is almost as good as the satellite’s (±3.2 dB), but its averaged curve doesn’t look as good because interference between the woofers causes a broad dip between 1.8 and 8 kHz. This dip shouldn’t cause overt colorations in the midrange, but it could make the treble and lower mids sound a bit emphasized (unless you have absorptive material on the side walls of your room). Off-axis response is typical for a woofer-tweeter-woofer center speaker — at 45° and 60°, a dip of 10 to 20 dB appears between 1 and 4 kHz, and at 60° the response dips by 13 dB at 10 kHz. The center’s grille caused a treble reduction averaging 2.5 dB between 11.3 and 17.8 kHz, but no other significant changes in response. Impedance (see chart) of the satellite and center drops a little low for inexpensive speakers (which will presumably be connected to an inexpensive receiver), but it should be manageable. For the satellite, it drops to 3.7 ohms at 285 Hz with a phase angle of +7°. For the center, it’s 3.7 ohms at 265 Hz and +4°. Sensitivity is low, though. Average of on-axis quasi-anechoic output from 300 Hz to 10 kHz runs 80.7 dB for the satellite and 82.6 dB for the center. It’s unlikely you’ll be playing this system real loud, so I imagine most inexpensive receivers can drive these speakers with no problem. I probably wouldn’t recommend using the DX-1 system with one of those all-in-one DVD player/receiver components that come with many mass-market HTiB systems, though.

The subwoofer’s frequency response goes up to 122 Hz, just enough to mate properly with the satellite and center. Combined low-pass function of the subwoofer’s crossover and driver is -19 dB/octave. I measured the DX-1 subwoofer’s output using the CEA-2010 technique, outdoors at 2 meters, and added 6 dB to each result to simulate measurements at 1 meter. For such a tiny sub, output is pretty good in the low bass (40-63 Hz) octave, but it drops quite a bit at 31.5 Hz and there’s no measureable response at 25 or 20 Hz. (The average low bass response is calculated in pascals, as per the updated CEA-2010A standard. Calculated by the original CEA-2010 standard, it would be 107.9 dB instead of 108.3 dB — an insignificant difference.) Note that none of the results was dictated by a limiter, so either the limiter threshold is set very high or a limiter isn’t present.

Applying lessons learned in the car audio arena, Earthquake Sound has been delivering high-powered, high-quality products in the active deskop stereo and 2.1 market for a suprisingly long time. The iQuake-52 powered speaker pair has been given an overhaul this year, with a beefier output transformer and a range of bright colors; unchanged are the carbon-fiber 5.25-inch woofers, 1--inch silk dome tweeters and 100 watts per side of power.

An integral dock supports and charges all past and present iPhones and iPods; it's a recessed dock so an iPad can't be supported directly, though it will play and charge via a dock extender cable if you're so inclined. An S-video output port is provided for watching video content; a USB through port lets you listen to your iOS device while you're syncing. If you're not Apple-inclined, RCA and 1/8" inputs let you use the device of your choice — or, as the company suggests you can use the provided rear-panel power outlet to attach an Airport Express and convert the iQuake into an AirPlay speaker pair. Rounding out the feature set is a convenient onboard volume pot, a remote, and a subwoofer out.

And on that note, getting a refresh is the MiniMe compact subwoofer (the 8-inch P8 version of which is designed to pair nicely with the iQuake-52 in a 2.1 system, but can certainly fill your other compact sub needs). Beyond the 8-inch/320 watt version, 10-inch/450 watt P10 and 12-inch/600 watt P12 MiniMes are also available. The MiniMes couple an active driver with a passive radiator (Earthquake has patented the design, known as "SLAPS") in what the company calls a two-driver system; the power comes from a Class D amplifier, newly updated for the current production run. A new piano white finish is available, though only for the smaller P8 — the P10 and P12 are only available in basic black.

A slectable signal-sensing circuit automatically turns on the MiniMe and puts it into stand-by; there's an onboard volume control, a 0-180-degree phase shift adjustment, and a variable cutoff frequency control from 50 Hz on up to 160 Hz. RCA inputs can be run in LFE or Sub modes, high level speaker inputs and outputs are also provided.

The iQuake will set you back $475/pair in black or white, $499 in pink, red or silver. The MiniMe P8 is available in black for $849.00 or piano white lacquer for $949.00; the MiniMe P10 is $1,099.00; and the MiniMe P12 costs $1,399.00.

We've long been fans of Sonos' mesh-network wireless system; the company's range of products deliver great functionality at reasonble cost, and with a simple setup routine that rivals anything coming out of Cupertino, the system has gotten countless people into the notion of whole house audio. Sonos' recalibrated last year as a lower-cost-of-entry, more lifestyle-oriented (and, we could easily say, "youth-oriented") brand, and concurrently introduced the smaller Play:3, a friendlier and easier to place version of the flagship S5 Zone Player.

One thing's been missing from the equation though, and that's substantial bass. Til now.

The new Sonos SUB is a small, slim-profile wireless subwoofer, employing dual racetrack drivers, placed facing one another across the central port in a force-cancelling configuration. The drivers are powered by a pair of Class D amps, managed by the company's signature DSP, their output reinforced via two newly designed ports. The device speaks SonosNET, of course, and can be used as part of a system with any of the company's powered players (Play:3, Play:5, etcetera).

During our brief hotel-room demo (Sonos has been partnering with Cool Hunting to create a "Sonos Listening Library" installation at the Standard in downtown NYC's East Village) the SUB was quite impressive reinforcing a pair of Play:3's. Bass was more than ample — the selection of reggae tracks and other low-end-rich material showed off the devices strengths — I'd imagine it fitting right into the sort of small-to-medium-sized spaces that a pair of Play:3s would cover.

The automatic setup routine, accomplished via the Sonos Controller app (we saw the iOS version in action) is almost ridiculously simple. The app walks you through a grand total of two steps; results were more than adequate.

At only 15.8 x 6.2 x 15 inches, and weighing only 36.3 pounds, placement should be simple (it's slim enough to tuck in almost any available space, and Sonos tells us it can be used either standing or lying down).

Available for preorder now in a glossy finish, the SUB goes for $699. A matte version (matching the Play line) will soon be available for $599. Pretty attractive pricing if you're already invested in a Sonos setup.

I was testing some subwoofers the other day when something wonderful dawned on me. I realized that at long last, we have an easy way to separate the serious subwoofer manufacturers from the not-so-serious.

The tests I was doing involved CEA-2010 output measurements. CEA-2010 measures the maximum usable output of a subwoofer at six different bass frequencies. As I’ve written before, it’s by far the most useful test you can perform on a subwoofer.

Not only does CEA-2010 tell you the maximum output at those six different frequencies, it lets you see if a sub is tuned for, say, a relatively flat power output throughout the bass region, or maximum power at higher frequencies (50 or 63 Hz) but little or no output at 20 or 25 Hz.

CEA-2010 sets certain maximum thresholds for distortion harmonics. If you’re measuring the output at, say, 40 Hz, the 2nd harmonic at 80 Hz has to be at least -10 dB below the level of the 40 Hz fundamental tone. The 3rd harmonic has to be at least -15 dB below the fundamental, and so on. The higher the harmonic, the lower its acceptable maximum level, because higher harmonics are more readily audible.

My realization came when I was measuring a subwoofer that made some nasty buzzing noises. The noises, which were relatively high in frequency, caused the sub to exceed the maximum threshold CEA-2010 sets for upper distortion harmonics at a lower output level than if those noises weren’t there. But the noises weren’t the result of distortion. They were the result of either some mechanical noise inside the sub — i.e., something vibrating inside — or air turbulence around the port. “They definitely didn’t do CEA-2010 on this one,” I thought to myself.

If the manufacturer had done CEA-2010 measurements on that sub, they’d have found the problem and probably could have fixed it. It’s not like 2nd or 3rd harmonics, which are caused by the speaker or the amplifier exceeding its capabilities. To fix excess 2nd or 3rd harmonics in a subwoofer, the manufacturer may have to spend a lot more money on a better driver or a more powerful amp. But fixing problems at higher frequencies may require just a minor mechanical tweak that adds little to production cost.

Thus, if the manufacturer of your subwoofer publishes CEA-2010 results, you know the subwoofer has been fully tested and optimized for the maximum performance its driver and amp can deliver.

Performing CEA-2010 measurements isn’t particularly expensive; if a freelance reviewer like me can afford it, so can a manufacturer. Total cost of the gear and software I use is about $1,450 plus a PC to run the software on. (The website Audioholics uses a very similar rig, as do the manufacturers I’ve talked with.) A manufacturer can even do the test with nothing more than inexpensive spectrum analyzer software and a cheap measurement microphone; the results won’t be as consistent as using the CEA-2010 testing software, but they’ll be adequate. Even just running the CEA-2010 test tones (available on my website) through a subwoofer and cranking it up can reveal a sub’s flaws and limits in seconds.

However, it seems most manufacturers don’t perform CEA-2010 tests, and even fewer publish the results. In fact, I could find only one company that publishes CEA-2010 results on its website: Polk Audio. You rock, Polk.

I also know from speaking with the people at Hsu Research, SVSound, and Velodyne that those companies do CEA-2010 measurements. However, while these manufacturers sometimes share their CEA-2010 results on online forums, they don’t currently publish the results on their websites.

Instead of publishing CEA-2010 results, manufacturers typically cite a meaningless maximum output number. Let’s say a sub is rated at 115 dB max output. Well, at what frequency? At what level of distortion? At what distance?

It’s time for this to change. Despite my past complaints about CEA-2010’s repeatability, there’s no other test that so quickly and accurately gauges the quality of a subwoofer. Every manufacturer should be doing this test on all of its subwoofers — and publishing the results in the product specifications. If they do, you know they’re serious about their subwoofers. If they don’t. . .

Since my first lengthy experience with Sonos products, I’ve been recommending them as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to traditional multiroom audio systems. It’s just so much easier. Plug in a Sonos component, go through a simple config, and you have great-sounding music and Internet radio in any room (or many rooms) in a matter of minutes, all controlled by your smartphone or computer.

But there’s one thing a Sonos system doesn’t deliver: bass. Now that’s fixed.

Yesterday, the company introduced the Sonos Sub, a $699 subwoofer designed to work seamlessly with any Sonos system. I was lucky enough to get a pre-ship sample for review.

Just to recap the way Sonos works: All components communicate through Sonos’ own wireless network, which streams music independently of your main wireless network; the Sonos system also connects to your Wi-Fi router so it can accept commands from your smartphone or computer, retrieve music stored on your networked computers and hard drives, and reach the Internet to access numerous streaming services.

