Bookshelf Speaker Reviews

I once dated a girl in college who had a unusually large mouth. I was so taken in by the possibilities that I failed to explore the reality—a big mouth equals a loud mouth. Likewise, when it comes to speakers, you can usually get a good idea of the limitations or exacerbations of a speaker by the types and number of drivers it has.

In a Reflective Mood

It is rare for a carton to put a smile on my face. A lot of cartons trample through my modest living and working space. They are a necessary evil in my work as a reviewer that’s redeemed only by their contents. But the carton that housed the Mirage MX satellite/subwoofer set made me grin when I picked it up in my doorway. It weighed all of 20 pounds, portending a review process without physical rigors. I deposited it in my bedroom along with the other treasures that live there—my books, my LPs, my bags of speaker cable, my collection of styrofoam popcorn and plastic bubble packing, not to mention my bed—and forgot about it until the time came for its debut in the listening room.

Here's a tip for home theater newbies: Don't shop for speakers using just your eyes. That advice holds true for any speaker, regardless of size or price; when it comes to what we euphemistically refer to as "lifestyle" speakers, though, please try to listen before you make a purchase, or you'll deserve what you get. Lifestyle-inflicted design compromises too often exact a toll on performance—skinny towers can sound undernourished, wall-mounted speakers can produce pancake-flat imaging, and pint-size satellites can come up short.

More than any other speaker in this group except perhaps the Polk, the BX1 ($379/pr) looks like a high-end product, with its walnut finish; its 1-inch, gold-finish C-CAM (composite ceramic metal) tweeter; and its 5.5-inch C-CAM woofer. Unusually, the woofer is attached to the back panel, not the front, so its vibration won't be as easily transmitted to the front panel.

MASS 5.1 Speaker System
Performance
Build Quality
Value

MASS W200 Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Unique design
Beautiful imaging
Surprising dynamic capability
Minus
Tight binding posts won’t accommodate some connectors
Horizontal Centre speaker best used upright

THE VERDICT
Big, bold, bombastic sound from a relatively small and quite affordable package

I love double irony, that wonderfully weird phenomenon whereby a seeming incongruity loops right back around and becomes all too apt. Take the guy who names his Chihuahua Killer, for example, which seems like fun and giggles at first glance, until the little bugger tries to eat the face right off of your skull for want of a Snausage. Take also Monitor Audio’s compact MASS (spelled just like that, in all capital letters), a 5.1-channel home theater speaker system that continues the company’s trend of delivering complete home theater speaker systems in increasingly small, though typically traditionally shaped, packages. (Search the monitoraudiousa.com domain for the word diminutive, and you’ll see what I mean.) At first glance, you can’t help but think that whoever decided to hang such a MASSive moniker on a delicately tapered, lantern-like satellite speaker this small certainly had some chutzpah. And lifting one of the dainty 3.64-pound satellites does nothing to abate that initial urge to chuckle, no matter how solidly built and sturdy it may be.

It must be something of a conundrum for speaker designers: Today's buyers are demanding more and more from smaller and smaller speakers. The designers' incredible shrinking speakers work their mojo with ever-more-innovative cabinet designs, and their high-tech drivers push the performance envelope. At least that's what they tell me. No doubt some of their more-extreme claims are jive techno babble, but that's OK—the sonic truth will inevitably be laid bare when the pedal hits the metal on the Fast and the Furious DVD. The pint-size speakers better deliver the goods. . .or else.

It was 40 years ago today (well, just about) that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. What a year 1967 was! It was also the year of Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Disraeli Gears by Cream, Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd, Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane, The Doors by the Doors, and that album with the banana on the cover by the Velvet Underground. A scan of Rolling Stone magazine’s “40 Essential Albums of 1967” also turns up Moby Grape, the Hollies, James Brown, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Arlo Guthrie, the Beach Boys, Tim Buckley, the Kinks—please, a sustained round of applause for the Kinks—Van Morrison, Dionne Warwick, Buffalo Springfield, the Moody Blues, Love, the 13th Floor Elevators, and (a previously undiscovered gap in my listening life) the Serpent Power. Thank God I wasn’t into drugs then. Look at what I would have missed.