(^62) [ April May 2019 [soundandvision.com
test report
The Verdict
PSB’s long-running Alpha Series
has been a value leader for more
than 25 years. Now in their third
generation, these speakers sound
equally good with music and
movies, and the value quotient is
stronger than ever.
the drum kit well behind, yet
tightly focused between, the
speakers, “Last Plane Out” by
Toy Matinee showed me what
was possible with the PSB
towers. Lower-cost speakers
are oen be voiced in a way that
aempts to make them sound
bigger than they are, but the
neutrality of the T20's response
let me savor the midrange detail
in the music. To be honest,
switching between the T20s
used straight-up by themselves
and a 2.1 setup supplemented
by the subwoofer didn’t bring
much benefit with most record-
ings, and I oen found myself
preferring the sonic coher-
ency of the un-augmented
T20s. Comparing them with
my eight-times-as-expensive
Synchrony One tower speakers
might sound prey unfair, but
doing so served to highlight the
T20's similarities rather than
its deficiencies. Sure, the T20
tower can’t go as deep in the
bass, nor does it have the same
level of clarity and articulation
in the midrange and highs that
its bigger brother provides,
but it was clear to me that both
speakers come from the same
gene pool.
reviewed manage to extract
from it. The SubSeries 250
subwoofer unleashed plenty
of deep bass energy as Bond
managed to pull a plane up just
before crashing, the engine’s
low throb making my floor
vibrate and teacup rale.
CONCLUSION
The budget loudspeaker space
has become crowded in recent
years, with various flavor-of-
the-month designs coming
along and disappearing just as
quickly. Through it all, PSB has
steadily sold its Alpha Series
speakers. Like the preceding
generation, these new Alphas
are not the flashiest, biggest, or
loudest speakers around, but
they have a neutral sound and
do prey much everything well
at a down-to-earth price. Just
as no kid has a Toyota Corolla
picture pinned up on their
bedroom wall, these aren’t the
kind of speakers that an audio-
phile will put on a dream-gear
list. That said, speakers like the
Alphas are the ones that people
actually buy, and happily listen
with over time.
Does anyone still listen to
surround music? With the
current growth of streamed
music, along with fading
interest in SACD and DVD-
Audio, it seems that surround
music is on the downswing. I
still find it to be an essential part
of any surround speaker system
test, however, so I slipped a
DVD-Audio disc of the final
Talking Heads album Naked into
my Oppo player and listened to
“(Nothing But) Flowers.” This
is a great, immersive mix, with
drums and vocals locked to the
front stage and lots of percus-
sion spread throughout. Johnny
Marr from The Smiths makes a
guest appearance on this song,
and his instantly recognizable
guitar is mixed mostly into the
surround channels. This track
provided an opportunity to
hear how well the various Alpha
models tonally matched with
each other—a benefit derived
from all that blind testing.
Of course, the primary
reason people buy a surround
sound system is to enhance
their movie-watching experi-
ence. The opening scene of
the old James Bond favorite
GoldenEye offers a good mix
of explosive action as 007
aempts to escape from a
chemical weapons facility. The
Alphas did a fine job of keeping
dialogue clear and understand-
able as chaos broke out all
around in this scene, although
the system didn’t quite deliver
the sledgehammer dynamics
that some speaker systems I’ve
ahead with no toe-in. The C10
center sat between them on a
tall stand that set its drivers at
around the same height as the
tweeters on the T20s. The P3
surrounds were set up near the
side walls slightly behind the
listening seat and raised about
a foot above my ears. The P3
uses an inverted layout with
the tweeter positioned below
the woofer, an arrangement
that PSB says helps to maintain
phase coherence for a standing
listener. I was concerned that
this may have the opposite
effect in my setup where the
listener is seated well below
the speaker, so I experimented
with turning them upside down.
Ultimately, I found that they
performed best when used as
designed.
The SubSeries 250
subwoofer was placed in the
front le corner of the room and
turned so that its driver faced
directly at the listening position.
It was fed an LFE signal from
the Onkyo TX-NR787 receiver I
used for my evaluation, with the
crossover duties performed by
the Onkyo. (I also tried out the
T20 towers with a number of
high-end stereo amps.) Finding
the ideal crossover point for the
T20s proved tricky, as seing it
too high created a dip in output
around the crossover region.
Normally a phase control helps
here, but I found the beer solu-
tion was to set the receiver’s
crossover at 60 Hz and take
advantage of the speaker's
impressive bass extension.
PERFORMANCE
Aer breaking the system in
by using it to watch TV for a
few days, I began my critical
listening with two-channel
music played full-range through
the T20s without a sub. Right
out of the gate, familiar PSB
hallmarks such as an articulate
and detailed midrange and
powerful, dynamic bass were
easy to hear. With its punchy,
articulate bass line and a
soundstage depth that placed
ALPHA T20 5.25 in polypropylene cone
woofers (2), 0.75 in dome tweeter with wave-
guide; 6.75 x 32.5 x 9.5 in (WxHxD); 26.2 lb
ALPHA C 10 5.25 in polypropylene cone
woofers (2), 0.75 in dome tweeter with wave-
guide; 17.75 x 6.75 x 9.5 in (WxHxD); 17 lb
ALPHA P3 4 in polypropylene cone woofer, 0.75 in aluminum
dome tweeter with waveguide; 5.2 x 8.7 x 6.8 in (WxHxD); 4.9 lb
SUBSERIES 250 10 in polypropylene cone woofer; 200 was
RMS (300W dynamic peak); sealed; stereo RCA line level in;
stereo RCA line level out (80 Hz high pass filter); line level LFE
in; line level LFE out; speaker level in; speaker level out (full
range); 13.7 x 13.7 x 13.7 (WxHxD); 42 lb
Specs
PSB ALPHA T20 SPEAKER SYSTEM
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