Well I got my new speakers. It was quite the job getting the whole thing home, it's lucky I have a pickup or it would have been several trips.
First off I'm not a knowledgeable audio person or speaker reviewer, in fact I'm barely a noob, nor do I have a large speaker background for comparison sake.
This is a used set I just got, they are all in like new condition and were obviously well cared for by the previous owner who only was selling as he no longer used them. They are in black wood finish which I like, when the lights are down they disappear. The new speakers are from the PSB Image line, 5T, 2B, 8C and a PSB Alpha Subsonic 1 sub. They are replacing my "vintage" PSB century series 400, 300, 100c, I bought those speakers new almost 20 years ago and they have been great speakers and not a complaint with them. Originally was just looking for a newer center speaker but came across this deal. Not having much knowledge on speakers I figured I would stick with the PSB line as I was happy with the ones I had. The set came with a Yamaha 5950 receiver, two nice stands, Monster brand speaker wire (didn't need) and 20 Monster banana plugs. I got all the speakers switched over which was easy enough except for the center speaker. My entertainment center has a place for the center speaker to go into but the new 8C was quite a bit larger than the 100C so had to do some modifying but got it in place.
Well after switching things on, started with just the front mains playing some MP3's I was kind of shocked as it sounded like crap really. What I found was that I had to make some adjustment before they sounded good. Infact one of the first big difference with these was that changes are very noticeable with these speakers. The old ones didn't really sound all that different no mater what you did. With the new ones any little change would be very apparent. With just the mains playing I had to adjust the bass and treble up, old I just had at "0", new I had to set at "+3" for both (rec is + or - 6) then they sounded really good. They sounded so good I spent the next hour playing through my two dozen MP3's I had on the PS3 at a pretty good volume (I'm more movies than music). Also discovered just how hot my receiver gets after doing this, a two hour movie at a good volume it just gets warm, music at a slightly louder volume it gets hot. I was really surprised at just how much tinkering it took to get everything to where I liked it. I really just kind of figured it was a plug and play deal, not complaining as it was a enjoyable afternoon (other than being up for about 36 hours, night shift eh!). The 5T's have a huge amount of bass as compared to my old 400's and the sound is very warm and natural (to my untrained ears) and can be turned up to the painful range of listening.
After getting a bit tired of playing the same songs over and over I switched to movie play, Iron Man. I ran the Sony's auto calibration, was again surprised as to how much the settings were changed compared to my old speakers. I also noticed with these speakers just how matched they were in tone (right term?), not the best at describing something but they all seemed to work together and no one set seemed to stand out but all would blend together really well. My old sub was a Precision Acoustic something or other (Best Buy brand?) 250 watt down firing 12" woofer, again I liked it and had no complaints, also nothing to compare it with. The new PSB Alpha subsonic 1 is physically smaller and I think only a 65 watts 10" front firing woofer, so wasn't to sure about using it but swapped it out for a try. Again a very noticeable difference, were as the old sub made LFE noise and vibration the PSB sub seems to make a broader range of LFE more musical than special effect if you will. The impression I had is that it really seemed to complement the sound from all the other speakers and not just act like a separate entity, but still able to rumble the couch. Even though I think the PSB sub is a better sub than the PA sub it just doesn't have the power to really keep up with the other speakers. The other vastly noticeable change was the center channel speaker, night and day difference really. The 100c was pretty small and was the lowest of PSB's low end stuff but I thought it still sounded good but the 8C can really put out higher, sharper, clearer sound.
I would have to say that so far I'm pretty happy with the new stuff and it's always fun to be able to get something new to tinker around with. Plus I now have a second complete 5.1 system to put else where.
