Flat-panel TV is the 900-pound gorilla currently ruling the home theater roost. More and more people are deciding that, yeah, a steep price, grayish blacks, and the occasional digital video glitch really are worth it for a hang-on-the-wall TV that's big, bright, and bodacious — décor-wise.
Of course, hulking, boxy, out-in-the-room speakers tend to spoil the effect of these flat-panel beauties — which is why ultra-thin on-wall speakers have become a hot trend in home theater sound. To see how some of the higher-end speaker manufacturers are meeting the on-wall challenge, we summoned surround systems from KEF (KHT 9000 ACE satellites with the PSW 2150 subwoofer, $5,100), M&K Sound (MP-150 satellites with MX-700 sub, $6,394), and Thiel (ViewPoint front speakers with SCS3 surrounds and SS2 sub, $12,030).
| Test Setup |
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I set up each suite of wall-mountable speakers in my home theater studio in turn, with the front left/right models all flanking my 42-inch Gateway plasma HDTV monitor. They were placed on stands at TV height, bang-on flush against the wall, which yields the same sound as actual wall mounting. The center speakers for the KEF and M&K systems (Thiel opts out of a center channel) also went against the wall, just below the bottom of the screen. Many people mount center speakers above the screen, but I think below is better unless the screen is really low. The surround speakers went on high shelves or stands against the side walls just behind the listening position, and the subwoofers occupied my usual location to the left of the left front speaker. |
KEF KHT 9000 ACE
British brand KEF has a long and eminent history of serious speaker design. Its current engineering keystone is the Uni-Q driver, which puts a compact dome tweeter in the center of a woofer/midrange cone. This coaxial arrangement allows all of the sound to come from a common point and also helps to disperse the sound evenly across the listening area — both Very Good Things according to the Hogwarts Manual of Speaker Design . KEF's new flagship on-wall speaker is the KHT 9000 ACE, a slim, Uni-Q tower just 5 inches deep that's designed to hang on a wall or mesh with a selection of equally slim stands to form dramatically thin towers. ACE stands for Acoustic Compliance Enhancement, a new KEF enclosure technology aimed at coaxing more bass from small boxes (see www.kef.com/technology/acoustic/acoustic.html for details).
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We used the KHT 9000 ACE for all five main channels. One advantage of a coaxial driver array is that the sonic character and coverage change very little whether the speaker is vertical or horizontal. And KEF's clever mounting system lets you orient it either way, on the wall or on a stand.
Clever as it is, however, struggling with the mounting system was no fun. The parts are nicely machined and very attractive, but the wordless manual full of cryptic pictures, the curved, almost-symmetrical parts that might go this way or that, and screws that were about two threads too short for one of the configurations made for a hair-tearing experience. Do yourself a favor — let a professional installer set these up!
Once they were in place, though, the KEF speakers looked elegant flanking my plasma TV. The KHT 9000 ACE can be used with or without a subwoofer, but for real home theater action you should definitely use a sub. Nonetheless, the 6 1 / 2 -inch Uni-Q driver flanked by two 6 1 / 2 -inch woofers produced enough low bass to be fairly impressive from a speaker this small and shallow — presumably a credit to the ACE enclosure technology.
PERFORMANCE Played without a sub, full-range stereo pop music — like Elvis Costello's orchestral-jazz ballad-fest North on Super Audio CD (there's also a surround mix) — sounded impressively detailed and clear, with big, rich bass. I did note that the KHT 9000s sounded slightly but distinctly better at higher volumes powered by my 150-watt-per-channel separate amp than they did fed by a midprice 100-watt A/V receiver. (This proved to be true of the M&K and Thiel systems as well.)
Either way, what I heard sounded very smooth and slightly warm, but with outstandingly even, open, uncolored vocals. Some thickness in the lower midrange tinged what was otherwise a nearly ideal tonal balance. But that's what happens when you put speakers on the wall instead of out in the room, and I've heard the same effect from almost every on-wall I've listened to.
With a subwoofer in the mix, though, I could get close to the ideal by controlling the balance between the sub and the satellites. We chose to test this system with the compact PSW 2150 sub, but you could also use one of KEF's larger and more powerful (and more expensive) models — or any other suitable sub. I used a standard 80-Hz crossover with the 2150, which tightened things up discernibly, adding another full octave to the system's deep bass.
The KHT 9000 ACE proved to be a marvelously capable center speaker, sounding almost identical to its vertically oriented front L/R companions. And this stayed true even when I sat well off to the side of my usual listening position — like that spot you get stuck with at the end of the sofa when you arrive last after thoughtfully grabbing the chips and dip. The only real changes were that the sound became slightly brighter and more focused when I moved directly in front of the Uni-Q tweeter. This was especially apparent with treble-rich music. But there were none of the shifts in the lower-midrange sound — most easily heard on male voices — that you'll hear with most horizontal center speakers sporting a classic woofer/tweeter/woofer layout.
