Good sound quality speaker for it's price range.Removable grills.Kevlara woofer and mid range cones.Rubber surrounds for longer driver life compared to foam.3/4 inch thick black cabinets.

Lacking somewhat on the low end(below 45hz)despite being a bass-reflex(ported) design.

I picked up these units 2nd hand as I have a pair of Sony SS-MF500H also. The 500's produce significantly better base than the 550's. I agree with some of the other reviews around about replacing the crossovers in these units, some improvements here. I am also thinking of replacing the 8"woofers in the near future. These speakers represented an excellent buy at $50aud 2nd hand, but there is room for improvement

I have to disagree with some of the reviews on here which appear to have been written by either Sony employees or people with very low knowledge or experience with quality speakers.

I will start by saying that at a sub-500 dollar price point, these speakers represent EXCELLENT value for money. Sporting a large 8 inch woofer with separate midrange and tweeter, they outperform almost anything else available in the same price bracket.

Bass is punchy down to about 50-60 hertz where it tapers off, sadly losing deep rumbles in movies and some of the more liquid-sounding sinusoidal low bass (30-40hz) in dance and hip hop music. Midrange and treble are reasonable, although a little harsh and peaky at some frequencies (especially around 4KHz) but I suspect that this is due to them having no high pass filters on the woofer or midrange.

Another reviewer (possibly employed by Sony), started raving about the "crossovers" in these speakers. If you classify a crude 6dB/octave high pass filter on the tweeter and midrange (an inline, electrolytic capacitor on each) as a crossover, then you are easily pleased.

These speakers show excellent potential for upgrades as a quality 3-way 12dB/octave crossover and gold plated terminals would go a long way to improving their response and efficiency.

Regardless, the 8 inch woofer, 3.75 inch midrange and 1 inch tweeter, enclosed in an attractive 35 liter ported floor standing enclosure reproduce music and home theater with surprising punch and accuracy. They are packed with just the right amount of dampening material and the drivers appear to be constructed from decent quality materials.

Overall, I would recommend these speakers to someone who wants something a little better than the mainstream average without forking out large amounts of money. For audiophiles, they would make a decent set of speakers for the living/games room after a few small modifications to the connections and internal circuitry.

Clear voice and higher ranges.

Comparitively inexpensive.

Sound a lot like my old CVs.

No strong low bass.

Not very efficient.

Well, my 30 year old 12" Cerwin-Vegas finally bit the dust. That should give you some idea of the type of music I listened to and the volumes. Now, much older and hearing impaired, I needed something with more clarity in the voice and higher ranges. Not so much for music as for movie and video game soundtracks.

I listened to several brands $500 and up. Just for the heck of it I listened these speakers too. I was pleasantly surprised. The deep bass of the CVs is certainly not there but the clarity was. I demo'd the speakers with a Michael Buble album and that was the kicker. None of the more expensive speakers sounded any better. At home, I was floored by the concussion coming from these speakers when the anti-aircraft cannon fires in Halo 3. Very realistic for something that is not real.

I'm so impressed that I'm going to replace all of my surround speakers with similar Sony speakers to eliminate tonal and efficiency differences.
SSCN5000 Centre Speaker will replace a perfectly fine PSB C100.
SSB3000 Bookshelf Speaker will replace small old acoustic suspension speakers.
SAW2500 10" Subwoofer will bring back some of the lost thunder of the CVs.

I would've spit on Sony brand speakers in the past.

The 2007 replacement speaker is a Sony SSF5000 and it sounds exactly the same.

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin-Vega

Provide perfectly adequate sound for an AV system.

Relatively cheap.

Look good too.

Not terribly efficient.

Need a sub-woofer for support.

Refer to the 5000 model for this speaker's replacement. Same specs and sound.

Well, my 30 year old 12" Cerwin-Vegas needed to be replaced. That should give some idea what kind of music and volume I used to listen to. Loud, in control but the highs were certainly lacking in quality. So now, 30 years later, I'm hearing impaired in the upper voice range. I was looking for a replacement that was cheap with reasonable voice and high range clarity. I can still hear bass very well.

The main use will be for movies and video games.

These speakers, which I would have spit on in the past, provide perfectly adequate sound for an AV system.

I tested them using a Michael Buble album and I loved the clarity and tone. While playing Halo 3, I couldn't believe the thunder that came out of them when the huge anti-aircraft cannon fired. Surprising!

I am about to replace all of my AV speakers with matching Sony versions. That includes my PSB C100 centre channel. That should even out any tonal or efficientcy issues.

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin-Vega

NIce Highs on the Nano Tweeters, Pretty decent lows

Could have more bass, Speaker wire that Sony gives is cheap!