The Sub’s design is a little weird, with two 4.5-by-7-inch “racetrack” drivers facing each other across a central cavity, a design that cancels vibration. (I wonder if the aesthetics were inspired by Paris’s Grande Arche.) You can stand it up or lay it flat. At just 6.2 inches thick, it slips easily into small spaces — certainly under most end tables, maybe even under a couch.

Each driver is in its own ported enclosure; the ports fire into the same central cavity as the drivers. Each driver has its own Class D (switching-type) amplifier, of unspecified power.

No one will blame you if you’re thinking the Sub is a function-follows-form design created by a lifestyle-oriented company that doesn’t know low bass from largemouth bass, but you’d be wrong. Unlike a lot of companies that make compact audio systems, Sonos has its own acoustical engineering team. In fact, its director of engineering product management is Chris Kallai, formerly of Velodyne and thus well-versed in good bass reproduction.

Nor would anyone blame you if you assumed the Sub connects to other Sonos components with a wire, but it doesn’t. It uses the same wireless network as the other gear. The only wire required is the AC cord, although you can use a wired Ethernet connection if you wish.

Setup à la Sonos

As with other Sonos components, you go through a simple config to assign the Sub to a certain room and a certain Sonos component, like a Play:3 or a Play:5. You just push a button on the sub, a little LED starts blinking, then you search for new components using the controller app running on your computer or smartphone. Once your system finds the Sub on the wireless network, you tell it what Sonos component in what room you want it to mate with.

The Sonos app then takes you through a simple adjustment procedure for the sub. First it plays a multitone bass pattern two ways, and asks you to choose the louder of the two. Then it plays the same tone and asks you to set the level so the bass sounds full but not overwhelming.

I mated the Sub with a Play:3, and the operation took less time than it would take to hook up and adjust a conventional subwoofer. However, despite the adjustment procedure, the bass level still needed occasional tweaking, as I’ll discuss below.

Getting a lot from a little

Two 4.5-by-7-inch drivers may not seem like a lot of audio real estate, but it’s actually slightly more area (although probably a little less total displacement) than a typical 8-inch woofer. Still, approximately 54 square inches of moving diaphragm isn’t a recipe for raw bass power, so I wondered if and how Sonos might tune the Sub to best exploit its limited resources.

The pumping, danceable bass line of the English Beat’s “Ranking Full Stop” (from I Just Can’t Stop It) told me right away. I was impressed that the Sub, in combination with the Play:3, could easily play loud enough to get people dancing at a party. And that doesn’t mean pushing it to the edge; the system still sounded distortion-free even cranked all the way up. But it wasn’t the tightest rendition of “Ranking Full Stop” I’d heard — the pitch definition in the bass seemed a tad soft and the sub had a trace of the “high-Q” sound often heard from small subs that need to deliver an impression of power.

That said, the Sub still delivered a nice sense of punch and drive, especially in the upper bass region. When I played “I.T.M.” from saxophonist/keyboardist James Watkins’ Intense, the Sub nicely conveyed the mix of rich low notes from the two bassists, perfectly capturing the contrast between Jamaaladeen Tacuma’s explosive popped high notes and restless, ahead-of-the-beat rhythm and Shawn Scott Jones' more relaxed, grooving sound.

I imagine most Sonos customers won’t be playing ska or avant-leaning jazz/funk, though, so I switched to some classic regular-guy fare: “Limelight” from Rush’s Moving Pictures. The Sub made the Play:3’s sound vastly more satisfying, delivering a surprising sense of low-end power. The tight — indeed, lean — sound of bassist Geddy Lee and drummer Neal Peart sounded fatter and less crisp than I’m used to hearing, but most people would probably enjoy that effect; Peart’s kick drum, in particular, always sounds too thin to me.

The Sub rocked especially hard when I played “Outshined” from Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, the awesome bass/guitar/vocal unison in the chorus coming off in perfect sync with no lag or bloating in the bass. In fact, I was a little shocked at the sense of bass power the Sub delivered on my heavy-metal faves.

As with the Rush tune, “Outshined” demanded a subwoofer level setting that was down a couple of notches from the one that sounded best with jazz and pop. That’s not tough to adjust, though — just go into Room Settings in the Sonos app on your smartphone or computer and set the sub level as you like it. It’s much more convenient than adjusting a level knob on the back of a subwoofer, or searching between the couch cushions for the little credit-card-sized remote that manufacturers tend to include with their higher-priced subs.

Yeah, I’m sure if you put together a standard two-channel system with a separate, fully adjustable subwoofer, you could get better sound, but the person who’d do that probably isn’t the Sonos customer.

Measurements

Frequency response

34 to 96 Hz ±3 dB

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: NA

20 Hz          NA
25 Hz          NA
31.5 Hz       99.0 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 113.7 dB

40 Hz          110.9 dB
50 Hz          114.8 dB
63 Hz          114.9 dB

I measured the frequency response of the Sonos Sub using ground plane technique with my Clio FW audio analyzer in log chirp mode. I tried measuring it standing up and flat on the ground, the measurements were within 0.2 dB either way. Signals were fed into the Sub and a connected Play:3 (acoustically isolated from the sub for this measurement) using a Sonos Connect.

The frequency response was pretty typical for something of this size, with the tuning focused on the second octave (40-80 Hz) of bass. The 96 Hz upper bass response is exactly what’s needed to blend properly with the Play:3’s bass response.

I performed CEA-2010 output measurement at 2 meters, then added +6 dB to scale the measurements to the 1-meter reporting standard mandated by CEA-2010. Averages are done in pascals per recent amendments to the CEA-2010 procedure. The Ievel was cranked all the way up in the Sonos control software, but I didn’t encounter a limiter at any frequency.

The CEA-2010 output measurements are pretty impressive, about +10 dB more than you’ll get from the subwoofers included with a typical 2.1 soundbar system. There’s no measurable output below 31.5 Hz, but the fact that this relatively small sub nears 100 dB of output at that frequency means you’ll get reasonably satisfying deep bass from it.

Bottom line

For a plug’n’play compact subwoofer, the Sub does one hell of a job and looks great doing it. What’s more, Sonos did a spectacular job of integrated it with the existing Sonos interface. It’s a very, very welcome and necessary addition to the Sonos line.

TVs are lonely. A beer-soaked barstool at 2 a.m. kind of lonely. They cry out for companionship, their tinny, bass-less voices difficult to hear, even harder to enjoy. When they were young, they held so much promise: high definition, good times, low cost. How quickly came the onset of disappointment?

A search, a hope, a late-night call for help. Four suitors — less "Diamonds and Gold" and more "Small Change" — sauntered in: the Valley vixen, Harman Kardon’s Soundbar 30; two Seoul singers, LG’s NB3520A and Samsung’s HW-E550; and Vizio’s VHT215, glossy black from head to toe and fluent in Mandarin.

The tip jar at the bar may not hold quite enough, but enough is all you will need to hold: Just a few hundred dollars is what you’ll pay for this play. In tow with each soundbar: a faithful wireless subwoofer to nip at the heels and bring bass to the table where none was before. Half the bars are HDMI-friendly, and all of them come with remotes for you to dial in your choice of 11 p.m. loud or 4 a.m. loud.

But now it’s a quarter to three, there’s no one in the place, ’cept you and me. Let’s find one for your baby, and three more for the road.

Vizio VHT215

Price: $269

Vizio, in typical fashion for the company, brings low price and a slightly different design aesthetic to the party. Where the Harman Kardon and Samsung bars go round and the LG goes boxy, the VHT215 is all triangles and corners. Inside are four 2.75-inch midrange drivers and two 0.75-inch tweeters (split between the left and right channels). The wireless subwoofer holds a 6.5-inch woofer. The power for all these drivers isn’t specified, so we’ll say “some.” Two HDMI ins and one out are the big connections, but there’s also one each optical and coaxial digital, and a 3.5mm analog minijack. The remote control is a little smaller than a pack of cigarettes and has all the basic buttons on its front. A hidden slide-out compartment reveals bass, treble, and subwoofer controls, plus input access and SRS mode selection.

The Vizio’s (and also the Samsung’s) HDMI output features Audio Return Channel (ARC). This means that if you have a “smart” TV (like one with Netflix or Hulu Plus built in) that also has an HDMI jack with ARC, you can send the audio back out to the soundbar via the same cable connecting the soundbar and the TV. It also means you can use the TV to switch sources instead of the soundbar.

Performance

My first thought upon hearing the VHT215 was: Huh? When manufacturers aim to hit a specific price, adding features usually means diminished performance. But the Vizio is the cheapest soundbar in the group and has HDMI switching, so imagine my shock at hearing the huge sound coming from it. As with all soundbars, the fidelity isn’t as good as what you’d get from a decent pair of bookshelf speakers, but the VHT215 is notable in its lack of significant vices. The Vizio, despite costing one-third as much as the HK, gives it a run for the title of “most listenable.”

I started with music, mostly because it’s far more useful than movies for revealing overall sound quality. Tom Waits’s The Heart of Saturday Night seemed fitting, and “Please Call Me, Baby” has the right mix of piano, vocals, strings, and percussion. For a soundbar, the Vizio’s overall balance was quite decent. Few frequencies really jumped out over others. Vocals sounded a little forward, but they were not as bad as on some of the other soundbars. Bass extended quite low, but it also lacked any real definition.

Billie Holiday’s “You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart,” from The Complete Decca Recordings, starts with some loud horns, and then, of course, you hear her amazing voice. The latter was a little forward-sounding and the brass a bit bitey, but compared with the LG and Samsung, both aspects were quite good.

To hear something harder, I put in the Faces’ “Stay With Me.” Not necessarily a band you’d find in a bar, but I’m also not convinced they weren’t all drunk during every recording session, so close enough. The VHT215 compressed the tune at high volumes, but it was still listenable.

Part of its charm is its SRS TruSurround HD processing. This greatly expands the soundstage both vertically and horizontally, and it also increases depth. I didn’t hear any serious artifacts with it enabled, and I ended up using it in this mode the entire time.

The VHT215 plays pretty loud for the most part, though all of the bars here could be drowned out by a good shout. It could go slightly above a “normal” listening volume, but if you play much higher than that, it starts to distort slightly.

Movies about bars, or people in bars, don’t exactly make for the best audio demos, so I put in John Carter (aka Tim Riggins of Mars). Interestingly, the SRS processing didn’t expand the soundstage as well with movies. It was still big, and better than on the LG or Samsung, but I wasn’t as impressed as I was with music. Also, when the action really got going, the VHT215 couldn’t handle the excitement, distorting and compressing more than the other bars at higher volumes. Its HDMI jacks did pass 1080p video without incident, however.

Bottom Line

For $269, the VHT215 is a shockingly good value. It generally performs better than the competition, and it has both HDMI switching and ARC (something that some of the more expensive soundbar systems don’t offer). It plays loud enough, has a big sound, and looks decent, too. If an affordable soundbar is what you’re looking for, look here first.