The KHT 9000 ACE's ability to sound essentially the same whether positioned horizontally or vertically made it an especially good surround speaker — particularly for someone like me who usually prefers the more diffuse sound of dipoles and bipoles for movie watching. The surrounds did a fine job with ambient sounds like the storm in Chapter 7 of Kevin Costner's unabashed compendium of Western clichés, Open Range . The thunder rolled realistically while sheets of rain moved convincingly across the sound field.
The PSW 2150 subwoofer was a competent performer, with solid extension (down to about 35 Hz in my room) and good output — plenty to match the KHT 9000s for movie listening in a moderate-size room. With multichannel music at rock-club levels, the five KHT 9000s could outstrip the PSW 2150, though by a relatively narrow margin. So for really no-holds-barred home theater, you might want to consider a more powerful subwoofer.
PDF: Fast Facts
PDF: In the Lab
M&K Sound MP-150
Unlike our other two low-carb entries, this system from M&K Sound makes no effort to match flat-panel TV sets in sleekness or shininess. But its five identical satellites are only 5 1 / 2 inches deep. The MP-150 is a conventional small, black-box two-way speaker, very much in keeping with the California firm's no-nonsense, pro-audio approach to design. M&K somehow managed to cram into a wall-mountable cabinet two midrange/bass drivers and its typical three-tweeter vertical array, which controls how much of the sound “spills” to the ceiling and floor. To go with the MP-150s, the company sent its MX-700 subwoofer.
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The face of the MP-150 is angled slightly so that you can aim the front left/right pair either slightly up or down according to the height of your TV. (I angled mine up since my plasma is centered a bit below the ideal center position on the wall.) The metal slide-mount wall bracket is supremely simple and effective, and it adds less than a half inch of depth — just enough to route speaker wires if they're not in the wall.
PERFORMANCE Two-channel listening revealed the MP-150 to be a straightforward performer. It sounded clear, dynamic, and slightly “dark” in the upper midrange. It also had extended, highly focused treble, but it didn't have the harshness I remember from similar M&K speakers.
You could probably use the MP-150s on their own for casual music listening, but for anything more demanding, you'll want to add a sub. When I balanced the MX-700 subwoofer with the MP-150s, the sound was rich, “fast,” and full of precise dynamic shadings. In fact, the M&K offered the most focused stereo imaging of our three systems. Instruments and voices were stable and positioned exactly where the mix put them. It sounded like I was sitting in the control room listening to Costello's gorgeously recorded vocals right off the North master tapes.
Sound this intimately detailed can occasionally be a bit too “close” for stereo listening, but multichannel playback brought the Californians fully into their own. With five MP-150s arrayed around my listening room, the multichannel mix of North sounded awesome, and movie soundtracks blended seamlessly across the three front channels — every word of dialogue was clearly audible.
The MP-150s performed fine as surround speakers. If you place them high on the side walls, you can take advantage of their tilted faces to angle the cabinets up and bounce the sound off the ceiling for a more diffuse, dipole-like sound. Or you can angle them down for the more direct sound that often works best with multichannel music. And the MP-150's vertical array is an asset in the center position, where it keeps off-axis sound very even. Its image and tone both remained amazingly stable and consistent even when I moved to either end of my couch.
Small box speakers aren't always the most dynamically capable, but the M&Ks were an exception. With the MX-700 sub dialed in, this system played far louder than I'd ever ask for in real-life listening — with no signs of stress.
While the M&Ks were set up, I surfed across Biker Boyz on HBO-HD (I'll watch anything with motorcycles). The system pounded out the hip-hop soundtrack at absurd levels without breaking a sweat, and the high-winding sport bikes revved smoothly across the front trio with perfect continuity. The MX-700 sub is a compact design (though the amp's cooling fins protrude a good bit) with substantial grunt. It didn't match the Thiel sub's amazing low-bass output on stuff like the U-571 depth charges, but it wasn't all that far off — and it did it at a quarter the price and half the size. I loved the MX-700's compactness, but if you need super-loud deep bass in a big room, consider a bigger subwoofer. M&K makes several good ones.
PDF: Fast Facts
PDF: In the Lab
Thiel ViewPoint
Well respected in audiophile circles for its two-channel systems, Kentucky's Thiel Audio has recently embraced multichannel playback as well with unusual systems like the ViewPoint. The front left/right speakers, with their elegantly machined brushed-aluminum cabinets, are made to order to match your plasma TV. There's no center speaker because Thiel believes that the ViewPoint's “coherent source” design makes one unnecessary. Thiel also believes you should avoid mounting front speakers at different heights, which is inevitable with a center speaker in a plasma-based system.
