Return Of The Mini

Whether used as a noun or merely a prefix, “mini” always brings a smile to people’s faces. But its popularity often fades. Think of the miniskirt, which comes back from time to time but never seems to stay for long. Or the Mini automobile, which before its recent resurrection had largely disappeared from public awareness. Or, worst of all, consider the minispeaker.

In the mid-1990s, minispeakers were the hippest thing going in audio. Budget-minded enthusiasts could pick up a pair of NHT SuperZeros or PSB Alphas and attain performance almost as good as (and sometimes better than) high-end speakers costing 10 times as much. But then came the home-theater-in-a-box craze—and with it, a flood of cheaply made minispeakers that barely outperformed a pocket radio. Manufacturers who preferred not to delve into such dreck moved upmarket. The minispeaker genre never died—a few standouts of the golden days remain with us—but it certainly lost its luster.

We may be seeing a minispeaker resurgence, though. Custom installers need smaller audio systems to go along with the 32-inch flat-panel LCD TVs now filling the nation’s bedrooms. And manufacturers are responding with minispeaker systems far more inspired than the plain black boxes of the mid-1990s.

One would hope that 10 years of advances in speaker technology, combined with the always-falling prices of componentry and manufacturing, might give rise to a new generation of superminispeakers sonically superior to their forbears. To find out, we run each of these systems through its paces in Editor in Chief Brent Butterworth’s acoustically treated listening room. This room may be somewhat larger than the intended environment for these minispeaker systems, but most of our listening takes place at moderate, family-pleasing volume—even though, at the end of each session, we push these minis to the max just to see what they can do.

THE POD SQUAD KEF KHT3005
KEF is no stranger to unusual speaker designs—the company offers a motorized ceiling speaker that automatically lowers itself from the ceiling when in use. Almost as radical is the design of its recent minispeaker systems for home theater; the pod-shaped satellite speakers of its KHT2005.2 system were a big hit with design-conscious home theater buffs. For 2006, KEF has improved the satellites and added a pod-shaped subwoofer. The result is the $1,500 KHT3005.

NESTING TWEETERS KEF is known for mounting its tweeters inside its woofers, a concentric arrangement the company calls Uni-Q. The advantage of Uni-Q is that the sound from each driver emerges from the same space. With conventional woofer/tweeter arrays, the sound changes as you move your head up or down, because as you move, your ear moves slightly closer to one driver and farther from the other. With Uni-Q, this problem cannot occur. The downside of a concentric tweeter is that its sound can reflect off the woofer’s cone and surround, but through years of experimentation, KEF has largely conquered this problem. (Click image to enlarge)

The cast-metal, curved sides of the pods practically eliminate vibrations of the speaker cabinets or resonances inside them. That’s good because you can hear those vibrations and resonances, and speakers sound better without them. Each satellite contains a 0.75-inch tweeter, centered inside a 4.5-inch woofer. The base of the satellite can be shifted for use as a wall mount, and KEF offers optional floor stands for the satellites.

The center satellite is larger and adds two 3-inch drivers to augment the bass. KEF says that because most of the sound in a movie emerges from the center speaker, such beefing-up is warranted. The subwoofer can stand upright like a wheel or lie flat like a bagel. It incorporates a 10-inch woofer, a 10-inch passive radiator to reinforce the woofer’s bass, and a 250-watt internal amplifier. A few control switches hide under the base, next to the RCA line-level input jack.

The KHT3005 changes character as you switch from stereo music to surround-sound movies. We start with music, a task that the little pods take on with a willing, yet leisurely, attitude. The satellites sound smooth and mellow, with a slightly rolled-off treble that makes them forgiving of bad recordings and harsh pop music mixes—even if it does diminish the ambience of the speakers’ soundfield a bit. Occasionally, our music selections remind us we are listening to a $1,500 system—voices get a little harsh with a few of our recordings—but with at least 90 percent of the music we play, the KHT3005 sounds as pleasing and laid-back as Perry Como after two jiggers of Early Times.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we hear such crisp detail in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King—the metallic scrape of swords against each other, the creaking of medieval machinery, the breath in whispered dialogue. The reason is the center speaker, which for some reason sounds brighter than the others. But that is no great crime in this case. In fact, it clarifies dialogue and highlights the sound effects.

