Just how slim can speakers get? It's a question I find myself pondering these days as wave after wave of skinny speakers arrives on my doorstep for testing. Looking over the elegant, metal-clad CS-System 3 speakers from British newcomer Audica — a company of audio veterans who previously did time at established UK speaker outfits like Mission — the answer is: remarkably slim. Audica's stated aim is to tailor products to a contemporary, video-dominated lifestyle, and it achieves that goal by producing tower and satellite speakers that measure a mere 3 inches wide. Jeez, if they made them any thinner, they'd be almost nonexistent.

What We Think

A shockingly slim two-grand speaker rig that delivers substantial sound for the money

The CS-System 3 that Audica sent me comprised a pair of CS-T1 tower speakers, a pair of CS-S1 satellites for surrounds, a CS-C1 center speaker, and the CS-Sub10 subwoofer. Each teardrop-shaped speaker is housed in a 7.5-inch-deep extruded aluminum cabinet that tapers back gracefully to a point. The towers come with heavy-duty aluminum bases to anchor them to the ground. To mount the surrounds, you can either place them on Audica's optional stands ($200 a pair) or fasten them to the wall using the included mounting bracket. Audica's mounts are very nicely designed — not only do they swivel up, down, and sideways to aim the speaker, but they come with a black plastic cover to camouflage the bracket once it's up on the wall.

The CS-Sub10 subwoofer has a gunmetal-gray finish and rounded edges that help it match the other speakers. Large plastic carpet spikes are included to stabilize the box. The sub's 150-watt amp powers a 10-inch driver. Connections include a line-level input and line-level output, while various control knobs and switches allow you to set the sub's crossover frequency and output level and to adjust phase to either 0 or 180 degrees.

SETUP With speakers this eager to fade into the woodwork alongside a flat-panel TV, I could have set them up anywhere and they wouldn't have looked obtrusive or out of place. But I deposited the towers squarely in the footprint of my regular speakers — about 3 feet out from the back wall and 2 feet from either side of the TV. The center channel slipped into the middle shelf of my TV stand, while the CS-S1 satellites were set up on tall speaker stands slightly behind and to either side of my couch. Stowed in the front right corner of the room, the subwoofer seemed to vie for my attention in a manner that the other speakers did not (maybe Audica's next project could be a skinny sub). Nonetheless, it performed best from that location, sounding powerful and not at all boomy after a few positioning adjustments.

A footnote in the literature that came with the system states that it shouldn't be used with subs other than Audica's own models. I suspect the reason here is that the system's main speakers, which use tiny, custom-designed 2-inch midbass drivers, rely heavily on a subwoofer to fill out the frequency range. (My experiments bore this out — listening to music on the towers sans sub, I heard almost no bass.) Bottom line: A powerful subwoofer is an essential component of this system. Audica recommends that you use theirs, possibly because, as our measurements suggested, they have unusual high frequency extension to better mate with the bass-shy satellites.

The Short Form

$2,000 / audica.co.uk / 866-928-3422

Plus

•Radically slim, décor-friendly design •Clean, open sound •Impressive dynamics on music and movies

Minus

•Somewhat lean lower midrange

Key Features

•CS-T1 tower ($1,000 a pair) 0.5-in tweeter, four 2-in midrange/woofers; 41.5-in high; 32 lbs each •CS-C1 center ($250) 0.5-in tweeter, four 2-in midrange/woofers; 11 in wide; 5.5 lbs •CS-S1 satellite surrounds ($300 a pair) 0.5-in tweeter, two 2-in midrange/woofers; 7.3 in high; 6.5 lbs •CS-Sub10 subwoofer ($500) 10-in woofer; 150-watt amplifier; 15.8 x 15.3 x 15.8 in, 35.3 lbs •Speakers available in anodized titanium silver or anodized carbon black finish; metallic gunmetal gray finish only for subwoofer •Price $2,000

MUSIC PERFORMANCE With the subwoofer happily plugged back in, I sat down to spin some tunes. Jazz sax player Charles Lloyd's "Ballade and Allegro" quickly keyed me in on the system's performance. The piano on this track had lots of natural ambience and warmth, and when Lloyd cut in with his solo mid-song, details like the reedy texture of his close-miked horn came across clearly. Overall, the Audica CS-System 3's sound seemed open and clean rather than being bright or in-your-face. The one complaint I had was a somewhat recessed quality to the lower midrange — it was as if a small slice of the sax's bottom end was absent. Raising the crossover setting helped out here, restoring some fullness that had previously gone missing.

In stereo mode, I cued up Sufjan Stevens' "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois," the opening track from his concept album Illinois, and the Audica towers presented a tremendously wide soundstage. Stevens' vocals remained locked in dead center, while the song's wash of piano and wind instruments seemed to billow out around the room. It was probably as close to a surround sound presentation as I've ever heard coming from a pair of speakers. Digging deeper into my alternative rock rack, I next listened to Secret Machines' "Faded Lines." The System 3 did an admirable job of capturing this band's stadium-worthy sound. Dynamics were powerful, and the lows came across very cleanly, making it easy to distinguish between the song's machine-like kick drum and equally precise bass guitar notes.

MOVIE PERFORMANCE Kingdom of Heaven is a movie that supposedly was taken away from director Ridley Scott by the studio, which is why I'm glad I waited to catch the director's cut on DVD. The first thing I noticed when watching it on the Audica system was the CS-C1's clear rendering of voices. During a scene where Godfrey (Liam Neeson) and his fellow knights converse with Godfrey's brother, their dialogue inside the cavernous castle sounded effortless and clean, with little change in timbre when I listened to it from an off-center seat.

With movies set in medieval times, you can count on plentiful sword fights and jousts, and Kingdom of Heaven delivers. In a scene where Godfrey's brother sets his army on the band of idealistic knights, the CS-Sub10 conveyed a realistic rumble of horse hooves as the attackers galloped across a campsite. The trajectory of arrows from the front to the rear of the room also sounded vivid on the system, as did the clanging of crossed swords, which seemed to ring out with equal force from each speaker. In sum, I'd say that the Audica's handling of medieval battle scenes was very impressive for such slim speakers.

BOTTOM LINE The CS-System 3 is up against plenty of stiff competition in the two-grand range — I can think of a half-dozen or so systems selling for around that price that deliver excellent performance and look pretty good as well. But what sets the Audica CS-System 3 speakers apart is a radically slim cabinet design that addresses the needs of lifestyle-oriented listeners while sacrificing relatively little in terms of performance. I was doubtful at first, but after listening to the skinny System 3 for a week, I was surprised at how well it met my everyday home theater needs. For speakers that were designed to literally evaporate into the background, that's a substantial achievement.

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