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The ViewPoint has a triangular cross section, which means that when the cabinets are placed on either side of your TV, the drivers actually fire away from the listening position rather than toward it. Each speaker has just one woofer, with the tweeter nestled coaxially. You mount the pair flush against the wall, using holes behind the grilles and running a screw or bolt into a wall anchor. And since the big, heavy metal binding posts are located on the inner edge of the cabinets, they're likely to be concealed behind the TV's undercut bezel.
PERFORMANCE The ViewPoint's unusual cabinet means that the baffles are “toed out” — just the opposite of how we're used to seeing front L/R speakers arrayed. The look is elegant, but how did this unorthodox arrangement sound? Sparklingly clear and exceptionally spacious, as it turned out.
The Thiels were perceptibly brighter than either the KEF or M&K front speakers, but not “hot” or “trebly.” The stereo mix on the Super Audio CD version of Costello's North sounded supremely open and three-dimensional. And the ViewPoints made it easy to compare the SACD and CD two-channel formats. Tracks like “Someone Took the Words Away” sounded more effortless and open on the SACD, with a more dramatic sense of depth — the sound extended both out to the listening position and “behind” the front wall.
The Thiels also sounded distinctly different from most other on-walls in the sense of space they created from stereo sources. I could hear this immediately by listening to applause. Where the KEF and M&K front L/R pairs produced a tight, between-the-speakers sound, the ViewPoints radiated a palpably wider, more spacious soundstage — probably because their wider dispersion pattern was creating more reflections from the side walls.
Thiel's SCS3 surround speakers are probably a little too good for the job, with the same sizes of coaxial drivers as in the ViewPoint. But their broad, controlled sound served the system well. The surrround channels of top-flight SACD and DVD-Audio discs sounded gorgeously cohesive and transparent. The multichannel layer of the Costello SACD sounded wonderful, with the subtle vibes, strings, and brushwork on the drums elegantly defined. Cueing up a big-orchestra SACD — like the San Francisco Symphony's reading of the Mahler Fourth under Michael Tilson Thomas — was a visceral pleasure, with large, lifelike, ultra-dynamic high-end sound from all positions in the multichannel mix.
Thiel's “Who needs a center speaker?” approach meant that I had a 4.1- rather than a 5.1-channel setup. This worked very well, but I had to stay within a relatively narrow listening area. In my room, this meant I could move about one position to either side of my centered listening spot when I sat 9 or 10 feet from the screen. If I moved any farther to the left or the right, the sound “pulled” to the closer speaker. If you set this system up in a large room and sit well away from the TV — say, more than three times the diagonal size of your screen — everything should sound fine.
The system's clarity and definition made sure I never missed a word of dialogue, and its impressive dynamics came through on even the most demanding soundtracks. For example, the 15-minute gunfight climax of Open Range had an attention-getting, visceral punch, with sternum-striking detonations. But you could also easily tell which gun was being fired by its sonic signature.
Of course, some of the credit for the system's impact goes to the SS2 sub. Thiel recommends using it with the company's PX 02 external passive crossover ($350), a simple “black box” (silver, actually) with a pair of heavy-duty speaker-level inputs (for cables from your left/right front speaker outputs) and a single balanced-XLR line-level output to the sub. There's also a conventional RCA input for a separate LFE (low-frequency effects) connection from a preamp/processor. For home theater use, you connect both.
Thiel gets excused for including a sub that costs almost as much as either of the other two complete systems because it's the only one the company makes — and it's a doozy. The SS2 equaled the best subs I've tried in my system in almost every way. In the famous depth-charge sequence from the U-571 DVD, it slammed me about, awakening room rattles I thought I'd chased down and cured long ago. Is it worth nearly $5,000? Couldn't say — I've never seen $5,000 all in the same place — but I can tell you that it's one hell of a sub.
PDF: In the Lab
The Bottom Line
So has our search for the ideal speaker system for flat-panel TVs come to an end? Not yet — but we're getting amazingly close. Any of these setups is a colossal upgrade from the pathetic microspeakers far too many flat-screen owners select for “invisible” sound.
Thiel's unusual ViewPoint system seems a natural choice for anyone who's also a serious two-channel audioholic — or for the price-no-object, minimal-visual-impact crowd (it clearly wins the prize for flat-TV compatibility). The more traditional M&K MP-150 system might be the best bet for those who simply want dead serious, full-range home theater performance at fair value, without too much fuss over styling. And KEF's KHT 9000 ACE system does a nice job of splitting the difference: reasonable price, great sound on music and movies, and more than elegant looks. Best of all, whichever one you choose, you won't have to worry about any big boxes intruding on your flat-screen paradise.