Movie soundtracks also allow the subwoofer to show off, and show off it does. Even in Brent’s large, 3,000-cubic-foot room, the sub rarely reaches its limits. The little sub pounds out loud impacts and deep bass notes with the vigor of a Chihuahua guarding its food bowl. Yet it musters enough reserve and taste to reproduce more subtle tones: the growl of electric bass, the pulse of jazz legend Elvin Jones’ kick drum. It does not achieve the precision and perfection of the best audiophile subwoofers, but at this price it’s a miracle—and it looks fantastic to boot. Come to think of it, that statement nicely sums up our impression of the entire KHT3005 system.

BACK IN BLACK NHT Classic Series
NHT’s SuperZero—a $230-per-pair, black-lacquer block with modest drivers and meticulous engineering—was the classic minispeaker of the 1990s. With careful installation, patient tweaking, and the help of a good subwoofer, it rivaled, and often exceeded, the sound quality of large floorstanding speakers costing $2,000 or $3,000 per pair. (It’s still available, by the way, in a plastic-cabineted version dubbed the SuperZero XU.) With their black-lacquer cabinets and similar overall look, the Classic Series speakers seem positioned to pick up where the original SuperZero left off.

THREE IS A MAGIC NUMBER NHT’s Classic Series speaker line includes a couple of two-way models, but the focus of the line is on three-way models, each equipped with a woofer, a tweeter, and a midrange driver. The midrange driver makes a speaker’s performance more consistent from the low frequency ranges to the high ranges. This improvement occurs partly because of improved dispersion. Large drivers (i.e., woofers) beam sound more tightly at high frequencies—in the bass, they’re like a floodlight, but in the midrange, they’re like a spotlight. Routing the midrange into a smaller driver helps maintain broader dispersion and a smoother, more ambient sound. (Click image to enlarge)

With four main speakers, two center speakers, and two subwoofers in the line, the Classic Series easily accommodates bedrooms, dens, and small- and medium-size media rooms. At our request, NHT provides us with a pair of $399 Classic Threes, a pair of $199 Absolute Zeros to use as surround speakers, and a $600 Three C center speaker (all prices per speaker). The company also sends the $849 Twelve subwoofer, but given the Three’s rated bass response down to 45 hertz, the sub should be considered optional—and being able to do without a sub is a huge plus in a small room.

The selling point of the Three and the Three C is their three-way design. Each speaker has three drivers: a 6.5-inch woofer, a 2-inch aluminum-dome midrange, and a 0.75-inch aluminum-dome tweeter. Few speakers this size include a midrange driver, primarily because they don’t have room for one. The benefit of the midrange driver is threefold. It takes some of the load off the tweeter, thus reducing distortion. It eliminates the “cupped hands” sound that big woofers exhibit when forced to reproduce voices. And in the center speaker, it disperses sound more evenly, so everyone hears pretty much the same sound no matter where they are sitting on the couch.

The Three and Three C need a little TLC to sound their best, although nowhere near as much as the SuperZero did. Like the SuperZero, they sound a little muffled with the grilles on, but they look pretty nice with the grilles off—so lose the grilles. They also require application of a supplied, adhesive-backed foam “mustache” under the tweeter. The foam minimizes interference between the tweeter and midrange drivers, and it makes an immediately noticeable difference in the sound.

Thanks to their aluminum-cone woofers and larger cabinets, the Three and Three C sound far more robust than the SuperZero could ever hope. Nothing seems to faze them, not even the sheer chaos of blockbuster action movies cranked way, way up. Their balance proves particularly appropriate for pop and rock: The woofers reproduce even the most hyperactive electric bass players with ease and contribute to a sound that grooves nicely when the speakers are used on their own, but really rocks the house when you add the Twelve subwoofer.

Sans grilles, the speakers have a full tonal balance and an even frequency response, which makes them easy to use in practically any room. Most vocalists sound good through the Three and Three C. The lower treble gets a bit aggressive on occasion, though, making certain vocalists—Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto and the guy in Toto, for example—sound a tad blarey for our taste. It does make percussion instruments stand out nicely, though.

As much as we welcome the Twelve subwoofer in our listening room, the real appeal of these speakers is that they are so appropriate for use without a sub. If you have a room where placing a subwoofer is a problem, you do not have to do without bass. Just hook up a pair of Threes and their accompanying center and surrounds, and have at it.

