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Review 4 of 4
, from Palm Beach Gardens Summary:
Stereos, as they relate to indoor sport
Last night my daughter went out and bought a boom box from Sony for $179. Despite a living room dominated by two of the largest three way horn speakers ever made, she purchased a silver MHC-RXD2 for its CD player and dual cassette decks, with out any consultation from me. I knew that she would make a quick decision, but I was just beginning to re-read my Stereophile and Stereo Review back issues for boom box reviews!
Nonetheless, the unit said that it put out 30 watts per side of power, from 7 to 20 kHz. And the specs admitted that this was at .9% THD - I was pleased that they had specs at all.
It was time to play, as she ran off for the evening, I hooked her separate speakers up to my front end (including the 200-watt Klipsch sub-woofer) and then hooked her boom box up to my Klipsch Cornwalls with my Monster cables. I flipped from one to another with random selections from a newly purchased Michael Franks Blue Pacific CD to hear the contrasts and tone. The results were eye opening and revealing.
First the good news: The cheap little silver boom box plugged into my horn speakers sounded wonderful. There was lots of deep bass, even with the unit dialed about 1/4 of the way, to 15 on its digital dial. Distortion at that typical listening level was not as apparent as the fact that the high end was not pushy or strident. In fact, as I think this over, the impression I was left with was that with the cheap front end, the listener hears the melody and the lyrics as the fore front of the sound, while with my system, the listener hears the individual instruments up front as the melody and the singer become part of the overall music.
When compared to my front-end electronics powering the Sony speakers, the pianos appeared on the Klipsch. Horns sang out as if they had just been added to the sound track. The high end tinkled like delicate Christmas crystal. My notes say" you could buy a boom box for your Cornwalls and save thousands of dollars!" Nothing magical, but not fatiguing either. There was no need for a long evaluation as the differences were clearly apparent.
Of course the boom box can not drive the Cornwalls loud or make the bass thump hard, but it was a pleasant sound. And so was the opposite system; plugging the cheap speaks into my $1500 front end.
In fact, the two systems pose the dilemma of our acoustic age: The new style $179 boom box speakers with $1500 of front-end electronics versus the old and efficient $500 used Cornwalls powered by $179 of cheap boom box.
With my Rotel, Dynaco, Pioneer M-22 reference amp and the Klipsch subs, the little speakers sounded remarkable good. The sub helped enormously. Wide placement on top of my 2 1/2' high Cornwalls helped with the sound stage. Vocals were just as nice on the cheap boom box speakers as they were on the Cornwalls.
The silver Sony speakers are very modern looking with a curved black face piece covering 3/4 of the front and two comma shaped ports peeking out from either side like the ram jet intakes of some Ferrari sports car. They look powerful, but they are not. They are two way speakers with a 13cm (5") woofer and a 2cm (3/4") pizzo tweeter. They weigh only 6 pounds, but feel even lighter.
With my front end, the little speaks had no sharp and sweet nuances, but it was almost there. There was no warmth or magic, but it was still very good. My wife, who does not like all the bass that I love, preferred that combination instead of my Cornwalls. Of course, she said she liked the "little system better" so I can not be sure what her motives were.
I did not need much adjustment on the Klipsch sub; almost any setting helped the spiffy little boxes out, but the highest amount of equalization (close to 120 Hz) helped fill out the low end the most. In fact I turned the sub's volume knob 3/4 of the way before the sub intruded on the low end of the boom boxes.
The imaging of the Sonys was a little better when they were placed on thin metal candlestick stands 5 1/2' apart, 32" high in front of the entertainment, but it was not wonderful or great.
I was able to turn the Dynaco volume up to 9:00 on the dial, (the type B potentiometer more closely approximates the amount of power the amp is using than most other pre-amp volume knobs) a volume level that is hard to withstand for long on the super efficient Cornwalls. But even then, I can't say the silver boxes rocked. They did rattle with the bass output from the sub.
When put back together, the boom box and the sleek speakers make barely pleasant, background Muzak together: The sum is far less than the parts. The role the sub played was huge: It added 200 watts of power, deep bass and a fullness to the sound. I could see daughters buying $150 boom boxes and $150 subs to give the system some meat and muscle, texture and tone.
Now the bad news: I will say that both combinations impressed me. They made me seriously consider the amount of spare change I have kept adding to my sound system. As it is set-up now, my system reflects the music of diminishing returns: I keep investing more and more and getting less and less dramatic sound improvements.
My system now costs three times more than the little boom box powering my big horns, but is it three times better? Hard to say - hard to admit, after spending all that money. I was perplexed and began to worry that I was wasting money I don't have to spend.
I put my system back together, cleaned up the living room and sat down to listen to a big, wide dramatic presentation with all of the tinkeling highs, bopping lows and the smooth mid range on the Michael Franks CD …
Strengths:
cheap, good looks, watts, lots of eatures like dual cassette and 3 CD player Weaknesses:
cheap, no oomph, no sparkle, speakers capbale of more sound Similar Products Used:
none
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