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The Short Form
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| $4,500 each / SNELLACOUSTICS.COM / 978-538-6262 |
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Snapshot
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| Snell’s C7 tower speakers deliver the audiophile goods — along with enough low bass that you can live without a subwoofer |
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Plus
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| • World-class tonal accuracy, definition, and transparency • Almost literally full-range sound • Gorgeous, master-craftsman woodworking |
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Minus
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| • Expensive |
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Key Features
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• (2) 8-inch cone woofers, (2) 4-inch cone midrange drivers, 1-inch silk-dome tweeter, and 1-inch soft-dome tweeter (rear-firing). • Tweeter Level, Rear Tweeter, Boundary Compensation mini-switch controls (rear panel) • 47¼ x 16 x 9½ in; 95 lb |
The Signature Series Type C7 may be three steps down from the flagship Illusion in Snell’s current full-range family, but it’s no lightweight. Dual 8-inch woofers and a solidly machined D’Appolito mid-high-frequency array, all packaged in a beautifully finished tower nearly 4 feet tall, make for an imposing presence. My evaluation pair was modestly finished in black, but close inspection revealed the usual superb Snell woodworking touches such as matched, mirror-image veneers and meticulous, hand-rubbed finishing. While my C7s appeared coolly competent in black , I’m sure that the same speaker in any of Snell’s standard or special-order hardwoods would look spectacular.
SETUP
Once you unbox and place the C7s, each weighing in at 95 pounds (I had help!), you’ll have some decisions to make. Like nearly all Snells, the towers have several user-selectable setup switches. You can adjust the front tweeter level using Cut, Normal, or Boost settings, switch Boundary Compensation to Normal or Boundary ( this invokes a mid bass-cut to curb “woofiness” with close-to-wall placements), and turn the rear-firing tweeter on or off. (A feature dating back to Snell’s original Type A, the rear-firing tweeter helps the speaker deliver smoother, full-hemisphere power response at high frequencies.)
From long experience I had a pretty good idea how I’d want these settings adjusted after hooking the C7s up to my 200-watt-per-channel amp. But I did my due diligence anyway, listening, moving, and adjusting before settling on a front tweeter-cut, Boundary-on, and rear -tweeter-enabled configuration.
MUSIC & MORE
A recording like Language of the Soul,from Boston-based Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, is what you might call high-end homespun: Laid down in a fine local studio with minimal intervention between mikes and master tape, its sound is at once intimate and clean, conveying all the nuance of Earl’s playing (and his guitar-tone-über alles vintage rigs) and that of the rock-steady Broadcasters on Hammond B3 and piano, bass, and drums. Heard over the Snells, a mid tempo shuffle like “Green Light” showcased Earl’s relaxed virtuosity to perfection; whatever the opposite of “in your face” is, Ronnie Earl is it. (I love him because one day, years ago, at luthier Jim Mooradian’s shop in Cambridge, he picked up my beat-up ’64 Fender , played a chorus or two, and said, “Now that’s how a Strat should play!”) The Broadcasters disc showcased the C7s’ extraordinary midrange and treble clarity. I could effortlessly “aural-ize” Earl’s ’50 s tweed Fender amp (Super? Bassman?), while the whirly grit of Bruce Katz’s B3 organ Leslie cabinet was supernaturally real, and every pick attack or snare-drum stroke was gorgeously vivid.
For a 68-second display of the Snells’ full-range abilities, I turned repeatedly to the obscure snippet “Fanfare for the Signal Corps” by American composer Howard Hanson, on Telarc SACD. The distinct timbres of snare and side drums remained razor sharp as the volume crescendoed . And when brass, timpani, and finally deep bass drum joined the fray, the C7’s total acoustic power and range was arresting .
The soundstage created by the C7 pair was nearly as impressive as its breadth and detail. They produced a perfectly seamless virtual stage reaching just a bit beyond each speaker. And while this carried only moderate depth, the precision of the front-to-back dimension and the overall spatial stability of instruments and voices were as good as I’ve heard. I t was dramatically evident throughout the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (Zander; Philharmonia) on another Telarc SACD. The spatial and tonal clarity of the soft bass drum, despite its very low tones, combined with pinpoint woodwind locations for a powerfully convincing effect.
And vocals! Suzanne Vega’s utterly unprocessed, bare-naked voice on the a cappella “Tom’s Diner” from Solitude Standing was heart-stoppingly present, with each element — breath, resonance, articulation, even tube-microphone glow — effortlessly rendered.