Soundbar
(2) 0.75-in tweeters,(4) 2.75-in mid/woofers; 40.1 x 4.1 x 2.1 in; 5 lb

strong>Subwoofer
6.5-in woofer; 8.5 x 12.8 x 11.3 in; 11 lb

LG NB3520A

Price: $299

The LG NB3520A’s glossy black plastic cabinet gives it the same visual flair as a pint of Guinness — in this case, poured into a plain rectangular box. Its exposed speaker drivers are an interesting touch, though, seeing as most inexpensive speakers go to great lengths to hide their transducers.

Each channel uses 80 watts to power a 1-inch silk dome tweeter and two 2.5-inch midrange drivers. The sub’s 7-inch woofer is powered by 140 watts.

The LG does not have HDMI switching — a big negative in my book regardless of price. The added convenience of HDMI switching is worth some extra money to me (or, in the case of the Vizio, less money). Instead, your input options are two optical connections and a USB port (to plug in thumb drives, not iPods). It also has Bluetooth for wireless streaming from a smartphone.

The LG soundbar remote looks like a small TV remote, and it has roughly the same number of buttons. An AV Sync feature — one that’s also found on the Samsung — is there to minimize lip-sync issues.

Performance

If your thing is vocals, the LG is your soundbar. Tom Waits didn’t need to call; his voice was so far forward that I could smell the beer. Aside from sounding overtly forward, with midrange taking center stage at the expense of everything else, the LG came off sounding a bit nasal as well.

When you activate the LG’s 3D sound feature, you get a better balance, with voices receding almost behind the bar. Better, but still not great. The “surround” effect in this mode is rather wide but also seems to accentuate certain frequencies. The sound of cymbals, for one, was very noticeable.

And when I listened to “You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart,” Billie Holiday sounded smaller through the LG than on the others bars, and the horns at the beginning of the track were very harsh.

The Faces didn’t sound much better: all cymbals, guitars, and mush. The LG subwoofer offered some low-end reinforcement, but that was mostly just low thuds. To be fair, though, I wouldn’t classify any of the subwoofers in this group as “good” or even “not bad.” There also wasn’t much blend between the bar and the sub.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the LG’s performance is that it flips the left and right channels with stereo recordings. The iconic guitar-riff opening of “Stay With Me” that’s hard-panned to the left? With the LG, you hear it on the right — at least when using the Optical 1 input without any other processing active. Guess what? If you use Optical 2 or any other input, the channels are correct.

The LG fared far better with movies. The 3D Sound processing created a reasonably large soundstage, and its sound in that mode had a better balance than Samsung’s bar. During big action scenes, the forward quality of the vocal range was a benefit, letting dialogue come through fairly clearly, and there was enough treble to create some atmosphere and make effects audible.

On the features side, the LG easily made a Bluetooth connection with my phone, and it found the files on a thumb drive plugged into the USB input and played them without a fuss.

Bottom Line

The LG NB3520A lacks HDMI switching, plus it has mediocre overall sound quality, a rather average design, and a channel-swapping software bug. Its USB and Audio Sync features are cool, and it performed better with movies than with music (certainly what soundbars are mostly meant for), but even so, it doesn’t hold up against the others bars featured here.

Soundbar
(2) 1-in tweeters, (4) 2.5-in mid/woofers; 2 x 80 watts; 39.4 x 3.2 x 2.0 in; 5.1 lb

Subwoofer
7-in woofer; power, 140 watts; 7.7 x 15.4 x 12.5 in; 15.2 lb

Samsung HW-E550

Price: $449

The HW-E550 confuses me a bit. In one form, it’s a thin, round soundbar. If so desired, you can split it in the middle and have two small speakers to mount on stands or on either side of the TV. At this point you have a 2.1 system, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just go with a real 2.1 system. It’s an option, though, so I’ll give Samsung credit for that.

Each bar section is powered by 80 watts, while the wireless sub gets 150 watts of its own. No driver sizes are specified, so we’ll assume “small.” Even the driver on the sub is covered, though to judge from the indent visible when I pushed in the cloth with my finger, it’s around 5.5 inches. Two HDMI ins and one out (with ARC), are joined by a USB port (again, for USB thumb drives, not iPods). There’s also an optical digital input and a 3.5mm analog minijack. All of these connections are located on the lower rear of the subwoofer. This is interesting: The Samsung is the only bar here that locates all the connections on the sub and sends audio wirelessly to the bar, not the other way around. This configuration might require longer cables, but it certainly simplifies installation, especially if you’re planning on mounting it to the wall.

The Samsung soundbar also has Bluetooth connectivity for streaming music from your phone and an Audio Sync feature to minimize lip-sync issues.

The system’s remote ties with the LG for the Most Buttons award in this group. The intent here, seemingly, is to allow you to use it as a smallish universal remote. There’s also a volume wheel on the right edge of the bar that’s as discreet as it is handy.

Performance

Sooooo much bass. Even at the subwoofer’s minimum setting, there’s way too much bass, and that’s coming from someone who loves bass. Consider subwoofer placement carefully; you don’t need to put this baby in a corner. It’s a bit boomy and lacks definition, but like I’ve mentioned, none of the subs here is very good.

There’s a limit to how much technology can really fool physics. As a result, the (presumably) tiny drivers in this tiny bar produce a midrange-heavy sound. There’s very little upper extension, and it’s a little shouty. As with the LG, it feels like you’re only hearing pieces of the entire frequency range.

Samsung’s 3D sound feature increases soundstage size vertically and horizontally, but it also makes the vocals sound very forward. The other bars here showed more overall improvement with their “surround” modes active. The system plays fairly loud, though with a bit of compression — and distortion — at the top of the volume range.

Billie Holiday’s voice sounded very forward, and there wasn’t much treble. The Faces were all vocals and guitar. Everything else came across as quite mushy. With John Carter, the Samsung’s characteristic vocal emphasis made dialogue easy to understand, but unlike with the LG, that clarity came at the expense of music and sound effects. It was like the Samsung bar had a voice-only bandpass filter.

The HW-E550’s Bluetooth wireless connection synced up with my phone perfectly, and its HDMI jacks passed 1080p video without problem. Experimenting with the split-speaker setup (which requires running speaker cable from the right half to the left), I found that the sound opened up more naturally, which is what you’d expect when there’s more distance between the drivers. The improvement wasn’t huge, though.

Bottom Line

I’m of mixed mind about the Samsung HWE550. On one hand, it’s got HDMI switching (with ARC), a svelte form factor, and room-filling bass (enough for several rooms, really). I can imagine that many people would be perfectly happy with it. From a strict sound-quality point of view, though, it’s not great. The colored sound produced by the tiny drivers would not, in any circle, be considered “high fidelity.” In a product category marked by endless compromises, Samsung’s soundbar offers some feature pluses to go with its sound-quality minuses.

Soundbar
42.84 x 2.17 x 2.17 in; 3.75 lb

Subwoofer
11.41 x 11.41 x 14.52 in; 15.98 lb

Power(soundbar/subwoofer combined)
310 watts

Harman Kardon Soundbar 30

Price: $799

The Harman Soundbar 30 takes us out of the gin joints and into the speakeasies and clubs. It’s a bruiser, by far the widest bar here. Oddly, despite its comparatively high price, there’s no HDMI switching. Instead, you get one optical and one coaxial digital input, along with an RCA analog stereo input.

The money here seems to be in the drivers: There are seven 1-inch dome tweeters, each with its own 10-watt amp, and six 2-inch midranges powered by four 40-watt amps. The HK subwoofer has an 8-inch woofer driven by 100 watts.

The small, flat, credit-card-size remote, which has all the buttons you’d need, is more what I had in mind when I thought “remote control for soundbars.” There’s no display on the bar — the only one in this group without one. Instead, it has three multicolored LEDs that you read like a rainbow Morse code.

Performance

I had high hopes for the Soundbar 30. After all, it was the only bar here from an actual speaker company, and it had more drivers than many complete 5.1 systems. In basic Stereo mode, the 30 sounds okay, at least when compared with the rest of this group. There’s a bit too much treble, though, which adds a slight harshness to the high end of its frequency range. As a result, the cymbals and snare drum on Tom Waits’s “Please Call Me, Baby” sounded a bit too forward.

The Harman Kardon soundbar fared better with Billie Holiday’s “You Can’t Lose a Broken Heart,” sounding the best of the bunch by far on that track. The balance was decent, and the brass was the least harsh of the group.

With the Faces, cymbals sounded somewhat aggressive, with the bar exhibiting some sibilance. The sub’s bass wasn’t well defined, though it filled in the low end capably enough.

Unimpressed with the Soundbar 30 in vanilla-stereo mode, I started experimenting with its surround modes. With 13 drivers and 11 amplifiers, cool things should be possible There are three settings: Stereo, Virtual, and Harman Wave. Stereo uses the outer drivers in a traditional 2.1 setup. Virtual adds in the two driver pairs in the bar’s center to “simulate the reflected sounds that would be created by rear-channel speakers.” I didn’t hear a major improvement with it. However, the Harman Wave mode impressed me quite a bit. Using all the drivers and, presumably, a lot of processing, Harman Wave made the Soundbar 30 come alive. The soundstage increased dramatically. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I heard sounds behind me, but it was a reasonably convincing faux side-channel effect.

This is easily the best mode to listen to with the 30: room filling with a huge sound field, in a sort of electrostatic-speakers way. The sound quality in this mode largely made up for the bar’s still noticeable extra treble.

The 30 wasn’t particularly loud in any of its modes, though. At maximum volume, I found its output to be acceptable but certainly not raucous. (To be fair, I have a pretty big room.)

With John Carter, the Soundbar 30 fared the best of the bunch, performing slightly better than the Vizio (though both bars have their strengths and weaknesses). It sounded the most open, and the most like a real set of speakers. The treble harshness was still apparent, but the voluminous soundstage gave movie soundtracks a wider scope than the other soundbars (the Vizio sort of excluded).

One other oddity: The Harman Kardon Soundbar 30 cuts off the first second or two of each new CD track when a player is plugged into its optical or coaxial digital inputs (but not the analog input). So if you’re listening to a disc, you will lose the first second of each song. If you plan on listening to a lot of music with the Soundbar 30, this issue will end up being pretty annoying.

Bottom Line

The Soundbar 30 delivers decent sound quality, and its Harman Wave surround mode creates a faux multispeaker effect that is quite cool. However, it is way too expensive for a soundbar that lacks HDMI switching. The sound was good overall, but it would need to be really good in my mind to justify the $800 price. For that same money, you could easily get a receiver with HDMI switching and a pair of decent bookshelf speakers (or even a small 5.1 sub/sat system) that would likely sound better, offer more features, and be easier to upgrade. A different product category, perhaps, but I feel that that’s the Soundbar 30’s competition given its $799 price.

