Sandy Gross, founder of
Definitive Technology, is the Mark
McGwire of hi-fi. Somehow, this
guy has been able to come up with
one incredible speaker home run
after another. As a result, there are
two problems when reviewing a
Def Tech speaker system. The first
is that there has been so much
praise and adulation
penned in
the past that
it’s hard to
be complimentary
without
being repetitive. The
second problem comes
when it’s
time to pack
up the
speakers and
ship them
away. You
start babbling wild
excuses to
extend the
deadline.
“My cousin’s cat died … so much
stress … I haven’t had time to listen. I need another week….”
Eventually, though,
the painful time
comes, and there
you are with tears
and packing tape,
handing off your
newfound loves to
an oblivious UPS
guy. “Treat them
gently,” you beg
the guy in brown.
(Man, it’s tough
being a reviewer.)
Undaunted, I
jumped at the
chance to review
the latest home
theater system
from Def Tech.
Even if you’re not a baseball fan,
you’ve probably heard of Mark
McGwire. After crushing the previous single-season home-run
record a couple of years ago,
McGwire continues to pound the
ball out of the park to the delight
of Cardinals fans everywhere. Yet,
despite his imposing form and
incredible swing, McGwire (like
most power hitters) strikes out
with some regularity. Of course,
who’s going to complain to a guy
who has hit 72 home runs in a
single season?
“With the
BP2006TL
system,
Definitive
Technology
has hit the
ball out of
the park —
and I don’t
think it
has come
down yet.”
Definitive Technology
BP2006
TL Speaker System
By Darryl Wilkinson
HIGH-PERFORMANCE THEATER
“these are not just
fine music speakers
— they’re fantastic
music speakers”
“the launch
sequence in
Apollo
13 made the hair
on the back of my
neck stand up.”
“Like Strapping Yourself onto a Rocket Sled
and Lighting the Fuse”
I’ll admit to some concern, though
— having had ample listening time
in the past with Definitive’s big
boys, the BP3000TL and the
BP2000TL. As a friend of mine
said when he heard I was going to
review the new BP2006TL speakers, “But all they’ve got are dinky
little 8-inch powered woofers. Why
do you want to listen to something
like that?” Such are the perils of
prosperity — when you’re around
great gear a lot, it’s extremely easy
to get jaded. The next amp’s got to
be bigger. The next CD changer’s
got to hold more CDs. These are the
times when you just have to be
thankful and
remind yourself
that, in less fortunate places in the
world, some people still listen to
audio in mono.
The gear that
arrived was a pair
of the new
BP2006TLs for
the left and right
front channels,
the new C/L/R
2300 for the center channel, and
a pair of old standbys, the BP2X
bipolar rear on-wall speakers. It’s
physically a pretty small system.
The BP2006TL speakers stand just
a little over a yard tall (38 inches),
but they’re only 6 1/4 inches wide!
In addition to being sleek and narrow, these speakers are less than a
foot deep (11 1/2 inches). Flanking
a television or even out in the open,
the BP2006TLs pleasantly blend in
with the rest of the room. Heck, an
average potted plant takes up more
space in your room than these
speakers do.
Visually, the BP2006TLs follow
the wildly popular form of their
bigger brothers. A black fabric
sock covers all but the last inch
or so of the top and bottom of the
speaker, where black-lacquered
end caps add an elegant touch.
The sock, aside from neutralizing
the physical appearance of the
speaker in the room, also contributes to the quality of the sound
by eliminating any baffle effect a
speaker grille might have on the
performance of the speaker.
The driver complement in the
BP2006TL consists of two 4 1/2inch cast-magnesium-basket polymer midbass drivers with a 1-inch
pure-aluminum-dome tweeter …
and that’s just what’s in front. Since
this is a bipolar creation, the same
combination is reproduced on the
backside of the speaker. That
“dinky” 8-inch subwoofer, strapped
to its own 250-watt amplifier, invisibly fires from the side of the
speaker. Interestingly, Def Tech has
a patent on the integration of a
bipolar array with a side-firing
woofer. Once again, they’ve done
the obvious while everyone else
was oblivious.
Def Tech unleashed the idea of a
powered subwoofer built into a
tower speaker with the BP2000.
Reviewers and consumers ate up
the idea like a hot bratwurst late in
the fourth inning. It’s definitely con-
venient. There’s no need to find
room and run wiring for an extra
subwoofer box in your listening
room. That alone might have made
the idea a bestseller, but, according
to Def Tech, the idea really originated as a way to make the speaker
sound better. Dual
subwoofers (one in
the left speaker and
one in the right
speaker) can pro-
vide more-linear
bass reproduction
throughout the room
than a single one
can. Since the sub
is right there near
the tweeter and midbass drivers, there
are fewer potential
timing or phasing
problems. And,
“I’m still having
flashbacks from
the first 20 minutes of Saving
Private Ryan”
“another advantage of
incorporating the
powered woofer into
the C/L/R 2300 is that
it creates a great
bookshelf speaker”
“It’s a deliciously,
deliriously entertaining setup”
A
C
B
A. Despite being
the old-timer in the
bunch, the BP2X
bipolar surround
integrates very well
into this new system.
