Price Paid:  $100.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
What a Bargain! These little speakers are quite pleasing to the ear, and are pleasing to the wallet.

I picked these up at a local circuit city as I wanted some speakers for my desk/ bedroom. I ended up buying them as they were on sale - $90.00 off. I ended up listening to the bigger brother, the CR67, at the store and I was impressed with the clarity of the sound. The CR57 was not currently connected to the demonstration system, but the CR57 was on sale and had the same tweeter and style of woofer, just a little smaller at 4.5” compared to the 5.25” that the CR67 model had.

Arriving home I decided to connect these little speakers into my main system. At the time I didn’t have surrounds connected, only a powered subwoofer. Wow… now I was surprised. My “reference” speakers were my old JBL N28 Northridge series. Wow, the Bostons had much better, neutral, and “alive” sound character that I decided to leave them in my main system. I actually heard things in my music that I haven’t heard before as the JBL’s muddied it up a bit. I ended up buying a second pair for surrounds and I am very pleased.

Differences between the old and new: The JBL’s were more efficient, which is great for a large room, but I live in a small apartment. The JBL’s are quite a bit bigger, now my living room doesn’t look overcome with bigger speaker boxes.

Obviously, these are small speakers due to that, a good subwoofer adds to the performance to this setup. Once the subwoofer is blended into the mix, a pleasant, high quality sound is the result.

I’m not sure about the ultimate SPL capabilities of these speakers, but for my environment, I think they are great.

Strengths:
High build quality
Price
Pleasing sound - not harsh or fatiguing

Weaknesses:
You need a sub-woofer to handle bass (pretty standard for a small speaker however).
70 watts power rating.

Similar Products Used:
JBL N28 Northridge Series