Soundbar
(7) 1-in tweeters, (6) 2-in mid/woofers; 7 x 10 watts/6 x 40 watts; 3.94 x 45.69 x 3.125 in; 8.4 lb

Subwoofer
8-in woofer; power, 100 watts; 13.91 x 10.5 x 10.5 in; 19.2 lb

For subwoofer designers, the laws of physics boil down to: Small box, low cost, high output — pick any two. You can always shrink the enclosure, but to get decent output from it, you’ll need a high-powered amp and a beefy driver. And if you shrink the box way down, as Sunfire did with its new Atmos subwoofer, you’ll need to go even more extreme.

The first thing you notice about the Atmos is its size: The longest side measures just 10.1 inches. It’s smaller even than some of those cheapie “subwoofers” that come with desktop audio systems. But Sunfire contends that the Atmos can go hertz to hertz, decibel to decibel with full-size home theater subs. The next thing you notice is that its enclosure is made from thick extruded aluminum, which contributes much to the sub’s 32-pound weight. Sunfire chose aluminum in order to contain the intense pressure generated inside the Atmos. You might also notice the ultra-mega-beefy asymmetrical rubber surrounds (the part that connects the diaphragm to the speaker frame) on the woofer and the passive radiator. Sunfire says the size and unique shape of the woofer’s surround gives it a maximum excursion of 1.8 inches. That’s a feat few 18-inch drivers can match.

What you can’t see is the 1,400-watt amplifier inside. Why so much power in such a small sub? Because the power demands of small-box subs increase radically with every octave below the subwoofer’s resonant frequency — by a factor of 16 for a sealed box, and even more for a passive radiator design like the Atmos. The amp uses Sunfire’s tracking down-converter technology, basically a Class H design where the power supply’s output is continuously adjusted so that it provides just enough to meet the sub’s power demands. The advantage of Class H is that it produces no excess energy that would need to be flushed out through a big heat sink.

Even with such muscular internal components, the Atmos can’t match the output of a much larger subwoofer. That’s why Sunfire strongly recommends placing it in the corner, where it’ll get a huge boost in output. Unfortunately, corner placement also tends to create huge resonant peaks and a really boomy sound, so Sunfire added an automatic room EQ circuit that’s intended to smooth out the big peaks.

Setup

Hookup for the Atmos is straightforward: line-level connections only, and I needed just one of those jacks to connect to my receiver. A nice feature that I didn’t use but that could be handy for stereo systems is a line-level stereo output with a defeatable 85-Hz high-pass filter. Connect your preamp to the Atmos’s line ins, run the Atmos’s line outs to your amp, activate the 85-Hz high-pass fi lter, and you have a fully functional subwoofer crossover — which is necessary because so few stereo preamps have built-in crossovers.

Calibrating the auto EQ circuit is simple. Just place the included microphone on the back of your favorite listening chair, then hold down the EQ button on the back of the sub for 5 seconds. A low-level calibration tone will emerge. Wait 10 seconds, then hit the button again to trigger the next test tone. Repeat the process twice more and you’re done.

Obviously, an auto EQ circuit that uses only four test tones can’t be all that sophisticated, but to my surprise, the results I got from the Atmos’s auto EQ were above average. Using TrueRTA software and an Earthworks M30 microphone, I measured the before-and- after results with the auto EQ and found that it had correctly identified the major peaks in my room, reduced the biggest one by 4 dB and the next-biggest one by 2 dB, and actually raised the level of the third one by 12 dB to match the level of the others. Normally, boosting frequencies this much with an auto EQ circuit is a bad idea because it causes distortion, but with a driver this robust, it’s no problem. The result was much smoother, more even bass, and elimination of the nasty resonant sound that corner positioning tends to produce with subs.

I used the Atmos with a variety of speakers, from my 200-pound Krell Resolution One towers to Definitive Technology’s new SM45 mini-monitor, using crossover points ranging from 80 to 120 Hz, depending on the speaker.

Performance

For my first test run with the Atmos, I wanted some material that would drive it to its limits. So I chose a home theater classic (in its Blu-ray form, that is): the intro of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It starts with a somber scan across a landscape littered with skulls, then jolts you to attention with a full-scale bass hit when a robot’s foot crushes one of the skulls with the force of an 18-wheeler slamming into a brick wall at 60 mph.

A truly great subwoofer can scare you on this scene, even when you know what’s coming. I can’t say the Sunfire Atmos scared me, but it did play loudly without any audible distortion. It also did a great job portraying T2’s chase scene through the aqueducts of the Los Angeles River; it didn’t quite shake my floor but did deliver a hell of a punch. Basically, it sounded like there was a decent-size subwoofer in the room.

Some minisubs with heavy-duty drivers do a mediocre job of differentiating the pitches of the notes in melodic bass lines. But the Atmos sounded quite tuneful on slickly produced pop like Toto’s “Rosanna” and Joni Mitchell’s “Car on a Hill,” delivering all the rhythmic subtleties that made those 1970s L.A. studio bass players so much in demand.

However, when the notes rose up into the higher bass range, around 80 or 100 Hz, the Atmos seemed to lose some of its attack and punch. It seems that Sunfire tuned it for maximum sound quality in the 40- to 63-Hz region — probably a wise decision given the sub’s limited driver area, but this makes it harder to match up with satellite speakers, many of which have limited bass output below 80 Hz.

Really deep notes, such as those below the low 41-Hz E note on a standard bass guitar, revealed the Sunfire Atmos’s limits. When I played tunes with deep electronic bass, such as M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” (from her Kala CD) and Olive’s “Falling” (from Extra Virgin), the Atmos subwoofer was able to reproduce the lowest notes, but it seemed to throttle itself down at times, compressing the notes so that they wouldn’t distort.

Bottom Line

There’s nothing else on the market quite like the Atmos. You really can hide this little sub almost anywhere, and it really does provide substantial bass output. You pay a lot for it, but those big bucks buy you a minor miracle.

Extended Test Bench

Frequency response

36 to 96 Hz ±3 dB

Bass output (CEA-2010 standard)

• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average:  81.8 dB

20 Hz        NA
25 Hz        76.1 dB
31.5 Hz     89.5 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average:  108.4 dB

40 Hz    102.5 dB (L)
50 Hz    111.9 dB (L)
63 Hz    108.3 dB (L)

I measured the frequency response of the Atmos using ground-plane technique with my Clio FW audio analyzer in log chirp mode. Measurements were done with the auto EQ deactivated. The Atmos delivers a fairly narrow response with almost all of its output focused in the second octave of bass (between 40 and 80 Hz). With the crossover point set to 65 Hz, the low-pass crossover function measures -24 dB/octave.

I performed the CEA-2010 output measurement with auto EQ bypassed. Measurements were made at 2 meters; I added 6 dB to scale the measurements to the 1-meter reporting standard mandated by CEA-2010. An L appears next to measurements in which the results were dictated by the unit’s internal limiter. Averages are done in pascals per recent amendments to the CEA-2010 procedure.

The output in the low bass (40-63 Hz) range is 108.7 dB, comparable to that of a good 8-inch or inexpensive 10-inch subwoofer, and better than Sunfire’s rated 106-dB max output. Unusually, the output at 50 Hz is substantially higher than at 63 Hz; I wonder if this is the cause of my perception that the Atmos’s upper-bass reproduction is a little lean. There wasn’t enough output at 20 Hz to get a measurement, so per CEA-2010 procedure I subtracted18 dB from the 25-Hz result to calculate the ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average of 81.8 dB. These numbers are lower than I expected from my subjective experience with the Atmos, but of course probably higher than any sub this small has ever achieved.

As I noted in the review, I measured the in-room frequency response with the Atmos in the corner of my listening room before and after activating auto EQ. The extra chart included here shows the before-EQ response (green trace) and the after-EQ response (blue trace). as you can see, the auto EQ does a pretty good job of equalizing the level of the main room modes at 40, 65, and 85 Hz.  — B.B.

When the economy tanked in 2007, a funny thing happened in high-end audio: Many manufacturers prospered by creating even higher-priced products. As a speaker reviewer, I lack the economics chops to explain this turn of events, but I can tell you it has spawned some fascinating audio gear.

Take, for example, Steinway Lyngdorf ’s S-Series, built to be the Bugatti Veyron of compact home theater systems.

 At $58,400 for the whole system, this is clearly no home theater in a box. Nor is the S-Series merely a bunch of mundane components dolled up with fancy finishes and half-inch-thick aluminum faceplates. No, the S-Series costs a small fortune in large part because it’s one of the most technically advanced audio systems you can buy.

Peter Lyngdorf, the mastermind behind Steinway Lyngdorf, is one of the few manufacturers in high-end audio who shows no reluctance to adopt advanced technology. As a result, the S-Series employs high-efficiency, switching-type amplification, a technology Lyngdorf helped pioneer more than a decade ago with his TacT amplifiers. It uses the company’s own RoomPerfect processing to correct for room acoustics problems. More digital signal processing fine-tunes each speaker’s performance. The components communicate through the Steinway Lyngdorf Digital Link, a proprietary, high-resolution audio interface.

The key component in the S-Series is the S-15 satellite speaker, which stands 10 inches high. The S-15 can sit on a stand or hang on a wall. An Air Motion Transformer (AMT) ribbon tweeter handles the highs; it’s similar to tweeters found on recent speakers from GoldenEar Technology and MartinLogan. To increase ambience, sound waves coming from the back of the tweeter bounce off an angled reflector and out through the rubber-string grilles on the speaker’s sides. The AMT sits above a 5.25-inch woofer. Thick slabs of aluminum form the enclosure.

Lows are handled by the LS Boundary Woofer, a medium-density fiberboard box housing two 12-inch woofers. It can be used freestanding, but it’s mainly intended to be built into a wall or a piece of furniture. Steinway Lyngdorf designed the LS specifically for corner mounting, thus the “Boundary Woofer” tag.

The system requires an audio processor — the SP-1 for stereo or the P1 for surround — and enough of the company’s A1 stereo amps to power all the S-15s and LSs in the system. My 5.1 review system included five S-15s, four LSs, five A1s, and one P1, although Steinway Lyngdorf technician Henrik Jørgensen told me he could have used just two LSs in my room. The added woofers and amp brought the “as tested” price of the system to $72,200. But no worries: Perhaps the S-Series’s inconspicuous design will dissuade the Occupy movement from camping out on your front lawn.

The P1 has the capabilities of a typical surround processor, including video and audio switching plus recent variants of DTS and Dolby (although not height-channel technologies such as Dolby Pro Logic IIz and DTS Neo:X). It also has eight-channel Room Perfect processing. What it doesn’t have is a display, so you need to have a TV connected to adjust many of its functions. It also lacks video scaling.

