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The Short Form
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| $1,580 / PURE-ACOUSTICS.COM / 718-788-4411 |
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Snapshot
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| A stylish speaker package that delivers crisp, articulated sound |
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Plus
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| • Clean, detailed, and up-front sound quality • Tasteful styling • Unobtrusive footprint |
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Minus
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| • Bright presentation may disturb mellow-sound lovers • Subwoofer lacks real heft • Center channel off-axis colorations |
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Key Features
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• Front towers: 1-in soft-dome tweeter, (4) 3-in mid/bass drivers; available in black, white, or cherry finish; 40 x 5 x 4¼ in; 15 lb • Center channel: 1-in soft-dome tweeter, (2) 3-in mid/bass drivers; available in black, white, or cherry finish; 4¼ x 15 x 5 in; 5½ lb • Surrounds: 1-in soft-dome tweeter, 3-in mid/bass driver; available in black, white, or cherry finish; 6 ¾ x 5 x 4¼ in; 2¾ lb • Subwoofer: 10-in cone driver, 150-watt RMS amplifier; available in black, white, or silver finish; 17¼ x 17½ x 15¾ in; 16 7/8 lb |
SETUP
The Dream Tower system comprises the Dream Tower-100 front towers, 101 center speaker, and 102 surrounds. Each 100 tower stands waist high, and its wooden construction makes it surprisingly heavy. (The rounded and tapered Dream Tower speaker cabinets will satisfy the interior decorator lurking inside you.) My gloss- black review models were so shiny, unfortunately, that they could be confused with cheap plastic cabinets that use similar styling. The towers are stabilized with simple wooden bases (some assembly required) and come with stout steel leveling spikes.
Each tower hosts five drivers aligned in perfect vertical symmetry. Reading from top to bottom, there are two woofers followed by one soft-dome tweeter and another two woofers. The tower’s top half is protected by a removable grill that covers the drivers, while the cabinet’s rear sports binding posts and a small port.
The 101 center speaker uses the same styling cues and cabinet construction as its mates. There are no mounting provisions; the cabinet simply rests on thin cloth pads. At minimum, I would have appreciated a way to adjust vertical tilt.
If you like the towers and the center speaker, then you’ll love the system’s 102 surrounds, which are smaller (and hence, cuter) versions of the front trio. The two-way design shares the same tweeter and woofer as the rest of the speakers, but the port here is relocated to the back of the cabinet. Also, a mounting bracket makes an appearance.
The Noble 10 subwoofer’s cabinet shares the same tapered styling cues as the other speakers. A 10-inch driver fires forward through a grille cloth. (But I thought that the sub looked handsome with the grille removed. ) The cabinet is vented with a downward-firing port and raised off the floor by plastic, spike-like feet. The control set comprises volume, low-pass filter crossover (40 to 180 Hz), phase (normal and reverse), and power mode (on, auto, off). There are stereo line- and speaker-level inputs and outputs. Power is rated at 150 watts.
Installing this system did n’ t present any difficulties. It took only a few minutes to screw the bases to the towers and then attach the spikes. All the speakers share the same binding posts, which I found to be less than robust. These are serviceable, but I like my binding posts like I like my hamburgers — beefy. I toed in the left/right towers to directly face my listening position, and placed the center- speaker underneath and flush with my projection TV’s screen. The surrounds went up on a bookshelf behind the listening position, and I placed the subwoofer in my usual spot, along the front wall, between the TV and the left tower. Finally, I used my receiver’s setup menu to set the front left/right channels to “large,” the center and surrounds to “small,” and the sub crossover to 120 Hz.
PERFORMANCE
I started my critical listening with simple stereo playback. I ran though my playlist of reference recordings and was struck by these speakers’ presence and detail. Some speakers can sound like they are veiled behind a curtain, while others sit in front of the curtain. These Dream speakers were way out in front —and indeed perilously close to my face.
I prefer speakers with a “soft” high end that might even sound dull to some listeners. These Dreams had a very clean and articulated sound, but one that was ultimately too bright for my taste. For example, on the 2007 reissue of Robert Plant’s Now and Zen, Plant’s vocals sound reasonably bluesy and mellow. The Dream Towers put Plant front and center in my listening room, and I could hear every nuance with crystalline clarity. His expressive voice, simply wonderful on this recording, had a good tonal quality during many passages when listened to at moderate levels. On the other hand, when I cranked the sound up and Plant started to push his dynamic range, the speakers tightened up and his tone became harder than it should have been.
Chris Blackwell’s drums had pretty good punch, and the reverberation on the hard-hitting snare had a terrific sense of air. The crash cymbals are fairly pulled back in this recording, and they sounded surprisingly restrained on these speakers. The floor toms were rock- solid and the kick drum had a nicely rounded sound, courtesy of the Noble 10 sub.