B. Sleek and narrow,
the BP2006TL will
blend in nicely with
the rest of your room.
Plus, the built-in sidefiring sub eliminates
the need for a separate subwoofer.
C. Thanks to its
internal powered
sub, the C/L/R 2300
center channel sounds
deceptively big.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Big sound from relatively
small tower speakers
• Great center channel that
would also make a good
bookshelf speaker
“the BP2Xs sounded
great”
“the C/L/R 2300 is
goose-bumpingly
great”
“DefTech
unleashed the idea
of a powered subwoofer built into a
tower speaker”
tall, 19 1/2 wide, and 12 deep and
sporting a black sock and end caps,
it looks right at home on top of most
any big tube or projection TV. To go
along with its dual 4 1/2-inch midbass drivers (the same ones found
in the BP2006TL), there’s an 8-
inch long-throw woofer with a dedi-
cated 150-watt amp. The woofer
fires out of the top of the speaker
(when positioned horizontally).
There’s even an LFE input on
the back.
“Now, surely,” you say, “that’s got
to be overkill. What’s a powered
subwoofer doing in a center channel? If I’m using a Dolby Digital
system, the bass management is
going to send all the bass to the
LFE output anyway. Give me a
break.” Well, the break, my friend,
is in your logic. There are several
reasons why a powered subwoofer
in an L/C/R like this makes definitive sense. In an ideal home theater
system, you’d use three identical
speakers across the front. However,
most of us are willing to compromise our ideals in the interests of
D. The C/L/R 2300 is goose-bumpingly
great… There are several reasons why a
powered subwoofer in a L/C/R like this
makes definitive sense.”
since Def Tech knows which subwoofer is going to be used with the
mid and upper portions of the main
speaker, they can optimize the
entire system to take advantage of
what each part does best.
Speaking of optimizing the system, building a good bipolar speaker means more than just slapping
the same drivers on the backside of
the cabinet and shipping it out the
door. Definitive uses separate and
different crossovers for the front
and the rear drivers because, with a
bipole, it’s the total output of the
front and rear that’s important. The
company spends oodles of time
fine-tuning and voicing the speakers, doing real-world analysis in a
real anechoic chamber at the NRC
in Canada — an expensive,
exhausting step other manufacturers often choose to forego in place
of computer modeling. For speaker
designers, the NRC is the equivalent of Mecca, the Vatican, or
Cooperstown, depending on your
religion. It’s kind of like the differ-
ence between taking batting practice on your PlayStation and walking up to the plate and really
swinging at 90-mile-per-hour-plus
fastballs. (We know which one
McGwire does.)
Listening to the BP2006TLs, the
first thing I sensed was that something was wrong. As far as tower
speakers go, these aren’t that big,
and yet the sound coming out was
big — way bigger than what I
thought was physically possible!
And that was the impression with
just casual listening. Acoustically
simple pieces like “Fatherless at
14,” a sad but sweet song by
Kendall Payne (from
Jordan’s
Sister
), came across with the
singer’s voice rock-solid in the cen-
ter, flanked by the guitar accompaniment on the left and right. You
could easily imagine yourself sitting
there in the studio with her as she
cut this piece. The detail was pinpoint and precise, like a fine
European speaker, yet the bass was
not shy (nothing dinky here!). The
soundstage was big and bold.
Additional discs confirmed that
these are not just fine music speakers — they’re fantastic music
speakers.
Next out of the box was the
C/L/R 2300. At only 5 3/4 inches
HT Labs Measures: Def Tech BP2006TL Speaker System
This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers)
frequency response of the BP2006TLmain L/R (purple trace), C/L/R 2300 center
channel (green trace), and BP2X surround channel (blue trace). All passive loudspeakers were measured at a distance of 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input and scaled for
display purposes.
On-axis response of the BP2006TLL/R measures +1.48/-4.13 decibels from 200
hertz to 10 kilohertz. The -3dB point is at 33 Hz, and the -6dB point is at 31 Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of 2.99 ohms at 123 Hz and a phase angle of 20.25 degrees
at 166 Hz. Sensitivity is 86.5 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz.
On-axis response of the C/L/R 2300 center measures +3.66/-1.58 dB from 200 Hz to
10 kHz. An average of axial and (+/-15 degree) horizontal responses measures +2.12/
-1.99 dB from 200 Hz to 10 kHz. The -3dB point is at 30 Hz, and the -6dB point is at 26
Hz. Impedance reaches a minimum of 2.89 ohms at 326 Hz and a phase angle of
43.78 degrees at 1.06 kHz. Sensitivity is 88 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz.
Three-point averaged response of the BP2X surround measures +0.45/-4.14 dB
from 200 Hz to 20 kHz. The -3dB point is at 98 Hz, and the -6dB point is at 83 Hz.