Designed for maximum sonic and economic efficiency, Sony's ash-wood-finished SS-MF550H floorstanding speakers enhance your hi-fi or home theater listening stylishly and affordably. Optimal for either stereo or, using 2 pairs, full-resolution surround sound music listening, these 3-way speakers each employ one 3.25-inch midrange and one 8-inch Kevlar/HOP bass driver, as well as a 1-inch Nano-Fine balanced-dome tweeter. Nano-Fine tweeters extend the speakers' frequency response well beyond the 20 kHz limit of CD audio, all the way out to 50 kHz--perfect for today's high-resolution music formats like Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio. The Nano-Fine design makes each tweeter extremely still and light--ideal properties for a tweeter.
The SS-MF550H's ported (bass-reflex) cabinets permit the larger drivers to move more air, significantly enhancing the speakers' low-end output. The speakers use precision crossover assemblies to ensure blending while recreating a seamless sound stage. Today's high-resolution stereo and discrete surround formats can reproduce the same sound out of all speakers. If a variance in drivers, crossover, or materials occurs, the pitch and surround illusion can suffer. Sony speakers are designed using matching driver compliments and crossovers to ensure blending from left to right and from front to rear.

The Kevlar fiber cone material offers an ideal mix of strength and low weight. Traditional driver materials must increase mass to provide greater amounts of rigidity, but these materials tend to be slow and inaccurate. Kevlar, combined with Sony's HOP (Highly Oriented Polyolefin), delivers extremely high strength and low mass. This allows for high power handling (up to 150 watts per channel) and ideal frequency response. HOP is a proprietary speaker-cone material offering high strength, low weight, and low resonance, contributing to the speaker's excellent transient response, high power handling, and flat frequency response. Frequency response extends down to 45 Hz, giving you all but the lowest audible octave of bass.

The balanced-dome tweeter represents a Sony refinement of the classic dome tweeter, which places the voice coil inside the tweeter's circumference for superb dispersion and reduced distortion than traditional tweeters.

Similar Products Used:

none

hmmm, well - they where cheap ... would work great as a lamp stand I suppose

I am very weak, YES.
Purchasing based on a 5min testing and relative to the weaker models from the series is a very poor thing to do.

honestly, that was the stupidest purchase I've ever made ... It was an impulse while buying new TV and I was tempted with the low price and the looks ... but the sound is just as I was expecting from SONY, but - the reviews from this site made me buy it :) heh.

While they performed relatively well (a lot of booms and bams) in the 5.1 movies, still the high end was bit unclear. Redbook CD's sounded like a cat would throw up inside the speakers ... not that I ever had the pleasure to listen to speakers that a cat would ... but that was what I have imagined listening to them.

DO NOT BUY THIS SPEAKERS, unless an elephant has stepped on your ears and you dont care either way about the narrow stage, response all over the place etc.

Now I went with the Onix X-LS speakers, a little more $$$ but completely different league

Customer Service

BestBuy: great customer service, money back - no questions asked

Allthough the guy with a "magnolia ..." polo shirt proposed to me that I point them outwards in order to achieve a better stage reproduction...

Similar Products Used:

Polk Audio RTi6, Onix AV123

Clear highs and mids, even when playing cassettes.

Weak bass on their own, but that isn't an issue when adding a sub, and using them for mains in a home theater setup.

I've been a Cerwin Vega lover for years, but after discovering there aren't any dealers in my area, I went to Best Buy to see what they had available. They used to be a CV dealer, but apparently they got rid of them a few years ago, so I decided to listen to what they had. I'm impressed with these Sonys. After listening to them at Best Buy and bringing them home, the sound is very clear playing either cd's or cassettes. The highs are crisp, and the mids cut right through. The bass is a little lacking, but that is to be expected with a single 8" woofer. Adding a subwoofer will cure that problem (I have a SA-WX700 on order to help).

Crisp, accurate reproduction of different styles of music. The cones and tweeters perform quite well. (FYI, the latest Consumer Reports testing speakers confirmed my theory; it rated these speakers {note sure if this one or the other model with dual woofers} #1 -- over the more expensive brands such as Klipsch, etc.

Low range with a single 8" woofer may not be enough low range for those without seperate subwoofers. If you don't have one, check out the other model with the dual 8s.

I've been using this product for several months in my home theater setup, listening to movies, video games, radio, cd's, etc. This is an excellent speaker that stands up well to bigger speakers costing hundreds more dollars. The local best buy has a cool feature that allows you to listen to the same music on the different brands of speakes that actually works very well. Compared to the new glossy Yamaha speakers with multiple cones that cost many more hundreds of dollars, all the music samples I screened sounded just as good, really on the Sonys as the Yamaha's. Same for the fancier Athena speakers. If you have a similar best buy, check them out and crank up the music to get an idea of the accuracy. The very slight advantage in terms of bass are negated since I have one of those powerful Yamaha YST-SW800 10" subwoofers. It provides all the low range oomph needed in my setup.

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin-vega, yamaha, listened to Atehna, JBL, Polk, Klipsch, etc at best buy.