DCM TimeFrame TFE200 Home Theater Speaker System Page 2
As to bass: Yes! The TFE200s produce lots of it, and they do so down to an impressive depth, with powerful output to well below 40 Hz (the lowest note usually encountered in pop/rock/jazz music) and useful response somewhat beyond. In fact, in my room, the DCMs could be a little overpowering in the middle "bass" octaves - say, between 60 and 240 Hz - which occasionally made things like jazz standup bass and deep male voices sound a touch heavy. Pulling the speakers farther from the wall seemed to help a bit, but there was only so far I could go, given the DCMs' size and my listening space.
Still, all of this adds up to truly kick-ass playback of rock & roll. A classic like David Bowie's Let's Dance CD serves up Hungry-Man portions of both level and bottom end, and the TFE200s - supported by 200 watts each from my multichannel power amp - happily obliged on both counts. The DCMs' middle-bass enthusiasm made Carmine Rojas's characteristic woody bass guitar seem a little growly, and they sounded a bit dynamics-shy and a hint "splatty" at really high levels, but both tendencies are true of most cost-conscious speaker designs. Even so, I surely haven't played "China Girl" this loud for a decade or two, and that's always a good sign! (Say, did Stevie Ray Vaughan ever play a better solo, or a more disciplined one, in his too-short life?)
The design of the TFE60C center speaker matches that of the TFE200s reasonably well: The center sounds just a bit brassier or brighter through the lower mids, but overall timbre-matching is about average. Listening from one or the other side, however, as you might when crowded to the edge of the sofa, revealed a measure of audible off-axis coloration: The TFE60C sounded noticeably fuller, even a bit boomy, from a 30° to 40° off-axis vantage point, despite its design scheme of single woofer plus passive radiator.
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