Test of PSB Image T6/C5/S5/Subsonic 5i speakers

PSB set of speakers from the renewed Image series pleased us with its versatility. And though it was not the first in all the points of the test program, but it did not fail. In addition, it is worth noting the decent musicality of the new flagships of the Image T6 series, which we advise to pay attention to those who are going to build or improve their stereo system, allocating a budget of about 40-50 thousand Dollars for acoustics.

CONSTRUCTION: Paul Barton’s Canadian company PSB has substantially modernized its lineup over the years, introducing two new lines, Synchrony and Imagine. Now it’s the turn of the upgrades to the Image series, about to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Before the “chip” of the series was the modular design of the front panels of the speakers, which were typed from the same type of units with the speakers and made of non-resonant plastic, in the design of the new speakers you can feel a strong influence of these older lines, especially Imagine. There’s also the curved profile of the front panels and the use of yellow composite MF/LF driver diaphragms. Another distinctive feature of all the new PSB series speakers is the hidden screws attaching the drive units to the front of the speakers, hidden behind rubber washers. The MDF cabinets come with thick, 26-mm-thick faceplates. True, unlike the top range PSBs Image speakers are not finished in veneer, but in black ash or cherry veneer. Floor-standing speakers stand on slightly protruding four plastic feet, which have room for spikes or rubber washers.

The front speakers of the set are the older models of the T6 series. With this example it is easy to show that PSB engineers did not just modify the Image speaker, but completely redesigned it. 25mm tweeters with titanium dome, equipped with neodymium magnets and coil cooling by ferromagnetic liquid, are borrowed from the new higher series, earlier aluminum was used in the squeakers. The midrange/midrange drivers are the same caliber as before, 133mm for the midrange and 165mm for the bass. But the old “Images” used polymer cones metallized with aluminum foil, but the new ones use die-cast polypropylene diaphragms reinforced with clay and ceramics. The midrange driver is now built into the closed compartment of the cabinet, although the bass drivers are fitted with large front reflex ports in the old fashioned way. The T6 crossover is built with 4th order Linquitz-Riley and 3rd order Butterworth filters with separation at 2.2 kHz and 500 Hz.

“Center” Image C5 has a phase-inverter enclosure with a port on the rear panel, the speaker is equipped with a 25 mm titanium tweeter and two bass/midrange speakers with composite membranes with a diameter of 133 mm. The working range of the drivers is divided at 1.8 kHz by 4th order Linquitz-Riley filters.

Rear speakers Image S5 made in a closed box, have bipolar directivity and are equipped with two pairs of speakers, consisting of a 25 mm tweeter and 133 mm midwoofer with a frequency division of 1.8 kHz LR 4 .

The Subsonic 5i subwoofer has a slightly curved front panel, the bottom of which is made of plastic. Plastic insert frames the sockets of two identical inverters and has controls of bass level and crossover cut-off frequency 50-150 Hz . On the back of the case are the phase shift toggle switches 0/180 deg. and deactivation of the built-in crossover, RCA line inputs, high-level inputs and outputs with universal terminals. Woofer with polypropylene cone with a diameter of 250 mm is located on the front of the unit and covered with removable plastic grill with black cloth jacket. The subwoofer uses a 150 watt BASH amplifier, equipped with MOSFET output field-effect transistors.

SOUND

The front speakers of T6 sound a lot like the flagships of the old Image T65 lineup. But retaining all the positive features of its predecessors, the Image T6 revealed to us many new commendable qualities. The speakers have even tonal balance with insignificant accentuation of the range edges, deep bass with good dynamics, and comfortable sound in the middle with the naturalness of the main timbres. Slightly emphasized low middle gives solidity to the sound of male vocals, and on the whole gives a pleasant warmth to the sound. The speakers do not have the annoying dryness of the upper midrange common to many speakers in this class. We noted that the use of an isolated midrange driver in its compartment made the speakers sound more accurate and intelligible in this area compared to the Image T65. The disks are handled clearly, the cymbals and percussion loops go far and are quite clearly worked out. The stage is wide along the azimuth and at the same time has a visible depth. Of course, the T6 speakers are not cheap, so they have their difficulties, for example, related to the localization of images in the far echelons of the scene, the bass could be faster and more deliberate, and a nice warmth of the low middle could be mistaken for coloring, but these points have not prevented the author enjoy listening to music of different genres.

In the movie set PSB showed good dynamics of sound, intelligible, tied to the on-screen dialogues. I liked the volume and homogeneity of the surround sound panorama, although the far-off plans are covered with the usual stereo veil. However, in the theater program the PSB set was more of a “good” than an “excellent” – in several DCs in the test the bass was more articulate, and the panorama in the near field was slightly more contrasted, involving the viewer’s imagination more actively in the action played out. On the other hand, not everybody watches only action movies, PSB acoustics coped with multi-channel music perfectly well.

9765 Dollars.