How can you possibly look yourself in the mirror and call yourself a person of the year — free, with a one-year subscription to Time — after what you’ve done to the home-theater loudspeaker?
Thanks to you, the once-proud music-maker is shrinking faster than the iPod. You want small? You’ve got it.
The $899 Infinity TSS-800, as an example, looks fashionably undernourished. The five speakers each measure about 9 inches tall, less than 4 wide and not even 3 deep. And unlike the traditional boxed speaker, these little objets d’art come to a curvy peak — sexy to some, but to these eyes they’re still just little platinum blockheads (also available in charcoal) with a radical pompadour. And these pipsqueaks weigh an alarming 2.5 pounds each. The muscle in this “Total Solutions” system is a 35-pound subwoofer with a quirky parallelogram-with-two-curved-edges look. When speakers have the vocal depth of actress Jennifer Tilly, the subwoofer carries a big load. That’s where the trouble begins with the new-style systems: The speakers sound as small as they look, forcing the subwoofer to cover too much ground. The TSS-800 somehow avoids a sonic mishmash of barking subwoofer and shrieking speakers, but it’s still not an ideal match.
A couple of years ago, I rhapsodized about another Infinity speaker, the Primus 150, that was deeper than the TSS-800 speakers are tall, weighed 13 pounds each and set a standard for performance in a bookshelf loudspeaker costing less than $200.
The TSS-800 uses some of the same Primus technology created by the Infinity acoustical engineering team led by Floyd E. Toole — a legend for his earlier work on speakers and room interaction at the National Research Council in Ottawa. The metal woofers, a formulation called Metal Matrix Diaphragm, are so much stronger and rigid than the usual paper or polypropylene drivers in budget speakers, according to Infinity (www.infinitysystems.com) that they reduce distortion-producing resonance. Without that distortion, their sound is cleaner, with greater detail.
The Primus 150’s heightened clarity was an instant charmer. That same clarity is evident, too, in the TSS-800, but it’s missing the Primus’ body and depth.
The TSS-800, however, is much more maneuverable than bigger bookshelf speakers. They come with tiny screw-on stands if you want to place them on a table or shelf, as I did, and both fixed and adjustable wall mounts for the plasma/LCD crowd. Infinity also sent another option, the $229-a-pair stands.
But these speakers are designed for the wall. With their all-metal jackets and gold-plated speaker posts, they’re fitting fashion companions for your elegant new flat-panel set.
Infinity also supplies speaker wire — including a 15-foot subwoofer cable — so all you need is the time to hook up everything. The subwoofer, which has a 10-inch driver mounted in the base of the cabinet powered by a 150-watt amplifier, can be connected two ways to your audio-video receiver. Using the low-frequency effects connection, Infinity’s preferred setting, will give your receiver full control over when low-frequency signals are redirected from the speakers to the subwoofer.
The alternative, which is what I used, made the subwoofer master of its domain: Its output was controlled by the volume and crossover controls on the sub’s back side. I had to set the crossover — designating where the subwoofer takes over from the speakers on the frequency spectrum — at about 120 hertz, well beyond what’s considered real bass. It took a lot of experimentation before getting an acceptable integration of subwoofer and speakers.
The TSS-800, for all its concessions to size, sounded remarkably coherent with movies, whether reproducing the pinball-quick action of “Robots” or the slam-bam explosions of “The Transporter.” The system’s shortcomings were more apparent with music. Though the electric guitar and vocals were dead-on, with great immediacy, at moderate volume levels on Francis Mbappe’s “Awololo Iyo” (from the Cameroon musician’s “Celebration” album), the TSS-800’s sound quickly dissolved when pushed sonically. It almost choked on the words as the sound became increasingly harsh.
That’s the tradeoff with smaller speakers, folks, no matter how well designed or built. The TSS-800 will look good, and sound good, in a small room. But I can’t help but think about those Primus 150s — since replaced by the Primus 152 — that a reader found online recently for $79 a pair.
If I were pursuing a best-sound-for-the-dollar system, I’d consider three pairs of those and an Outlaw Audio LFM-2 subwoofer ($299). Then I’d get special permission to place the speakers around the room without ruining the feng shui.
Or is that conduct unbecoming a person of the year?
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