I’m not meaning to gush. I manfully tried to find flaws in the C7s’ performance. At very high volume levels they sounded a shade brighter and harder — which made me suspicious. I tried the pair bi amplified with four identical 200-watt power-amp channels driving their low- and high-frequency sections independently. The result was to pretty much banish the effect (t hough I confess that my ears were giving out at that level anyway), thus confirming my diagnosis of amplifier clipping, rather than loudspeaker distress, as the prime suspect. I also detected a touch of emphasis in the 70 - 140 Hz octave, but compared with the bass-to-midbass sins of most full-range tower speakers, this was so inconsequential as hardly to merit mention.
This is a stereo speaker-pair review, but in the name of science I also threw a few movie scenes at the Snells with my everyday center and surrounds — which were a very good tonal match for the ultra-accurate C7s — in the mix. The verdict: Yes, you can really assemble a subwoofer-less home theater based around the C7s. They produce enough low bass to make such a setup possible . For instance, on the classic T .rex footfalls from Jurassic Park, the C7s easily delivered the desired cinematic effect: The earth shook, flesh crept, and geese bumped as required . However, when I replayed this sequence (and others) with my everyday sub dialed in for an LFE/ double-bass setup (front left and right speakers allowed to roll off naturally), I regained that last layer of infra-bass massiveness that you simply cannot attain without mad amounts of acoustic output below 30 Hz.
BOTTOM LINE
Okay, so I liked these speakers. A lot. They’re really, really good. They’re also $6,000 a pair, which means a full home-theater system with complementary Snell speakers at center, surround, and sub positions can add up to a $10,000 proposition. While other speakers in that price range can also deliver great sound, Snell’s C7 is one of the best I know at balancing three (often antithetical) sets of virtues: audiophile depth, air, impact , and all that other unquantifiable stuff; ruthlessly accurate, full-range frequency response with carefully engineered directivity for correct in-room balance ; and enormous dynamic potential — enough to convey the full loudness scale of a symphony orchestra (or a garage band, close up) without stress or limiting.
Is my opinion tainted by long acquaintance? Skewed? Not to be trusted? Probably. But that doesn’t change Snell’s C7 speakers themselves. Anyone seriously looking for speakers in this price range should solicit an in-depth audition and judge for him- or herself.
TEST BENCH
Frequency response (at 2 meters)
Front left/right: 36 Hz to 16.1 kHz ±4.6 dB
Sensitivity (SPL at 1 meter with 2.8 volts of pink-noise input)
Front left/right: 89 dB
Impedance (minimum/nominal)
Front left/right: 2.3/5 ohms
Bass limits (lowest frequency and maximum SPL with limit of 10% distortion at 2 meters in a large room)
Front left/right: 32 Hz at 80 dB
Subwoofer: 32 Hz at 80 dB SPL
87 dB average SPL from 32 to 62 Hz
91 dB maximum SPL at 40-50 Hz
Bandwidth uniformity 95%
All of the curves in the frequency-response graph are weighted to reflect how sound arrives at a listeners ears with normal speaker placement. The curve for the left/right front channels reflects response of the C7 with the speaker standing on the floor averaged over a ±30º window. Because the speaker will always be used on a floor, measurements were taken with the speaker on a floor in a large room. All measurements were taken at 2 meters, a span that emulates a typical listening distance, allows a larger speaker such as the C7 to fully integrate acoustically, and, unlike near-field measurements, incorporates front panel reflections, grille effects, and cabinet diffraction.
The C7 is a wide-radiating speaker. At ±30º its directivity remains uniform to 10 kHz, and even at ±45º off-axis directivity is uniform up to 6 kHz. The major response characteristics are a small 2 dB floor bounce centered at 190 Hz, a pair of 3-4 dB elevations centered at 450 and 3 kHz, and a gently falling treble balance above around 3 kHz. The speaker’s Boost and Cut high-frequency controls simply allow about 1 dB of increase or decrease of treble above 1.5 kHz and the Boundary switch position cuts output below 300 Hz by an increasing amount to approximately 6 dB at 30 Hz. The speaker’s unusually low impedance may limit use with older amplifiers. For example, impedance hovers near or below 4 ohms from 60 to 430 Hz and 5.4 ohms beyond that point up to 17 kHz.
The C7’s good low-frequency performance lets it deliver bass output that’s in many respects equivalent to a smaller 10-inch powered subwoofer. For this reason, I tested it as though it were a subwoofer, with mid-room placement. My main point here is that its response is dynamically pretty flat to 40 Hz, and it still delivers an honest 80 dB at 32 Hz. The SPL numbers are for a single C7 speaker; when used as a stereo pair you can estimate roughly a 3 dB increase in SPL.
— Tom Nousaine