The round remote has such an air of luxury that it could almost inspire an Occupy protest on its own. The chrome (or gold) ring around the edge is the volume control. This heavy metal ring spins with a soft, gratifying whir. Six buttons let you control power and mute as well as access various sound modes and the onscreen menu system. A small conventional remote is also provided.

Setup

You can’t set up your own Steinway Lyngdorf system; dealer installation is required, using a special remote. Jørgensen hung the three front speakers and two surround speakers on my walls, and placed the subwoofers in two stacks in the front corners of my room. All connections between the amps and processor used the Steinway Lyngdorf Digital Link.

After plugging everything in and configuring the inputs for my source devices, Jørgensen activated RoomPerfect setup. He used a test microphone in different positions while the system emitted test tones to adjust itself for my room.

Jørgensen provided three RoomPerfect settings: Global (for multiple listeners), Focus (optimized for my listening chair), and Bypass. He suggested that I use Global for most material, saying that it usually sounds about as good as (and sometimes better than) Focus.

Performance

Although Jørgensen checked the system’s operation by playing music so loud I had to leave the room, I still wasn’t convinced the S-15s would deliver the kind of oomph needed in a large home theater. So my first test was a Vudu stream of Real Steel, a movie that combines cool robot boxing with sappy dialogue.

I found that the S-Series easily reproduced the massive footfalls and powerful punches of the robots, with incredible impact and no audible distortion even when I cranked the system way, way up. The S-Series also exhibited a compelling “acoustic bubble” effect, giving me a great sense of the spaces in which the action took place.

The sappy, dialogue-driven parts of Real Steel might have proved more challenging due to the system’s unusually high subwoofer crossover point: 300 Hz, compared with 80 Hz for most systems. My worry was that the Steel dialogue might sound unnaturally full because it would be coming in part from the LS woofers. However, even though I was listening for this flaw, I never noticed it in 5.1 material from Blu-ray Discs and DVDs, nor with stereo CDs and LPs.

You really get the payoff of the S-Series’s advanced technology when you play stereo music. “It’s weird to hear a sound with so little identifiable character,” I wrote in my notes when I played Holly Cole’s “Train Song,” one of my go-to test tracks ever since it was released 17 years ago on her Temptation album.

While the mids certainly impressed me — the vocalists from my test CD all sounded as natural as I’ve ever heard them sound — I was really blown away by the bass and treble. The bass sounded distinct, powerful, and incredibly even from note to note; most systems are lucky to achieve two of those goals. The treble rang out with incredible clarity without sounding in any way exaggerated, edgy, or distorted.

My most stirring moment with the system came when I played “The Holy Man,” from the World Saxophone Quartet’s Metamorphosis. This track features four saxophonists soloing simultaneously over rambunctious African percussion. The S-Series gave me the most distinct sonic image of each saxophonist that I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard this track on at least 1,000 audio systems.

With stereo music, RoomPerfect seemed to kill the treble detail and the punch in the bass, so I bypassed it. With movie soundtracks, I usually liked the sound best in Focus mode. Compared with the Global mode, its more radical taming of my room’s flaws delivered a more realistic reproduction of explosions and impacts, and its smoothing effect on the treble made dialogue (which often isn’t well recorded) sound more natural.

Bottom Line

For the price of Steinway Lyngdorf ’s S-Series, you could have your choice of any number of great home theater audio systems. What’s special about this one? It sounds amazing; it’s the only small system I’ve heard that’s muscular enough to rock out a large media room; and it has a cool remote that would look right at home on Paul Allen’s yacht.

Extended Test Bench

Frequency response

• satellite (Global mode) 186 Hz to 20 kHz ±6.7 dB
• satellite (Focus mode) 191 Hz to 20 kHz ±6.7 dB
• satellite (Bypass mode) 215 Hz to 20 kHz ±7.8 dB
• subwoofer 23 to 92 Hz ±3 dB

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010 standard)

Bass limits

• satellite                                                  88.9 dB at 40 Hz

Because the S-15 satellite and LS subwoofer are designed as part of a system including electronics and DSP, and not intended to be used on their own, I had to depart in some ways from my usual measurement methods. I measured both driven by the Steinway Lyngdorf electronics, so the DSP correction was active. I also ran several in-room measurements of the system in its different modes.

For the S-15, the frequency response curve shown here represents the average of results at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°, all performed with a Clio FW audio analyzer. Because the S-15 is designed primarily for wall-mounting, I mounted the speaker on an ersatz wall, a 2-by-4-foot sheet of plywood attached to a stand and mounted on my measurement turntable. The microphone was placed on-axis with the tweeter (the position where I got the flattest response) at a distance of 2 meters. The measurements were taken using quasi-anechoic technique (with Clio in MLS mode) above 250 Hz and close-miking of the S-15’s woofer (with Clio in log chirp mode) below 250 Hz. For the LS subwoofer, I performed a ground plane measurement to get the total bass output of the two woofers. All results were imported into a LinearX LMS analyzer for post-processing. The S-15’s measurement was normalized to 0 dB at 1 kHz, and the LS’s so that its peak output was +3 dB. All curves were smoothed to 1/12th octave.

Even though I wasn’t able to recalibrate RoomPerfect for the measurement environment, Focus and Global still gave me smoother measured results from the S-15 than the Bypass setting did; apparently the compensation for wall-mounting that RoomPerfect applied in my listening room also yielded benefits when I mounted the S-15 on my ersatz measuring wall. The S-15’s measurements are obviously marred by that dip at 530 Hz, which is an unavoidable cancellation effect caused by the wall-mounting. (Because it’s a cancellation effect, or “suckout,” it can’t be corrected through equalization; any additional energy pumped into that band would simply be canceled.) Without that cancellation dip, the measurements are better: ±6.0 dB in Bypass, ±4.6 dB in Global, and ±4.8 dB in Focus.

Another performance parameter that DSP can’t do much to correct is off-axis response, and it’s here that the S-15 really excels, showing almost no change in response at angles out to ±30°. At ±45°, the midrange response is reduced by max -5.9 dB between 800 Hz and 2.5 kHz (that’s the dispersion of the woofer narrowing as frequency rises), but overall response at this angle is actually flatter than it is on-axis. Although the treble response gets a little ragged at angles of ±30° or greater, it remains essentially flat relative to the midrange and bass, which is unusual — typically, treble response is greatly reduced at ±45° and ±60°, but not so in the case of the S-15. That’s the rear tweeter reflector working, I assume.

You can tell from the frequency response chart that the S-15’s bass extension is limited, but the robust woofer still delivers useful output all the way down at 40 Hz. However, the system’s 300-Hz crossover point doesn’t capitalize on the little woofer’s muscle.

Although the S-15’s sensitivity and impedance are irrelevant because the speaker is not available on its own, I measured them anyway out of curiosity. Impedance runs below 5 ohms between 210 Hz and 570 Hz and again above 4.5 kHz, and hits a low of 2.7 ohms at 11 kHz with a phase angle of -19°. Sensitivity (average of quasi-anechoic measurement from 300 Hz to 10 kHz at 1 meter at 0° with a 2.83-volt RMS signal) is a little above average at 90.3 dB.

The LS Boundary Woofer’s frequency response when driven by the Steinway Lyngdorf processor and amplifiers shows good low-frequency extension, but an unusual “shelving” effect from about 100 to 235 Hz; I assume this curve is chosen in order to deliver substantial bass output while also delivering enough high-frequency response to make the 300-Hz crossover.

Speaking of the high crossover point (which in most good home theater systems would be set at 80 Hz), Lyngdorf provided an interesting technical explanation of why it didn’t result in bloated voices as it normally would. He said the sound quality resulted from excellent impulse response — the woofers’ ability to produce high output immediately yet also stop producing output the moment the signal ends. “If you don’t have good impulse response, you can easily hear woofer placement because the woofer keeps playing after the music stops,” he said.

He noted that the corner placement of the woofers is essential for good impulse response. “Corner placement delivers a unified wavefront coming from the corner, rather than the more chaotic result you’d get with the woofer placed elsewhere,” he said. “Think of when you make a splash in the corner of a pool. The waves go out uniformly from the corner.”

I did once hear the bloated voices I feared, when I streamed Battlestar Galactica episodes (the Edward James Olmos version, not the Lorne Greene one) from Netflix, processed through Dolby Pro Logic II in the P1. Given that the flaw never occurred with 5.1 or stereo material, I suspected it might be due to a software bug in the PLII implementation. After checking on a different S-Series system, Lyngdorf confirmed what I heard in PLII and stated that “it will be very simple to fix the issue.”

CEA-2010 output measurements for the subwoofer were taken at 2 meters and then scaled up +6 dB per CEA-2010 requirements so that they are equivalent to 1-meter results. An L appears next to those measurements in which maximum output was dictated by the amplifier’s internal limiter. I measured a single subwoofer; figure on roughly 6 dB of additional output (depending on room acoustics) when a second subwoofer is added. At press time, the CEA had instituted changes to the CEA-2010 standard but had yet to publish them; however, I do know that the new standard requires averaging in pascals rather than in decibels, so that’s the procedure I followed here. Averaged using pascals (the new method) and decibels (the old method), the subwoofer’s output is: low bass 120.6 dB/120.6 dB, ultra-low bass 107.2 dB/106.8 dB. That’s pretty kick-ass for a modestly sized subwoofer like the LS.

My in-room spectrum analysis of the system (shown in the accompanying chart) indicated that RoomPerfect’s compensation, at least from a magnitude standpoint, is conservative. (These measurements were taken with the mike in my listening chair positioned at ear height, using pink noise and the Clio FW in FFT mode. Results are normalized at 1 kHz.) You can see the results in Bypass (blue trace), Global (purple trace), and Focus (green trace) modes. The biggest difference is in the bass correction, where Focus was aggressive (and effective) in taming my room’s prominent 40-Hz axial mode.

The system also includes various sound modes designed to suit certain types of material. I decided against using my very limited space in the print review to cover these because they’re not a major feature and, as with most such modes, I didn’t find them useful. But I went ahead and measured them, and you can see the results in the attached chart. The frequency response measured about the same in Neutral, Movie, and Music modes. Relative to the Neutral mode, Action, Action+Movies, and Dance modes added 6.0 dB of bass boost measured at 38 Hz, the frequency of maximum boost, while Rock mode added 3.6 dB. There’s also some modest contouring between 2 kHz and 4 kHz; Action mode boosts by a maximum of 0.6 dB in this region, while Rock mode attenuates by 1.1 dB. — B.B.

