Whether used as a noun or merely a prefix, “mini” always brings a smile to people’s faces. But its popularity often fades. Think of the miniskirt, which comes back from time to time but never seems to stay for long. Or the Mini automobile, which before its recent resurrection had largely disappeared from public awareness. Or, worst of all, consider the minispeaker. (Click image to enlarge)

In the mid-1990s, minispeakers were the hippest thing going in audio. Budget-minded enthusiasts could pick up a pair of NHT SuperZeros or PSB Alphas and attain performance almost as good as (and sometimes better than) high-end speakers costing 10 times as much. But then came the home-theater-in-a-box craze—and with it, a flood of cheaply made minispeakers that barely outperformed a pocket radio. Manufacturers who preferred not to delve into such dreck moved upmarket. The minispeaker genre never died—a few standouts of the golden days remain with us—but it certainly lost its luster.

We may be seeing a minispeaker resurgence, though. Custom installers need smaller audio systems to go along with the 32-inch flat-panel LCD TVs now filling the nation’s bedrooms. And manufacturers are responding with minispeaker systems far more inspired than the plain black boxes of the mid-1990s.

One would hope that 10 years of advances in speaker technology, combined with the always-falling prices of componentry and manufacturing, might give rise to a new generation of superminispeakers sonically superior to their forbears. To find out, we run each of these systems through its paces in Editor in Chief Brent Butterworth’s acoustically treated listening room. This room may be somewhat larger than the intended environment for these minispeaker systems, but most of our listening takes place at moderate, family-pleasing volume—even though, at the end of each session, we push these minis to the max just to see what they can do.

THE POD SQUAD KEF KHT3005
KEF is no stranger to unusual speaker designs—the company offers a motorized ceiling speaker that automatically lowers itself from the ceiling when in use. Almost as radical is the design of its recent minispeaker systems for home theater; the pod-shaped satellite speakers of its KHT2005.2 system were a big hit with design-conscious home theater buffs. For 2006, KEF has improved the satellites and added a pod-shaped subwoofer. The result is the $1,500 KHT3005.

---

NESTING TWEETERS KEF is known for mounting its tweeters inside its woofers, a concentric arrangement the company calls Uni-Q. The advantage of Uni-Q is that the sound from each driver emerges from the same space. With conventional woofer/tweeter arrays, the sound changes as you move your head up or down, because as you move, your ear moves slightly closer to one driver and farther from the other. With Uni-Q, this problem cannot occur. The downside of a concentric tweeter is that its sound can reflect off the woofer’s cone and surround, but through years of experimentation, KEF has largely conquered this problem. (Click image to enlarge)

---

The cast-metal, curved sides of the pods practically eliminate vibrations of the speaker cabinets or resonances inside them. That’s good because you can hear those vibrations and resonances, and speakers sound better without them. Each satellite contains a 0.75-inch tweeter, centered inside a 4.5-inch woofer. The base of the satellite can be shifted for use as a wall mount, and KEF offers optional floor stands for the satellites.

The center satellite is larger and adds two 3-inch drivers to augment the bass. KEF says that because most of the sound in a movie emerges from the center speaker, such beefing-up is warranted. The subwoofer can stand upright like a wheel or lie flat like a bagel. It incorporates a 10-inch woofer, a 10-inch passive radiator to reinforce the woofer’s bass, and a 250-watt internal amplifier. A few control switches hide under the base, next to the RCA line-level input jack.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | >>