Of the world's billions of loudspeakers, some 99.735% (an unassailable number I just made up) use only conventional dynamic drivers. That is, cones and domes. Coils and magnets. The remaining 0.265% of speakers use something else — that something invariably being one or another variation of a flat panel suspended from or sandwiched between large magnets statically charged screens.
Ribbon drivers are tricky, but Sunfire chief designer Bob Carver and his cohorts have been fooling with them for decades. Sunfire's new Cinema Ribbon speakers deploy a high-frequency ribbon driver in every model; the heavily pleated ribbon, though only about 5 inches in length, is claimed to approach the surface area and thus the power-handling and output potential of a standard 6-foot-long example. (Speaker-tech guru Tom Nousaine posits that the Sunfire driver is actually, technically speaking, a planar-magnetic type, a closely related form. Either way: makes no real difference to my purposes.)
The other two drivers in the CRM-2 speaker are twin conventional dynamic cones, 4.5-inch woofers that fire to the sides. Conventional only in their essence: Sunfire tells us that these are deployed much like the cones in the company's well-known miniaturized subwoofers, delivering extraordinary excursion and thus unprecedented power-handling and output potential from tiny means.
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The Short Form
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| $5,990 (as tested) / sunfire.com / 425-335-4748 |
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Snapshot
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| Unique design combines tiny size with amazing output and extension, smooth balance, and impressive detail. |
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Plus
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•Terrific vocal-range accuracy and highly musical balance •Smooth, ultra-detailed treble •Super-small, super-dynamic |
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Minus
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•Setup alignment critical •Sub-to-satellite integration tricky •Sweet spot limits audience size •Tiny subs superb but trade bottom half-octave for size |
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Key Features
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CRM-2 •($800 each) Sealed enclosure; 4.5 x 1-in ribbon tweeter; (2) 4.5-in cone woofers; 8.3 in high; 7.5 lb CRM-2C center •($800) Sealed enclosure; 4.5 x 1-in ribbon tweeter; (2) 4.5-in cone woofers; 17 in wide; 10.5 lb True Subwoofer Super Junior •($995 each) 8-in woofer; 8-in passive radiator; 1,500-watt RMS "tracking-downconverter" amplifier; 9 x 10.5 x 10.5 in (including drivers and connectors); 29 lb |
MUSIC AND MOVIES Beginning as always with stereo listening, I quickly confirmed Sunfire's suggestion that positioning and orientation are critical to getting the best out of the CRM-2s. Vertical alignment proved particularly critical — no surprise with a ribbon driver whose sound-spread is fairly wide left and right but tightly controlled up and down. In my installation, atop 32-inch stands, I found that the "sweet spot" was actually slightly below straight ahead, so I ended up with the CRM-2s raked back a few degrees and toed in substantially. This yielded a clear improvement in balance from my first listen; although I had carefully followed the company's "break-in" advice, the speakers initially sounded distinctly warm, even restrained, across the top few octaves. Given that the little Sunfires do not make enough low frequencies to attempt any serious listening on their own, I also found sub-to-satellite integration to be a critical factor, and I spent a good chunk of time adjusting sub levels (and making small placement shifts) to get the smoothest, best-integrated result.
The more I listened, the more I concluded that the Sunfires sound different from many other speakers — yet the more I listened, the more difficulty I had putting a name to the differences. The CRM-2s sound distinctly warmer up top: less forward, snappy, or aggressive than even some very refined conventional designs. Yet there clearly was no "missing" or dramatically rolled-off treble, as the Sunfires displayed no absence of air, depth, or shimmer. Ride cymbals, plucked strings, and brassy attacks were fully defined and lifelike, notably relaxed and transparent. Yet the speakers' tonality was uniformly mellower and less metallic when compared with that of a selection of dynamic-driver designs of known quality. Again: The differences were not so much of quantity of output as of character, and I'm not quite prepared to say that one is "right" and the other "wrong."
Importantly, the Sunfires get the critical midrange just about perfect. Voices of both men and women (and that alien diva who performs in The Fifth Element) were consistently open and natural, with little if any of the "cupped," "nasal," or "hooty" colorations that belie peaky response across these most sensitive octaves. And the Cinema Ribbons' dearth of output much below 120 Hz or so ensures that they at least will not contribute boomy or excessive midbass.
As already mentioned, sub/sat integration is an especially critical factor with this setup. The challenge is to get the Super Junior subs — which have rather amazing output in the lowest octave-plus but do not seem to me especially flat up through 100-250 Hz — to meld in an even and continuous way with the CRM-2s, which seemed to roll off below 150 Hz or so. A lot of fiddling, and light touches on each sub's continuously variable Phase control, eventually got it done, yielding solid, smooth upper bass to complement the Super Junior's astonishing lower-octaves power.
Ultimately, this Sunfire array most impressed me with its reproduction of massed strings. A favorite SACD of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste was simply hypnotic, with the Hungarian master's full, vibrant palette of woody colors and resonant nuance vividly portrayed. Equally gorgeous were bowed double-bass passages, such as the famous entry in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and the Sunfire system sounded great on plucked jazz bass, too, though a half-shade less timbre-precise or "quick" than my everyday setup.
The CRM-2s produce a very wide and somewhat diffuse image, thanks to their side-firing woofers delivering a good portion of the midrange sound. This proved a boon, mostly, lending natural-acoustic recordings (classical, jazz, folk) a lively presence and a big image but producing a slightly less pinpoint effect on typical studio-pop "multi-mono" creations.
As a home theater system, the Cinema Ribbons were highly effective as well — given their name, they'd better be! The CRM-2C center unit largely shared the CRM-2's natural vocals and defined, relaxed highs but with the clearly more focused presentation I expected of an all-forward-firing array. Its grille incorporates a louvered waveguide to help spread highs from its horizontally arrayed ribbon, and indeed the sound was quite consistent over a reasonably wide listening angle. I noticed some differences in tonal balance between the center and the CRM-2s on three-speaker vs. one-speaker mono comparisons, however. The CRM-2C delivered audibly less "bite" on voice articulations, and it was a bit "chestier" at either position of its boundary-compensation switch.
Yet in context, the CRM-2C acceptably accomplished its center-channel mission. Dialogue was clear and well defined on a wide variety of film soundtracks, and effects that panned across the three front speakers — such as passing trucks or the single shot of a P-51 zooming leftwards from the indie World War II pic Saints and Soldiers — were smooth and continuous. When I looped the fly-by and concentrated, I could barely detect a shift in spatiality as the plane traversed the center, probably caused by the different radiation patterns of the CRM-2s and the CRM-2C. But this kind of microscopic scrutiny is clearly different from normal enjoy-the-movie listening.
The CRM-2s made very good surround speakers. These are, after all, largely bipolar reproducers in all except treble, and their layout seemed a particularly happy compromise between the diffuse reproduction ideal for ambience and spatial cues and the sharper imaging sometimes preferable for discrete effects or multi-panned surround music. The Mustang flyover mentioned above actually begins from the right rear, and it displayed an impressively smooth, contiguous motion as it moved forward and then shifted left.
Bob Carver had encouraged us not to spare the ponies, and indeed the tiny Sunfires proved able to absorb remarkable amounts of power. The system is only a scant dB or so less sensitive than the average, yet I could unload very nearly all the output of my amp's 5 x 150-watt arsenal into the Sunfire system without inducing audible hardship. Indeed, the CRM-2s seemed almost to sound clearer, more dynamic, and livelier the louder they played.
The Super Junior sub has appeared in S&V before (see Tiny Killer Subs), so its ability to pump deep bass out of a ridiculously small package did not come entirely as a surprise. But it's still impressive: The SJ has plenty of 35-Hz output to make real cinematic deep bass happen, and a pair of the subs pump just that much more — about 6 dB, to be precise. As I had before, I found that putting something good and heavy, suitably padded, atop each sub to hold it steady made an audible improvement in output and extension (I used an old blown-up power supply and a huge dead car battery, each about 40 pounds). When it's really working, the Super Junior has a sort of rocking-couple vibration, which I theorize squanders electroacoustic effort as movement rather than sound. The dual subs had enough output to push the system to honest big-cinema levels with ease (a single unit did not, quite), though the very biggest hits induced a bit of "flappy" excess on peaks. Nonetheless, these remain simply amazing little subs. If you truly must have a subwoofer the size of a 12-pack (or two), I don't know that you can do better.
BOTTOM LINE Summing up the Sunfire Cinema Ribbon loudspeakers is not much easier than describing them. To say you should give them a serious audition and make up your own mind may seem like a weasely-journalist cop-out, but it's the truth. The Cinema Ribbon system is different enough that I cannot simply rank it on a linear scale with other high-end ultra-compact systems. But I can say with complete confidence that anyone looking in this field — and everyone else who's truly interested in good sound and innovative engineering — owes it to himself to seek out a competent audition. Only then can you decide if the Cinema Ribbons' unusual route to high-end reproduction fits your ear.
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