When I’m looking for speakers to review, I gravitate toward two types: ones that have the potential to sound great, and ones with weird designs. The former offer the potential for hours of joyous listening. The latter offer the potential for either a previously unimagined sonic nirvana or an audio train wreck, both of which are fun to write about.

Definitive Technology’s $899-per-pair StudioMonitor SM65 fits both descriptions.

 Its brand name suggests excellence; I can’t recall hearing a bad DefTech speaker. Yet the SM65 also offers the potential for weirdness because of its huge, top-mounted passive radiator and its unusual new midrange/woofer drivers.

DefTech deployed the 6-by-12-inch passive radiator to give the SM65 deeper bass than most bookshelf speakers can muster. Passive radiators are tuned to resonate below the operating range of a speaker’s woofer, so they extend the speaker’s deep bass. Kind of like a voiceover actor hiring James Earl Jones to come in and do the lowest notes for him.

The midrange/woofer sports one of the biggest phase plugs I’ve ever seen. A phase plug, which sits in the same place as a regular driver dust cap but is attached to the pole piece and not the cone, minimizes interference of high-frequency sound waves inside the driver’s cone. DefTech’s new Linear Response Waveguide phase plug is far bulkier than the usual cone-shaped metal phase plug — and for some reason, it’s rubber-coated.

The midrange/woofer’s cone also has an unusual double surround: an extra butyl rubber ring that attaches the cone to the voice coil and earns the driver its Balanced Double Surround System moniker. The company says this design (which it has used in previous drivers) allows greater cone excursion and lower distortion.

The SM65 is the flagship of the StudioMonitor line, DefTech’s first new bookshelf speakers in nearly 10 years. It contains two 5.25-inch midrange/woofers and a 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter. The middle model, the $599-per-pair SM55, has the same tweeter, a 6.5- inch midrange/woofer, and a 6-by-10-inch radiator. The smallest speaker, the $399-per-pair SM45, uses the same tweeter with just one of the SM65’s 5.25-inch midrange/woofers and a rear-fi ring port instead of the radiator. DefTech makes three center speakers suitable for use with the StudioMonitors: the CS-8080HD, CS-8060HD, and CS-8040HD.

Even though the SM65’s purported 30-Hz bass response should let non-bass-freaks get by without a subwoofer, DefTech hedged its bet by sending me its new top-of-the-line sub, the $1,499 SuperCube 8000. The SC8000 incorporates an 11-inch active woofer, two 12-inch passive radiators, and a 1,500-watt “digital tracking” amp. (I take it that means a digitally controlled Class H amp, not a Class D switching-type amp.) No auto-EQ, but at least it has four EQ presets intended to tailor the sound to your taste.

Okay, now it’s time to find out what we’ve got here: great sound, or...?

Setup

DefTech sent me enough speakers so that I could set up a 5.1 home theater system: three SM65s for the front left, center, and right channels; two SM45s for the surround channels; and one SuperCube 8000.

Setup was simple. I plopped the three SM65s on 28-inch-high stands in a line below my projection screen and pointed them all straight at me. Same thing for the surrounds, which also went on 28-inch stands placed along the side walls, slightly behind my listening position. I tried listening with and without the grilles, and ended up doing most of my listening without. One caveat: If you’ve established a habit of leaning on a speaker by placing a hand on top, either break the habit or you’ll break the plastic frame of the grille covering the SM65’s passive radiator.

I put the SuperCube 8000 in my subwoofer sweet spot, the place where most subs sound best from my usual listening position. The large front display and the included remote control made it easy to set level, crossover point, and EQ from my listening chair. Another caveat: The LFE input does not bypass the internal crossover, so if you’re using this sub with an A/V receiver or processor, you have to remember to set the sub’s crossover frequency as high as it’ll go (150 Hz).

Performance

Sure, I could play my usual bass torture tests when I want to find out if a small speaker delivers satisfying low end, but I think a better test is to see what the speaker does with “regular guy” music. So I pulled out Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger CD and cranked up “Rusty Cage” through the SM65s, playing them full-range in stereo with no subwoofer. This tune confirmed that the SM65’s bass output is above average for a bookshelf speaker. In fact, it sounded like a small tower speaker. The bass was tight as all hell, with tons of impact and punch from Matt Cameron’s kick drum and Ben Shepherd’s electric bass. The SM65s could even pump out the ultra-deep notes in hip-hop and electronic music, although I did hear traces of distortion at times.

The strongest point of the SM65 might also be its weakest point: the treble. I noticed when watching the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Blu-ray that the SM65’s treble is clear, precise, and vivid. The Tinker soundtrack is packed with beautifully recorded orchestral music and sly sound effects, such as a bee buzzing around inside a car. Captivating as the movie’s plot was, the clarity of the SM65’s treble and the intensity of the sound effects kept diverting my attention to the audio. The strings and percussion sounded delicious, with fantastic detail and spaciousness.

So what’s weak about that? For my taste, the treble was a little too hot when I played stereo music; I’d prefer it if the tweeter level were 1 or 2 decibels lower. You may have a different opinion, depending on your taste and the acoustics of your room. Putting the grilles on tamed the treble a bit, but also took some of the life out of the sound.

Interestingly, when I listened to the SM45 in stereo, the smaller speaker’s treble seemed perfectly in balance without losing any of the positive qualities I heard in the SM65. In fact, I preferred the SM45 overall because its drivers and crossover are better integrated. The tonal balance is more natural and the mids sound a tad smoother. And even though the SM45 lacks a fancy-schmancy passive radiator, it easily plays low enough to mate with any subwoofer — or to possibly even use without a subwoofer.

Neither the SM65 nor the SM45 can slam out impacts and explosions like a real subwoofer, though, and that’s where the SuperCube 8000 comes in. The SC8000 sounds to me like a nice compromise between a small “punch sub” — i.e., one tuned to deliver maximum impact from 40 to 80 Hz — and a big monster sub that shakes the floors with powerful response down to 20 Hz.

When I played the King Kong DVD, the SC8000 pumped out punchy impacts and a decent amount of couch shake during the brontosaurus stampede scene — yet it couldn’t reproduce the deepest organ notes of the Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 from the Boston Audio Society’s Test CD-1. Here’s where those EQ modes came in handy. The low-end boost of EQ1 turned those bronto stomps into a gratifyingly tactile experience without causing distortion. And EQ3 gave “Hey Nineteen,” from Steely Dan’s Gold CD, lots of extra groove without in any way screwing up the sound. EQ2 and EQ4 focused more on the mid and upper bass; I didn’t like those modes, but maybe they’re good for gaming or something.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking to build a small, subwoofer-less home theater system or a great compact stereo system, the DefTech SM65 is a good choice. My preference would be the SM45, which has a slightly more natural tonal balance that sounded great no matter what movies or music I played. You’ll probably want a sub with that, though, and the SC8000’s potent bass performance and useful EQ modes make it a good match for compact speakers.

Extended Test Bench

Frequency response

• SM65: 43 Hz to 20 kHz ±3.5 dB
• SM45: 46 Hz to 20 kHz ±4.7 dB
• SuperCube 8000: 32 to 116 Hz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter/1 watt)

• SM65 85.3 dB
• SM45 82.8 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)

• SM65 3.1/7 ohms
• SM45 3.3/7 ohms

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010 standard)

Bass output, SM65 (CEA-2010 standard)

Bass limits

• SM45:                                                    95.4 dB at 40 Hz

The frequency response curves shown above represent the average of quasi-anechoic measurements taken at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°, all performed with a Clio FW audio analyzer. The microphone was placed on-axis with the tweeter (the position where I got the flattest response) at a distance of 1 meter, with the speakers on top of a 2-meter-high stand. The measurements were taken using quasi-anechoic technique (with Clio in MLS mode and 1/12th octave smoothing) above 250 Hz and ground plane (with Clio in log chirp mode and 1/3rd octave smoothing) below 250 Hz. For the subwoofer, I performed a ground plane measurement to get the total bass output of the active woofer and the two passive radiators. All results were imported into a LinearX LMS analyzer for post-processing. The SM65 and SM45 measurements were normalized to 0 dB at 1 kHz, and the SC8000 subwoofer normalized for peak output at +3 dB.

The SM65 measures pretty well, with a fairly flat frequency response across the ±30° listening window. There’s a bit of a peak around 14.5 kHz, but that shouldn’t be audible to most listeners. There’s also a rise around 2 kHz, which may be why I thought the sound was a bit bright. Off-axis response is very good; at ±45° and ±60°, there’s the expected treble rolloff at frequencies above about 2 kHz, and a peak of about 4 dB appears between 4 and 7 kHz. The grille reduces treble output by 1 to 3.5 dB above 2.5 kHz, which is a slightly bigger treble reduction than we usually see with most grilles.

Pretty much the same for the SM45: Its response is actually flatter up to about 3 kHz, but that makes the tweeter’s treble peak at 14.5 kHz appear more prominent — at least to the measurement microphone. Its small off-axis anomalies are similar to those measured in the SM65, as are the effects of its grille.

Impedance of the SM65 drops to a low of 3.1 ohms at 200 Hz, but the phase angle at that frequency is just -0.1° and the impedance averages about 7 ohms. For the SM45, it’s 3.3 ohms/-33° phase angle at 125 Hz. Sensitivity (average of quasi-anechoic measurement from 300 Hz to 10 kHz at 1 meter at 0° with a 2.83-volt RMS signal) of these speakers is rather low, though: 85.3 dB for the SM65, 82.8 dB for the SM45. So while the impedance won’t be tough for a cheap receiver to handle, the power demands indicate you’ll get the best results with a receiver or amp rated at least 80 watts or so per channel.

I included a frequency response chart showing the SuperCube 8000’s various EQ modes. EQ off (orange trace) measures pretty close to flat. All of the EQ modes boost overall output. EQ1 (blue trace) delivers a huge, 11-dB boost at 40 Hz. EQ2 (red trace) boosts about 5 dB at 48 Hz and rolls off the deep bass below about 35 Hz. EQ3 (green trace) boosts 10 dB at 50 Hz. EQ4 (purple trace) boosts about 9 dB at 70 Hz and also rolls off deep bass below about 50 Hz. The sub’s internal low-pass filter delivered a combined rolloff of about -20 dB/octave.

CEA-2010 output measurements for the subwoofer were taken at 2 meters and then scaled up 6 dB per CEA-2010 requirements so that they are equivalent to 1-meter results. An “L” appears next to those measurements in which maximum output was dictated by the amplifier’s internal limiter. Averages are done in pascals as per the revised (but as of press time, still unpublished) CEA-2010 standards. Just for kicks, I also ran CEA-2010 on the SM65, driving it with a Krell S-300i integrated amp.

