Évaluations - 3, GPA: 3.7
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by Chris Lewis Inside Gear Guide: • Infinity Interlude Speaker System • Sony KP-57XBR10W 57-Inch Rear- Projection HD Monitor • RCA DWD490RE UltimateTV DBS Receiver • Vienna Acoustics Mozart Speaker System Here we go again. You may remember my lamentations last month in the opening of the DTV Face Off about the cliche phrase “bridge technology,” a worn-out phrase that I shudder to use, given its widespread misuse and questionable origins. Of course, I then proceed to use it anyway. Well, it’s deja vu all over again, as it seems to me that the proper theme for an introduction to Infinity’s entry-level Interlude speaker line must be “trickle-down technology,” another hackneyed phrase that proves to be quite accurate in the Cordero Studios right context. And these particular Infinity speakers fit the bill, given that one of their most notable features is their use of some of the same top-shelf technologies that I very independent within the Harman fold—you could think of them as a small company within a large company. The trickle-down comes from the top of the Infinity line, not elsewhere. Outside the listening room, I root for the little guy as much as anybody. Inside the listening room, when I sit down to evaluate a speaker, I couldn’t care less where it comes from, who makes it, what color it is, or just about anything else. The only thing I care about is what it sounds like. These trickle-down technolo- gies can be summed up with, well, several letters—C.M.M.D. and R.A.B.O.S. Since you all read my work religiously (ha!), I won’t go into quite the detail on each that I did in the Prelude review, but the highlights bear retelling. C.M.M.D. (Ceramic Metal went on about in my review of the flagship Prelude MTS line back in November 2000. Now, I know some of you out there have a mental block against products from big companies, and Harman International—the com- pany that owns Infinity (as well as Revel, Madrigal, Proceed, Mark Levinson, Lexicon, and some other first-rate names)—is a big one. Still, it’s hard to deny the advantages that being a part of a large company provides in terms of research, resources, and so on. Truth be told, Infinity remains much abuse on their own. Put the two together, and you’ve got a full driver package that sounds as good as it measures. You may remember that the Preludes were remarkable in both respects, and these Interludes are impressive, as well. Needless to say, these aren’t cheap drivers to produce. Drivers, in general, are the most expensive part of any speaker: The more advanced they are, the more they cost. While we might expect this type of quality in the more-expensive Preludes, it’s a major bonus for products in the Interludes’ price range, many of which still use polymers and other cheaper driver materials. The R.A.B.O.S. (Room Adaptive A. The IL10 is a direct-radiating but they lack the inherent damping and stiffness of ceramics. Ceramics provide the damping and extra stiffness, but they’re brittle and can’t stand up to Bass Optimization System) consists of a parametric equalizer for the subwoofer section that allows you to make level, frequency, and bandwidth adjustments to optimize low-frequency output for your listening environment. As we all know, your room is the biggest determining factor of a speaker’s performance, and its effect on the lower frequencies is the most profound. Three dials on the back plate of each speaker (corresponding to the three adjustments I mentioned) allow you to make corrections in a couple of different ways. One option is to make primary changes by adjusting level and frequency by ear (you’d need a keen ear to make bandwidth adjustments in this manner). You can also get the R.A.B.O.S. kit (an extra $60 with the Interludes), D. The IL50’s back panel offers the standard array of subwoofer controls, as well as the level, frequency, and bandwidth adjustments that make up the R.A.B.O.S. system. • Top-quality C.M.M.D. drivers • Highly effective room- correction system • Excellent performance for the price HIGHLIGHTS which includes a test CD, an SPL meter calibrated for low frequencies, a measurement template, and a frequency-curve tool Infinity calls the “Q finder”—all of which are used to plot your room’s frequency response and make the necessary adjustments. You can either do the calculations yourself or input your data on the R.A.B.O.S. Online page of Infinity’s Website, where they will do the computations for you. As I said in the Prelude review, R.A.B.O.S.’s slick factor is superceded only by its effectiveness. Once again, this kind of technology in an entry-level line is a serious perk. There are multiple models of each speaker type (front, center, surround) in the Interlude line. For this review, I went for the least expensive of each: the IL50 powered towers ($1,800/pair), the IL25c center channel ($300), and the IL10 surrounds ($400/pair), each of which uses C.M.M.D. drivers from top to bottom. The IL50 is a powered tower that has a ...