LOUDSPEAKERS

go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards
EQUIPMENT REVIEW - PSB Imagine T2
Similar things happened with larger-scaled
music. John Eargle’s recording of the Shchedrin
arrangement for percussion and strings of music
from Bizet’s Carmen [Delos] presented the
percussion in particular as totally detached from
the speakers and indeed from the listening room.
Of course, all well-set-up stereo speakers do this
to some extent. But the T2s do it rather better
than almost all others I’ve reviewed.
And on this Delos recording, the dynamic
power of the T2s came to the fore. There is a
good deal of banging around in this percussion
tour de force—along with, in other spots, many
delicate subtleties. Everything came through
remarkably well, the banging and the subtleties
both, with the speaker maintaining a relaxed,
clean, apparently distortion-less sound even at
the more extreme moments, and an unforced
clarity in the quiet spots.
I mentioned above how smooth the speaker was
off-axis. Now what all that techno stuff is likely to
add up in listening terms is that the speaker will
be quite neutral in almost any reasonable room
environment. Of course any speaker will change
sound in rooms of different liveliness, in a hard
room versus a soft room. As it happened, I tried
the T2s at length in both my living room—an
ordinary domestic room of medium liveliness—
and my audio room, which is heavily damped and
less lively in the top end than an ordinary room.
The T2s did well in both. But it was in the less live
room that the T2s really came into their own. The
sense of sound-from-no-speaker was intensified,
and the tonal truthfulness was extraordinary.
A Few Limitations
No speaker is perfect and all have certain
limitations. The T2’s list of negatives is short and
not very emphatic but here are a few points: First
of all, the bass and mid/treble do not entirely
coalesce at very close listening positions. The
bass drivers are spread out and contoured for
a purpose—the arrangement minimizes floor
interaction problems as already discussed.
But the physical separation and transitional
crossover mean that the T2s do not work well as
“nearfield monitors”—at extremely close range
they sound like a small mid/treble speakers with
bass attached separately. At normal listening
distances, this ceases to be an issue at all and
things become remarkably integrated.
Second, the speakers are very smooth but
not totally flat, having a slightly contoured sound
in the upper mids. (There is, as noted, the high
treble peak, but this is too high to affect timbre
in the usual sense, though removing it by EQ
smoothes the sound subtlety.) The T2s are in
measured and listening terms slightly pulled back
around 1–2kHz, relative to the frequencies just
below. This does not affect perceived neutrality
so much as cause a slight “backing off” of the
image, an effect much to the good on a great
many recordings. Musically, this is a desirable
choice to my mind.
With its near perfection of pattern, an ongoing
PSB design criterion especially well done here,
the T2 is one speaker that is definitely DSPcorrection-ready—not
that it needs very much if
any correction, you understand. And one could
argue in this case that it really did not need any or
benefit much from any that was tried, depending
on the room. In the bass, only a rare, fortuitous
room/speaker combination does not benefit from
a bit of DSP touch-up. But in the midrange broadly
conceived I did not really want to change anything.
Few speakers get to that point on their own,
but here is one. Being as I am, I did experiment
with EQ settings, but flattening the speaker out
literally across the 1–6kHz region was not clearly
an improvement in listening terms: slightly more
accurate tonal character, but only slightly, and
rather less natural imaging behavior. Overall, I
tended to skip the EQ of anything in the midrange.
And even the slight bass emphasis from the room
seemed musically to the good, though of course
the bass would have needed correction to be
measurably perfect.
I seldom say this, being inclined to meddle and
in most cases finding things I think I can improve,
but in this case, letting well enough alone seemed
the way to go, except perhaps for getting rid of
the high-treble peak if you are so inclined.
In the live room, close to the walls of necessity
(the room is fairly narrow), with no corrections,
one heard a little midrange coloration, whether
from the slight 400–500Hz prominence or the
baffle step or something else it would be hard to
say for sure. But in the larger and deader room,
this went away.
One could really just revel in the realism of
the sound on good recordings. My old standby,
the Dallas Symphony/Mata recording of the
Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances on ProArte
sounded remarkably convincing and rather more
spacious than with most speakers—really (dare I
say it) like an orchestra.
The Big Picture
Like their PSB predecessors, the T2s are
exceptionally well-designed and represent
extraordinary value at the price. Their
performance in terms of their fundamental design
criteria—in particular, neutral smooth response
on- and off-axis—is so extraordinarily good that
there is not that much obvious competition near
the price range, if these are the things that count
for you (as they are for me!). But, whereas the
PSB T6s I reviewed earlier were so inexpensive
that there was really essentially nothing I could
think of at the price that would be competitive
in a full-range speaker, the T2s cost enough that
there is actually is some competition in the same
price range: the Gradient Evidence and various
BBC-related box monitors (e.g., Harbeth M30.1,
Stirling Broadcast LS3/6, etc.) come immediately
to my mind, but there are quite a few others.
Once speakers reach a certain level of neutrality,
then one begins to have to listen for one’s self as
to which exact choices please the most.
Can the T2s really be all that good Well, what
can I say In many fundamental ways—ways
which often escape other speakers, even those
at very high prices—the T2s get things right. Paul
Barton has been designing speakers for a long
time. But he just keeps getting better. The T2 is
a speaker to listen to carefully before you buy
anything else—even things that cost a lot more.
Or you could wait for Paul Barton to produce a
big statement speaker, price-no-object and
domestic compatibility ignored (I am waiting for
this myself). But what you already have in hand
with the T2 is one remarkable transducer. PSB
has a lot of dealers. A stop-in at one is definitely
recommended, with open ears and open mind
and forgetting about the modest price. I think you
will be not only impressed in audio terms but also
deeply attracted to their sound in musical ones.
64 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com
previous page
NEXT page