Impedance reaches a minimum of 3.09 ohms at 70 Hz and a phase angle of -29.29
degrees at 158 Hz. Sensitivity is 89.5 dB from 500 Hz to 2 kHz.—
AJ
“the sound coming
out was big — way
bigger than what
I thought was physically possible!”
“the inclusion of a
powered woofer in
the C/L/R 2300
makes it sound
like a much larger
speaker, quite decidedly fooling you into
thinking you’ve got
another BP2006TL
right there in your
system”
“My couch shook
like a teenager on
his first date.”
D
“Sandy Gross,
founder of Definitive
Technology, is the
Mark McGwire of
hi-fi. Somehow, this
guy has been able
to come up with
one incredible
speaker home run
after another.”
“the detail was
pinpoint and
precise, like a fine
European speaker”
“hold on for dear
life because, man, it’s
one hell of a ride”
actually being able to see the television screen. So we wind up using
a smaller speaker than we probably
should for the center channel. The
inclusion of a powered woofer in
the C/L/R 2300 makes it sound like
a much larger speaker, quite decidedly fooling you into thinking
you’ve got another BP2006TL right
there in your system. The presence
of the powered woofer to handle the
really deep information lets the
dual 4 1/2-inch drivers concentrate
on doing what they do best. So you
not only get a small speaker that
sounds deceptively big, you get one
that sounds sweeter and cleaner —
like its larger compatriots across
the front.
Set the bass management to
“large” with the C/L/R 2300, and
the most important channel in your
system becomes one of the most
potent, too. Be careful, though —
this baby’s got the power to caress
you with sweetness and then grab
you by the throat and shake you.
Sound effects that pan across the
front soundstage never sound
sunken or constrained in the center
with no changes in tonal quality. In
a movie like
The Red Violin, where
the voice of the violin is as impor-
tant a voice as any other character’s, the C/L/R 2300 is goose-
bumpingly great at revealing both
the subtlety and the majesty of the
tragic violin’s voice.
Another advantage of incorporating the powered woofer into the
C/L/R 2300 is that it creates a
great bookshelf speaker, one you
could easily use to make a great
left/center/right combination …
or even a five-channel nonbipolar
home theater.
The BP2X bipolar surround
speakers have been around for a
while, but I know why Def Tech
sent them. We can spend a lot of
time arguing the merits of dipoles,
bipoles, and direct radiators for the
rear-effect speakers, but the simple
answer is that the BP2Xs sounded
great in this system. Fronts and
rears worked together beautifully
as one coherent whole.
I was already prepared to gushingly recommend this system when
Def Tech sent a second pair of
BP2006TL speakers with the suggestion that I try using them for the
surround channels. They even
included a little adapter that
allowed me to hook my preamp’s
LFE output to the LFE input of all
four of the BP2006TL towers. I now
had four 8-inch subwoofers filling
the room with 1,000 watts of power.
Listening to an action film with
four of the BP2006TLs powered up
is like strapping yourself onto a
rocket sled and lighting the fuse.
Hold on for dear life because, man,
it’s one hell of a ride! I’m still having
flashbacks from the first 20 minutes
of
Saving Private Ryan. The scene
in
Contact where you can hear Ellie
Arroway’s (Jodie Foster) heart beat-
ing as she’s debriefed in the hospital
made my heart skip a beat, and the
launch sequence in
Apollo 13 made
the hair on the back of my neck
stand up. My couch shook like a
teenager on his first date.
It wasn’t just that there was more
bass — it was the utter authority
and sheer dominance with which
the system took over the room. Bass
came from everywhere. Even more
surprising was the extra thrill that
it added to the rear effects, combining a sure sense of direction with
a definite sense of spaciousness.
With a music DVD like
Stop
Making Sense
, the feeling of being
there was so strong that I kept wondering why my room lights weren’t
going on and off in time with those
on stage.
Of course, not everyone is willing
or able to use a set of tower speakers in the rear. If you can, do. It’s
a deliciously, deliriously entertaining setup. If you can’t, the BP2Xs
will mount up and still give you
a system that packs more wallop
with less from your wallet than
you’ll find almost anywhere else.
Definitely buy your tickets for this
one! With the BP2006TL system,
Definitive Technology has hit the
ball out of the park — and I don’t
think it has come down yet.
“an average potted
plant takes up more
space in your room
than these speakers”
“Dual subwoofers
(one in the left speaker and one in the right
speaker) can provide
more-linear bass
reproduction throughout the room than a
single one can”
“Definitely buy your
tickets for this one!”
“This baby’s got the
power to caress you
with sweetness and
then grab you by
the throat and
shake you.”
“the feeling of being
there was so strong”
HIGH-PERFORMANCE THEATER
Definitive Technology BP2006TL Speaker System
11433 Cronridge Dr. • Owings Mills, MD 21117 • (410)363-7148
www.definitivetech.com
Reprinted from the November 2000 issue of HOME THEATER.
Copyright © 2000 by EMAP USA. All Rights Reserved.
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