Results for the SuperCube 8000 were a little unusual. The output of most large subs at the 40-, 50-, and 63-Hz measurement points is usually dictated by the internal limiter, but with the SC8000, I bumped against the limiter only at 50 Hz. At 63 Hz, what sounded like a mechanical buzz (the driver hitting the grille fabric, maybe?) limited the max usable output. Also, at 25 Hz I encountered a weird noise that sounded somewhat like the speaker driver bottoming out, although it could have been a noise from one of the passive radiators, too. Seems to me the limiter should clamp down on the amp before the drivers are stressed to this point. Anyway, the SC8000 averaged 117.6 dB in the low bass (40-63 Hz) and 106.4 dB in the ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz). Those are respectable numbers — especially the ultra-low bass number, which is just 11.2 dB below the low bass number.

The SM65 put on a good show, too, delivering an average of 108.1 dB in the low bass octave. That’s comparable to a typical 8-inch subwoofer. But that’s just for one SM65; figure on roughly an extra 6 dB for a pair. You won’t get much output below that, though — I got measurable results at 31.5 Hz but nothing much but distortion at 25 Hz. — B.B.

When we looked at Ultralink's UCubes miniature desktop speaker system last year, we were, overall, impressed with how they sounded, but felt that those who wanted serious bass from the tiny desktop system might be somewhat disappointed. There's only so much a tiny 2.0 system can do. Physics, you know.

Well, it looks like Ultralink's been listening, because today they introduced the $220 USub — what they claim is the world's smallest powered subwoofer.

The miniscule box (the cube measures only 5 and 1/4 inch on a side, and weighs in at 4.2 lbs.) incorporates a 50 watt amp, a top-mounted volume control, and a lowpass filter with selectable cutoff frequencies (165 or 115 Hz) for easy integration with the UCubes or any other pair of desktop speakers (or for any situation that demands a simple-to-conceal sub, thus the rollout at CEDIA). Since it comes in a piano black finish, blending it into your surroundings should be just as easy. We look forward to hearing more.

Last month we got a peek at the 4TV and EVA, the initial offerings from AudioXperts, a new company with a long collective history. We were sworn to secrecy at the time, but there was one cool product we couldn't tell you about then — and now we can.

Korners, introduced today at the CEDIA Expo, is a neat alternative to traditional in-wall installations. It's a full surround system (configurable in any number of ways), based around an easy-to-conceal set of slim Korners L/C/R speakers based around a 1-inch tweeter and 6 2-inch drivers, and 8 2-inch passive radiators, available in 56 and 1/8-inch or 66 and 1/2-nch lengths. The idea is that they can be hung in corners (thus the name) or wherever wall meets ceiling or floor. With paintable white grilles (also available in black or silver finishes), they can disappear into a room. A matching half-cylindrical 100-watt sub (the Korners Kompact Sub) can be placed in a corner or against floorboards.

The system also includes a set of wire channels and wall brackets; a wireless transmitter and receiver is optional, and the whole setup should be available this fall. A bigger, more robust sub option is also on the way, aimed at bigger rooms. No word on pricing yet, but we'll keep you posted.

As athletes such as Michael Vick, Kobe Bryant, and the whole New Orleans Saints defense have learned the hard way, even when you’re the best, it helps to be friendly. Big surround sound systems aren’t friendly to your décor or your pocketbook. Fortunately, in the last 2 years, we’ve seen major speaker companies put serious effort into designing compact 5.1 systems that deliver no-compromise performance. The Mini Theatre line from Bowers & Wilkins is the latest to make its way through my listening room.

The Mini Theatre line includes two systems, both of which employ five tiny M1 satellite speakers. The difference is in the subs: The $1,750 MT-50 includes the rather ordinary ASW608 8-inch subwoofer, while the $2,590 MT-60D includes the snazzier PV1D, which has two 8-inch drivers in a ball-shaped enclosure.

You can mount the satellites on a wall, place them on a stand or table, or use the stands B&W designed for them ($150 each). To keep the look clean, B&W hid the M1’s tiny, spring-loaded speaker cable binding posts inside the base. Mount ’em carefully and you may not see any wires at all.

The M1’s cast-aluminum cabinet houses two extraordinary drivers. The 1-inch tweeter uses the same Nautilus technology found in B&W’s flagship 800 Series speakers. Instead of simply sealing the back of the tweeter, B&W uses what’s essentially a tiny transmission-line enclosure. (A transmission line completely absorbs the back wave of a speaker driver so that it cannot interfere with the sound coming from the front of the driver.)

The 4-inch midrange/woofer is just as interesting. Most good midwoofs use a metal phase plug, which fills the space in the speaker’s voice coil to prevent resonances from developing. In the M1’s midwoof, the “anti-resonance plug” is made from sound-absorbing polymer foam. Instead of reflecting sound forward, as a metal plug does, this one absorbs it.

However, the M1 seems ordinary compared with the PV1D. The PV1D is an update of B&W’s original PV1, launched back in 2004. The core concept: Use a super-stiff, semi-spherical cast-aluminum enclosure; mount 8-inch woofers on opposite sides so that they cancel each other’s vibration; and power them with a 400-watt ICEPower Class D amp. To the PV1D, B&W added digital signal processing along with a front display screen and menu system. You get four room EQ presets: One is flat, one has a substantial bass boost, and the other two are said to fall in between.

Setup

I decided to place the M1 satellites on speaker stands close to the walls of my listening room, which would give an acoustical effect similar to wall-mounting. I attached the left, right, and surround speakers vertically to the included bases, and swiveled the center speaker so that it would sit horizontally. The B&W logo on the front turns, so it’s upright no matter which way you orient the speaker.

Even with my big fingers, using the concealed binding posts was easy — just pull off a rubber cover on the bottom of the speaker’s base, slip the wires through their holes, and snap them into the spring-loaded posts.

I fed the PV1D signals from the subwoofer output of my Denon receiver, letting the receiver handle the subwoofer crossover duties for me. After some experimenting with action movies, I settled on a crossover point of 120 Hz. This made certain male voices sound slightly bloated because more of their sound was coming from the sub. However, the 100-Hz and 110-Hz crossover points didn’t sound as good because they made the M1s distort a little more. Of the PV1D’s different room EQ modes, EQ1 — the flat one — worked the best for my taste.

Performance

After breaking the B&W MT-60D system in with pink noise for several hours, I reached for a classic LP: Trio Music by Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous, and Roy Haynes. Trio Music was recorded for ECM, a label famous for its spacious, ethereal production. My favorite track, “Trio Improvisation 4,” sounded absolutely colossal and hugely reverberant through the MT-60D system, more like what I’d expect to hear from big electrostatic speakers. Roy Haynes’s drums in particular sounded as if they were echoing off corners 25 feet above my head.

The secret has to be mostly in that Nautilus tweeter, ’cause it’s the high frequencies that shone brightest. My all-time-favorite testing track, Holly Cole’s “Train Song” (from Temptation), gave an even better sense of the tweeter’s awesomeness. Not only could I hear every detail in the track’s swooping, swirling percussion instruments, but I could get a sense of how far away each one was from me. (I know they probably faked all that in the studio using digital reverb, but still.)

That 4-inch midwoofer on the M1 really has a way with voices, capturing the romantic tone of Cole’s alto as easily as it conveyed the libidinous wail of Robert Plant’s tenor on Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean” (from Houses of the Holy), even when I had the system cranked to 99 dB average SPL at my listening position. The only voice on which it felt a tad off was Donald Fagen’s, which sounded slightly reedier than normal when I listened to Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” (from Aja). That gave me the idea that the tweeter level was perhaps a half-decibel high, but I banished that thought, knowing such a change might take away some of the system’s magic.

Keith Jarrett’s The Moth and the Flame, another fine ECM LP, revealed some of the classic limitations of a mini sub/sat system. The mid and upper octaves of the Steinway piano Jarrett was playing sounded gorgeous, but the lower octaves didn’t have the weight and majesty that I knew was lurking in the grooves. You’d probably need a larger speaker with a 5- or 6-inch midwoofer to get that Steinway’s sound right.

Since none of this music really stressed the PV1D, I sat down for a night of action movies. First up was Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, streamed with 5.1 sound via Vudu. The same spacious sound quality delivered by the MT-60D system that worked so well for music also worked wonders for this movie, especially in the sandstorm scene, where the sounds of swirling sand in the surrounds made me feel like I was right in there with Tom Cruise chasing the bad guy.

That same chestiness I mentioned earlier also became apparent in Ghost Protocol, making Cruise and Jeremy Renner’s dialogue sound unnaturally full on occasion, but it was a pretty subtle and fleeting effect that bothered me in only two or three instances when I was testing the system.

Although the PV1D delivered plenty enough punch for most scenes, I did hear it distort and compress at times — for example, in Ghost Protocol’s opening, where a bomb goes off in the Kremlin. But it’s really just the toughest bass-heavy scenes, such as the spaceship flyover that opens Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, that overtax the PV1D. With typical home theater fare, it sounds robust and precise. If you want more oomph, you’ll have to get a larger sub. (And, most likely, a larger system.)

Bottom Line

When listening to music through the MT-60D, I mused that if B&W were to take these same components and shroud them in black fabric to look like a tower speaker, they could have audiophiles lining up to buy them at $5,000 per pair. For music, it’s one of the best small systems I’ve ever heard. It’s also great for movies, as long as you don’t go crazy and try to play ultra-dynamic action movies in a big room (as I did).

Test Bench

Frequency response

• satellite (horizontal) 90 Hz to 20 kHz ±2.6 dB
• satellite (vertical) 90 Hz to 20 kHz ±4.5 dB
• subwoofer 21 to 395 Hz ±3 dB

Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter/1 watt)

• satellite 83.4 dB

Impedance (minimum/nominal)

• satellite 3.8/7 ohms

Bass output, subwoofer (CEA-2010A standard)
Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 95.1 dB

• 20 Hz: 91.4 dB
• 25 Hz: 94.6 dB
• 31.5 Hz: 98.1 dB

Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 114.3 dB

• 40 Hz: 111.1 dB L
• 50 Hz: 114.7 dB L
• 63 Hz: 116.3 dB L
  

  Bass limits

• satellite 81.0 dB at 40 Hz

I measured the M1 satellite speaker with the microphone placed at a distance of 1 meter, using quasi-anechoic technique to remove the effects of reflections from nearby objects. I measured it on its provided base, which was in turn placed atop a 2-meter-high stand, measuring the speaker in both horizontal and vertical positions. I adjusted the microphone position for the flattest on-axis response, then averaged the measurements at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°, smoothed to 1/12th octave. Bass response was measured using ground plane technique with the microphone on the ground 2 meters from the speaker; this was smoothed to 1/3rd octave, then spliced to the quasi-anechoic measurements at 150 Hz. Results are normalized to 0 dB at 1 kHz. All frequency response measurements were made with a Clio FW audio analyzer and then imported into a LinearX LMS analyzer for post-processing.

