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The Short Form
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| Price $3,894 (as tested) / outlawaudio.com / 866-688-5297 |
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Snapshot
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| Highly competent, highly adaptable, and an outstanding value. |
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Plus
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•Superb multichannel performance
•Highly tunable for real-world rooms
•Excellent value |
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Minus
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| •Modest stereo image depth in L/R mode |
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Key Features
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LCR ($649 each)
•(2) 5.25-inch cone woofers, 1-inch silk dome tweeter; 19 x 7.25 x 8.8 in; 20 lb
LFM-1 EX ($649)
•12-inch woofer; 350-watt RMS amplifier; 22.5 x 17 x 24.75 in (incl. feet and controls); 80 lb |
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Test Bench
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The LCR's main features include a 6-dB depression between 7 and 11 kHz and a 3-dB peak at 13.2 kHz. When vertically arrayed, the unit has well controlled directivity, and the Left/Right and Surround channel traces are basically identical. Used horizontally, response is similar out to ±45°, but subject to a huge lobing dip (—27 dB centered at 1.3 kHz) beyond this angle. The LFM-1 EX sub, in its Maximum Output mode, delivered a healthy 107 dB average SPL from 25 to 62 Hz, max SPL of 110 dB at 32 Hz, and 93 dB at its bass limit of 20 Hz (<10% distortion). — Tom Nousaine
Full Lab Results |
Music & Movie Performance
The Outlaw LCRs did everything well, without once calling attention to themselves. Tonal accuracy, dynamic impact, spatial imaging — all were eminently on display over my usual rotation of 2-channel test tracks. In their L/R setting, the Outlaws weren't particularly airy or spacious on stereo material, nor would I expect them to be: The symmetrical dual-woofer array is intentionally fairly stingy with reflection-bound dispersive sound, which tends to favor a drier, more focused, intense stereo presentation. This is great for "hearing into" a mix, and for locating voices and instruments in a left-right soundstage (which the LCRs did admirably), but it's not particularly aggressive in creating an illusion of depth. Switching the LCRs to their Ctr mode, while leaving them standing vertically, changes their character in this regard fairly dramatically, however. Good 2-channel recordings offered substantially more depth, as well as being a bit punchier and a touch warmer.
But what a difference with multichannel material! Listening to Dvorák's highly colored symphonic poem The Water Goblin on a Teldec DVD-Audio disc, I was immersed in marvelously believable timbres and dramatic dynamic contrasts. True-to-life levels were no problem with the Outlaws, which rewarded me with that goosebump-inducing sense of rolling low-frequency space. The LCR surrounds produced an adequate listening area without "collapsing" into one or the other speaker, though switching to my everyday dipole surrounds made it substantially larger.
Pop recordings with hard multichannel mixes sounded equally exciting — especially played good and loud. A big, sweeping ballad like Don Henley's "The Heart of the Matter" from the DTS 5.1 CD of The End of the Innocence had a huge, all-encompassing, well-knit sound. And though this heavily processed recording can easily sound too hard — I've heard it so on several systems — the Outlaws successfully combated the tendency.
My LCR center, with its mode switch set to Ctr, required its Boundary Comp switch in the furthest position, –4 dB (probably due to bounce off the TV screen surface). Thus tweaked, this made a very, very close tonal match to its flanking mates, for a seamless front soundstage and a very wide seating range.
The LFM-1 EX subwoofer proved a worthy partner for the LCRs. This big, boxy, unfancy sub gets the job done, with powerful, well-controlled output as low as reasonable folks could desire — well beyond 25 Hz. Its "Variable Tuning" system comprises a contour (EQ) switch and a foam bung to plug one of its two down-firing cabinet ports; together, these retune the sub from a peakier, max-slam response (suitable for hip-hop or The Towering Inferno) to a "20-Hz Bass Extension" setting intended for purist snobs like myself.
On big-bang movie material like the joyless but sonically loaded Mission: Impossible III, the Outlaw speakers were entirely wowing. The system easily played big-cinema-loud with full definition and dynamic punch, though it wants meaningful wattage to do so to full effect. (My 7 x 150-watt power amp did the job without any strain, but I believe it was within hail of its limits a couple of times.)
Optimally placed and switched, the surround-channel LCRs worked quite well, though they were still a shade more apt to localize discrete effects compared with the best dipole surrounds. But that's about the only film-sound weakness I can mention (if it even qualifies), and on the whole the Outlaw system delivered M:I3's relentlessly busy noisiness with great expertise.
Bottom Line
Outlaw Audio's LCR is an unspectacularly competent loudspeaker. But if you think this is meant as faint praise, think again: Used to describe a speaker, "spectacular" is often a pejorative. Deploy this system in a high-end home theater, behind an acoustically transparent screen and sidewall scrims, and I'll wager that very few experts — this humble one included — would even come close to naming its price.
Full Lab Results
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