ndividual Performance and Reviewer Comments
I'm also going to throw out a few observations I had outside of the shootout while I still had the speakers to play with, so take the comments in italics with a grain of salt - they're my opinion and the group might not agree:
Behringer B2030P - "Great bass; Clean voice; Natural/Neutral". As mentioned above, scored quite high in all categories. Very impressive for the price.
Performed well in a large room, but for me their best roll is for near-field music listening on either side of my desk.
Yamaha NS-333 - "Neutral; Rich; Spacious; Crisp; Full". The NS-333 recorded the top score in 4 categories, more than any other. It lost out to the Behringer in Off-Axis and mid-range performance. Almost too close to call.
We didn't rate appearance, but the piano black finish put it miles ahead of most of the others.
Yamaha NS-6490 - "Rich, deep, solid bass; Clean, but perhaps harsh at volume; Detailed". This was the only 3-way speaker in the group. It didn't score quite as high as the other front-runners in bass and sound stage categories, but still managed to beat out the two above for the overall "Preferred speaker".
One of the largest, but also one of the lightest - and the least expensive of the group, we were so surprised it came out on top we had to listen to it again to make sure my son hadn't made a serious error in his record-keeping.
Regarding the "harsh at volume" comment: We sometimes had the feeling we were expecting too much of these minimal speakers in a medium/large space at reference volume levels, but only rarely and during a few specific music passages did we suspect that any speaker might be approaching its limits. I imagine some music or movie soundtracks might be even more taxing than we were, and since my son was obviously hoping we would blow something up, we just kept on, loud and lively.
Infinity Primus P162 - "Huge sound; Rich, deep, natural". Another of the very consistent scorers, it lost just a little ground in Off-Axis performance and depth of sound stage. One reviewer commented, "bit reserved mids" when it came up against the 3-way NS-6490 which scored highest in that category. Otherwise, mids scored pretty well.
I cheated a bit on selecting this speaker since there were two other "lesser" Primus models (the P142 & P152) that would have been more appropriate in an entry-level shootout. But, the P162 was (and still is) so hugely popular at the Audioholics Store, I wanted to hear it (since that's what started this whole thing). I've spent a little more time with this pair than the others after the shootout, and in the smaller room I have them in now, the performance is excellent.
Aperion Audio Intimus 4B - "Musical!; Clean, airy; Very nice, but need a little depth; Very clean top end; Could use better lows". These small speakers took top marks in Quality of highs and "Natural" sound, and pretty good scores in the Sound Stage areas. The lows did tend to disappear, though.
I tried this pair in my office, and with a low frequency spec only down to 120Hz this speaker cries out for a subwoofer. So, I accommodated it with the Chrysalis Starfire 10 I somehow forgot to return to its owner, and it made a world of difference. The small sub and tiny speakers really perform well together, especially at lower levels in the smaller space. My wife wants the speakers in her craft room because they're so "pretty and cute" in the piano black finish - sans subwoofer of course.
EMP EF30 - "Crisp; Flat response; Lows a bit too subtle". Another consistent score across all categories except bass.
Once again, I brought out the stolen... I mean borrowed... Chrysalis Starfire 10 subwoofer, and once again a fairly dramatic change. One thing I discovered about these speakers quite by accident: I was comparing the various bookshelves to my center speaker to see if one model had a better timbre match for a pair of towers, and found this pair to have the cleanest, clearest dialog performance of all of them. So I tried them as surrounds and found them very nice and detailed with the battle scene from Master and Commander. Made me want to try the towers with them sometime as a theater system ...next shootout maybe.
Polk Audio R15 - "Bass breakup; A bit tinny; Un-natural voice". Only 3 speakers scored less than a 3 average (and the Pinnacle doesn't count anyway), and this was one of them. The consensus was that the music just sounded too artificial even for a budget speaker. Even with this many speakers, everyone readily identified it the second time around. Someone said, "There’s that cop bullhorn again." I think this is an older model and may have been revised or replaced by now anyway.
Pinnacle P5.2 - These speakers caused a bit of good-natured ribbing at my expense when I admitted they were from my own theater system - just added to 'round out the field.' Even though I had recently replaced all the Pinnacles in my theater with a different brand, I'd always been happy with their performance and expected them to do well. The evaluation comments ranged from "Overly bright" and "Harsh" to just "ACK!." Even I rated them lower than their competition, and I had always thought them to be very detailed without being too bright. I still think that about the P6.3 towers, so maybe my satisfaction with the 5.2's as surrounds wasn't too far off the mark. The average overall rating was 2.64.
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Re: Puesta en marcha NAD T-758. Primeras impresiones
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Y no digamos ya a novel de THD vs SPL donde las Infiity le meten un buen repaso a las otras comentadas gracias a su mejor calidad de drivers....