The M1 measures extremely flat on-axis. Off-axis, it develops some anomalies, but they’re pretty minor. To my surprise, the measurements average better with the speaker in the horizontal position; interference between the drivers usually makes measurements along the woofer/tweeter plane rough. Clearly this speaker has a well-engineered crossover that minimizes this interference. Horizontally, there’s a slight emphasis in the 1.7-to-2.8-kHz range, and otherwise it’s almost dead flat. Vertically, the same 1.7-to-2.8-kHz emphasis is there, but with a bigger boost between 6 and 9.5 kHz. The off-axis anomalies at 45° and 60° are relatively mild in both positions.

The impedance measurement (also performed with Clio FW) is pretty mild, with a low of 3.8 ohms at 20 kHz — no big concern because energy at that frequency is minimal in most recordings, and the phase angle at that frequency is 0°. The next-lowest dip is to 4.7 ohms and +7° at 67 Hz, safely outside the M1’s normal operating range. Sensitivity (average output on-axis between 300 Hz and 10 kHz with a 2.83-volt signal at 1 meter) is a little low at 83.4 dB, so I recommend giving the M1 at least 75 watts or so per channel to work with if you want to play it loud.

The subwoofer frequency response measurement you see here was taken by close-miking one of the two woofers, using the LFE input and EQ1 mode, and normalizing the result so that peak output measures +3 dB. The effects of the various EQ modes are pretty subtle, and you can see them in the accompanying chart. EQ1 (blue trace) is the flattest. EQ2 (red trace) introduces a bass boost of 3 dB centered at 62 Hz. EQ3 (green trace) is basically EQ1 with a 3-dB bass cut at 20 Hz. EQ4 (purple trace) is EQ1 with a 6-dB bass cut at 20 Hz. Pretty simple stuff, but EQ2 is useful if you want a little extra kick, and EQ3 and EQ4 could help reduce boom if the sub is placed in or near a corner.

CEA-2010A output measurements for the PV1D subwoofer were taken at 3 meters and then scaled up 9.54 dB per CEA-2010A requirements so that they are equivalent to 1-meter results.

Output in the low bass octave (40-63 Hz) is pretty solid for the PV1D’s size at an average of 114.3 dB, although that’s not impressive for the price. While the PV1D does have usable output down to 20 Hz, it’s not going to shake your couch much: Average output in the ultra-low bass octave (20-31.5 Hz) is 95.1 dB.

The surest way to future success is to repeat your past successes. Like that line? I made it up. If you think it’s a lot of B.S., I present as irrefutable evidence the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Also the Paradigm Millenia CT, a 2.1 speaker system based closely on the MilleniaOne, our 2011 Product of the Year.

The Millenia CT combines two satellite speakers similar to the MilleniaOne with a tall, slim subwoofer that bears a superficial resemblance to the MilleniaSub. The subwoofer incorporates three channels of amplification: two for the sats, one for the sub. A little interface box, sized to fit atop an Apple TV box, provides analog and digital audio connections, and a tiny, five-button remote controls the system.

Paradigm offers the Millenia CT as a soundbar alternative; the “CT” stands for Compact Theater. Obviously, it’s also suited for desktop use, and you could even make it your main system if you can tolerate having just two inputs.

Like the MilleniaOne, the satellites in the $699 Millenia CT use a 1-inch tweeter and 4-inch midrange/woofer, both employing Paradigm’s S-PAL (satin-anodized pure aluminum) diaphragms. The enclosure is the same shape, although it’s made from molded plastic instead of the MilleniaOne’s cast aluminum. It’s also sealed, whereas the MilleniaOne’s enclosure is ported.

The Millenia CT subwoofer differs considerably from the MilleniaSub, though. Instead of the MilleniaSub’s dual oval drivers and high-powered Class D amplifier, the CT subwoofer uses a conventional 8-inch woofer in a ported, molded plastic enclosure, powered by an 80-watt amplifier. You can sit it flat, using four supplied conical feet, or place it vertically in the included stand.

Setup

Setting up the Millenia CT couldn’t have been much simpler. Every cable you need is included. The speaker cables use tiny block connectors, and a Cat-5 cable connects the controller box to the subwoofer. A level control on the sub lets you adjust the bass to your liking.

The satellites incorporate small stands that allow you to adjust their vertical angle, and you can also wall-mount them. I placed them on stands, close to the wall so they’d get some bass reinforcement. The sub went into my usual “subwoofer sweet spot,” the place where a single sub tends to sound best from my usual listening chair. For sources, I used my Samsung Blu-ray Disc player and my iPad touch.

One big downside to the controller box design: Even though I’ve been calling it the controller box, it has no controls. So if you lose the remote, you have no way to control the system, or even to turn it on. I don’t know about you, but I lose remotes often.

2.1 vs. the soundbar

It just so happened that I had had several soundbars in my listening room for testing for a couple of weeks before I received the Millenia CT. I’d gotten used to the soundbar sound, and I was amazed by the difference in performance when I switched to the 2.1 system.

Voices often sound unnatural through soundbars, because a typical soundbar’s horizontal driver layout causes the midwoofers and tweeters to interfere with each other, cancelling certain frequencies and boosting others. The problem is made worse by the primitive crossovers used in most soundbars.

With the Millenia CT’s satellites, this problem doesn’t exist. The close spacing of the drivers and the well-designed crossover gives them excellent dispersion and exceptionally clear and natural midrange. Watching the DVD of Star Trek Generations, I was struck by how good the dialogue sounded — no matter whether it was coming from the women in the Enterprise crew, the children in Captain Picard’s sort-of-dream sequence, or the deep growl of Lieutenant Worf. I did notice a little extra emphasis in the mid- to upper treble that made some voices sound subtly lispy, but the midrange and lower treble were far better than I expected from a system at this price.

I was also struck by how big and enveloping the sound was. That’s in part because of the satellites’ broad dispersion, and in part just because the speakers were spaced about 8 feet apart, much wider than they’d be in a soundbar. Soundbars have to use surround-sound virtualization technology like SRS to get such a big sound, but it’s never as convincing as the real thing.

The subwoofer is more than adequate to fill out the sound from the satellites, even if it’s nowhere near as awesome as the MilleniaSub. Its output seems focused on delivering maximum punch around 60 to 80 Hz. For example, on my favorite bass test — the starship flyover and explosion that begins Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones — I got the impact of the explosion but not the rumble.

I noticed much the same sonic characteristics when I listened to “I.O.U.” from the Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me. Paul Westerberg’s voice sounded — well, as smooth as it can, I suppose. Chris Mars’ drums were crisply imaged, the snare hits sounding like they were coming off a real drum head (although, of course, nowhere near as loud). The guitars and cymbals seemed to stretch all the way across the front of my listening room. I could have gone for a little more oomph in the kick drum and the higher notes of the bass guitar, but I’d need a larger and more expensive sub to get that.

The Millenia CT plays good and loud, too. It’s quite listenable even at full volume, which delivered 97 dBC to my listening chair when I played Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart.”

Interestingly, the high-frequency emphasis I heard in movies wasn’t so evident when I played music. I noticed it fleetingly in a few voices, but almost all the singers I listened to sounded surprisingly natural for being played back on a $699 complete system. The only singer who really got too lispy for my taste was Steve Earle, whose vocals on The Mountain became rough and spitty — even while the bluegrass instruments in the Del McCoury Band backing him sounded immaculate and precisely imaged.

Measurements

Frequency response

Satellite: 140 Hz to 20 kHz ±4.0 dB on-axis, ±2.7 dB avg 0-30°

Subwoofer: 38 Hz to 144 Hz ±3.0 dB

Bass output (CEA-2010A standard)
• Ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) average: 78.6 dB

20 Hz              NA
25 Hz              73.8 dB
31.5 Hz          86.0 dB

• Low bass (40-63 Hz) average: 107.3 dB

40 Hz              96.4 dB
50 Hz              106.0 dB
63 Hz              112.7 dB

I measured the quasi-anechoic frequency response of the Milennia CT satellites by setting one atop a 2-meter stand and placing the measurement microphone at a distance of 1 meter. (Quasi-anechoic measurements eliminate reflections from surrounding objects to simulate measuring in an anechoic chamber.) I moved the microphone up and down to find the optimum measurement axis, which turned out to be roughly midway between the woofer and tweeter. I then close-miked the satellite’s midwoofer to get the bass response. To create the graph shown here, I spliced the bass response below 200 Hz to the average of quasi-anechoic measurements of the left channel only taken at 0°, ±10°, ±20°, and ±30°. I measured the subwoofer’s frequency response using ground-plane technique at 1 meter. I used a Clio FW analyzer in MLS mode for the quasi-anechoic measurements and log chirp mode for the close-miked and ground plane measurements, feeding test signals into the Milennia CT’s 3.5mm line input. The quasi-anechoic measurements were smoothed to 1/12th octave, ground plane results smoothed to 1/3rd octave. The blue trace shows the 0° on-axis response, while the green trace shows the averaged response.

As with the MilenniaOne, the Milennia CT’s satellite speaker measures exceptionally well, with only subtle and inconsequential frequency response anomalies — a little dip at 6 kHz, another little one at 15 kHz, and a little peak at 20 kHz likely caused by a tweeter resonance. Exclude that 20 kHz peak (which you can’t hear unless you happen to be a dog or bat), and the response is super-smooth: ±2.3 dB on-axis, ±2.1 dB average 0-30°. Off-axis response is about as good as it gets — there’s almost no difference in the measurement even out at 30°.

These measurements were done without the grille, by the way. Using the grille introduces a dip of -1.5 to -4.5 dB between 5 and 9 kHz.

CEA-2010 bass output measurements for the subwoofer were done at 3 meters and scaled up so the results are equivalent to measurements at 1 meter. Averages were calculated in pascals. I got the ultra-low bass average by subtracting -18 dB from the 25 Hz result and using that for the 20 Hz result, per CEA-2010 procedure.

Output in the low bass (40-63 Hz) octave is typical for a conventional small 8-inch woofer. The ultra-low bass (20-31.5 Hz) octave is always a challenge for conventional 8-inch subs, and the Milennia CT sub isn’t strong here — just 78.6 dB average output — but at least it has measurable output at 25 Hz, a feat many 8-inch subs can’t match.

Bottom line

With its relative deficit of inputs and remote-only control, the Millenia CT is a niche product. Even though its sound quality is great, its applications are somewhat limited. Where it really shines is as a relatively inexpensive sound system for a TV, because it completely blows away almost any soundbar. It’s also a great choice for a computer audio system, because it’s compact and vastly better than almost all of the desktop audio systems I’ve heard. A hell of a lot of great sound for $699.