PINT-SIZED PROS Genelec 6020A/ 5050A
Genelec is hardly a household name in speakers—unless your household happens to contain a recording engineer. This Finnish company is widely credited with popularizing the active speaker in the pro audio world. Active speakers have the amplifier built in. Like most other active speakers, Genelecs use a line-level crossover to divide the bass and treble, and separate amps for the woofer and tweeter. This eliminates the massive, power-sapping capacitors, resistors, and inductors that ordinary passive speakers use in their crossovers. Thus, the amplifiers run far more efficiently.

NEW SIZE, NEW LOOK Although Genelec is best known for no-nonsense professional monitoring speakers, many of its recent products reflect a strikingly original (and surprisingly organic) aesthetic. The new look is the result of a collaboration with industrial designer Harri Koskinen, who styled both the 6020A speaker and the 5050A subwoofer. (Click image to enlarge)

Active speakers are as common in pro audio as freebie T-shirts are, but they never caught on in the home. However, astute Home Entertainment readers may remember seeing Genelec products in many homes we have featured—the brand is popular with custom installers and is used in many large home theaters. Count Brent among the converts: He has owned and cherished a septet of the company’s HT205 active speakers for five years.

Genelec’s latest and smallest creation is the 6020A, an adorable little guy with a 4-inch woofer and a 0.75-inch tweeter, and an affordable-for-Genelec price of $499 each. True to the Genelec creed, each driver gets its own 20-watt amp. That may not sound like much, but the extra efficiency of the line-level crossover makes 20 watts sound like 40. (That still may not sound like much, but bear with us.) The back of the speaker has a connector for a power cord, plus XLR and RCA line-level inputs. It also has switches for bass and treble roll-off. The treble switch lets you fine-tune the sound depending on the furnishings of your room; the bass switch lets you compensate for the bass boost you get if you mount the 6020A on a wall or sit it on a tabletop.

To complement the 6020A, Genelec offers the $999 5050A subwoofer. This diminutive bass box houses a 70-watt amp, an 8-inch woofer, and two 8-inch passive radiators. Like the 6020A, it has XLR and RCA inputs, and it adds a set of inputs and outputs with a built-in 85 hertz crossover for your main speakers. Bass roll-off switches let you fine-tune the response; you might use these if the sub sounds too boomy because it’s in the corner of your room.

We fall in love with the 6020A practically from the first note. It exudes a clean, clear sound that makes us feel as if we’re hearing something very close to what the engineers heard when they mixed the recording. (Of course, there’s a fair chance those engineers used Genelec monitors.) The sound is incredibly involving—not because of some pyrotechnical, whiz-bang, exaggerated characteristic, but because it’s simply so true. The speakers present a fairly convincing (though not world-class) stereo image. We rarely hear distortion; no one would guess they are hearing 40 watts of amplification per channel or 4-inch woofers. Mike does note, though, that the trumpets on a certain Aaron Copland recording we play sound a little edgy. Brent, having drunk the Kool-Aid, calls that statement preposterous.

SIMPLY ADORABLE With its supplied rubber foot—required because of the speaker’s curved bottom—Genelec’s 6020A looks almost like a Japanese cartoon character. (Imagine it with two side-by-side tweeters.) The rubber foot can be easily removed so that the speaker can be mounted on a wall; the back has holes tapped for standard wall mounts. (Click image to enlarge)

The 5050A sounds surprisingly full for such a small sub—even deep, synthesized bass notes in the opening to the excellent Russian movie The Return come through clearly. But with just an 8-inch driver and a 70-watt amp to work with, it has difficulty keeping up with the ambitious 6020A. When we play “The Siege of Gondor” chapter from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the 5050A’s internal woofer protection circuitry throttles back the volume on the big impacts, even as the five 6020As continue to play at full blast. It’s like watching six kids run toward a swimming hole, but the biggest one gets scared and stops before diving in. In a medium-size or larger room, you’d best get two (or more) 5050As—or something more powerful.

The one downside to the 6020A is that power cord. To make the system look nice, your electrician will probably have to put in an AC outlet next to every speaker, or conceal the speakers behind a false fabric wall. In an installation with the bigger, more expensive Gennies, the added installation cost would be insignificant, but with the 6020As, it might be an issue. Regardless, we encourage you to seek out these little speakers and see if you fall in love the way we did.