Stereo imaging was good, with the speakers delivering a much bigger soundstage than one would expect from relatively small speakers. Early in the evaluation, I placed throw rugs in front of each tower, and this smoothed the sound somewhat but did not greatly affect their overall character. The sonic blend between the towers and the subwoofer was also pretty good, with enough overlap between the subwoofer’s upper and the towers’ lower bass response to provide smooth musical transitions.
I checked surround music playback with a wide variety of music and got results similar to my stereo evaluation. The Dream Tower system’s tonal quality was consistently bright with good detail and air, although it showed some tightness on dynamic passages played at loud levels. For example, during Linkin Park’s Reanimation, a real barn-burner of a surround mix, every detail in every channel was revealed, but the musical peaks sounded a little crispy, particularly in the surrounds. But, because of a shared timbral DNA between the center and surrounds, they provided a solid sense of immersion.
I also watched Ratatouille with the Dream Towers hooked up. Randy Thom, director of sound design at Skywalker Sound, received two Academy Award nominations (sound editing and sound mixing) for his team’s work on this film, and the sound design is wonderfully detailed and filled with humor. The soundtrack is a sonic library of France: Some ambient sounds were recorded in Paris, and you can occasionally hear a bit of authentic French . When Rémy enters the Paris kitchen, human footsteps reverberate monstrously, ovens light with roaring flames, and Rémy’s first soup bubbles deliciously. All of this was nicely reproduced by the system.
Dialogue coming from the center speaker had satisfactory intelligibility when listened to on-axis, but suffered some coloration at off-center seats. The orchestral score sounded up front and lively, with lots of inner detail, and the surrounds provided good fill to complete the sense of immersion. The Noble 10 subwoofer was loud enough, and it displayed sufficient extension. In my large room, it sounded a bit lethargic on action films with more demanding LFE tracks but would likely prove adequate for a small- or medium-size space.
BOTTOM LINE
Pure Acoustics’ Dream Tower speakers system has a clean, crisp look, and the same can be said for its sound. For those who prefer their sonics hot ’n’ crispy, this neat system will deliver it to your door. Throw in the company’s Noble 10 subwoofer, and you’ll be ready to feast.
TEST BENCH
Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.8 volts of pink-noise input)
front left/right: 92 dB
center: 87 dB
surround: 89 dB
Impedance (minimum/nominal)
front left/right: 3.6/9 ohms
center: 4.3/7 ohms
surround: 4.9/8 ohms
Bass limits (lowest frequency and maximum SPL with limit of 10% distortion at 2 meters in a large room)
front left/right: 80 Hz at 79 dB
center: 125 Hz at 86 dB
surround: 125 Hz at 82 dB
subwoofer: 32 Hz at 98 dB SPL
102 dB average SPL from32 to 62 Hz
105 dB maximum SPL at 50 Hz
Bandwidth uniformity: 96%
All of the curves in the frequency-response graph are weighted to reflect how sound arrives at a listener’s ears with normal speaker placement. The curve for the left/right front channels reflects response of the Dream Tower 100 with the speaker standing on the floor averaged over a ±30º window. The center-channel curve reflects response of the Dream Tower 101 averaged over ±45º, with double weight directly on-axis of the primary listener. The surround-channel curve shows the response of the Dream Tower 102 averaged over ±60º.
Because the Model 100 will always be used on a floor, all measurements were taken with the speaker on a carpeted floor. Both the center- and surround-channel speakers were measured on a 6-foot stand, which gives anechoic results to approximately 200 Hz. All measurements, subwoofer excepted, are taken at a full 2 meters, a distance that emulates a typical listening distance, allows larger speakers to fully integrate acoustically, and, unlike near-field measurements, fully includes front- panel reflections and cabinet diffraction.
The Dream Tower 100 has a relatively mild floor bounce at 200 Hz, followed by a rising response of approximately 2 dB per octave above 400 Hz. The Dream Tower 101 center speaker has a 2. 5-kHz notch directly on-axis that falls in center frequency with increasing width and severity as you move further off-axis. The 102 surround speaker’s tweeter measured 7 dB louder than its woofer above 1.5 kHz. All speakers in the system have anemic low-frequency dynamic capability, along with rather dramatically raised response at higher frequencies.
The Noble 10 subwoofer’s bass limits were measured with it set to maximum bandwidth (Crossover Bypass and Flat trim) and placed in the optimal corner of a 7,500-cubic-foot room. In a smaller room, users can expect 2 to 3 Hz deeper extension and up to 3 dB higher sound-pressure level. Although the crossover dial is marked from 40 to 180 Hz, the true acoustical operating range only spans from 60 to 110 Hz. There is also a curious level/crossover interaction where the crossover at mid-rotation actually increases volume by 3 dB. (At the 40-Hz position, level was decreased by 13 dB.) The subwoofer’s dynamic capability peaks fairly dramatically at 50 Hz, falling off at roughly 9 to 12 dB per octave both above and below that point.
— Tom Nousaine