www.hometheatermag.com •
EElleeccttrroonniiccaallllyy rreepprriinntteedd ffrroomm OOccttoobbeerr 22000066
"It's one of the few
systems that can
make you worry that
your own ears are the
weak link in the sonic chain."
"Identical outstanding
performance no matter
which room you install it in."
"If you can afford it, buy it."
"Phase Technology's
dARTS is, without a
doubt, one of the best
systems I've heard."
Phase Technology dARTS
DCB1.0-LCR
Speaker System
Reviewed Inside
MIDRANGE
$$–$$$
from the
test bench
There’s nothing unusual about
a father who’s eager to show off
pictures of his kids and rave about
how great they are.This is one of
those moments, except Ken
Hecht, the president of Phase Technology, isn’t showing me pictures
(I’m getting a real-life look), nor is
he exaggerating how good these
particular offspring are. In truth,
we’re not talking about little
people at all.
What Hecht
is so proud to
show me is a
very special—I know,
that’s what
they all say—
home theater
speaker system
he’s been dreaming about and
working on for
the better part of
15 years. It’s a
system that, he
tells me, “will
make any room
sound like the
best theater in
the country.” As
if that weren’t
enough, he
claims that the
system can
expand the sweet
spot from the
typical single-
pair-of-ears hot
seat to an area large enough for half
a dozen or more people to sit comfortably and enjoy a movie. He’s
christened the system with the
name Digital Audio Reference Theater System, or dARTS for short.
(Thankfully, his real children have
names that roll a little more easily
off the tongue.)
Hecht is definitely not new to the
speaker business. His legendary
father, Bill Hecht, founded Phase
Tech’s parent company, United
Speaker Systems, in 1955 and
began building speakers for Avery
Fisher (another legendary name).
In 1967, the elder Hecht patented
the soft dome tweeter—one
of the most widely used speaker
drivers in this part of the solar system. From the beginning, United
Speaker Systems has built, and continues to build, speakers for a surprising number of well-known
companies. (Modesty—and legal
agreements—prevent them from
saying exactly which ones.) In addition to the company’s storied
history, they’re one of the last vertically integrated speaker manufacturers in the country that makes
everything, including the component drivers and crossovers, and
assembles it all in-house.
With this kind of pedigree, what
took the younger Hecht so long
to achieve his dream? The short
answer is,he’s not so good at math.
It’s a Numbers Game
That’s not really fair. No one has
been good enough at the math—
until recently. You’re probably
familiar with all the problems that
things like walls, floors, and ceilings can cause when you play a set
of speakers in your room. Sonic
reflections conspire to ruin the
sense of depth and imaging. Room
modes play havoc with the frequency response. Change your
location in the room, and all the
variables change—and so does
your experience of the performance. All of these problems are
excruciatingly difficult to control
because they’re not merely related
to frequency; they’re also highly
time dependent.
Creating a system that sounds
the same regardless of the room in
which you install it and, at the same
BY DARRYL WILKINSON
Why settle for a sweet spot when you can have a sweet room?
Phase Technology dARTS
DCB1.0-LCR Speaker System
Home Theater / October 2006 > www.hometheatermag.com
time, provides everyone in the
room with the same audio experience means being able to crunch
some numbers. Lots of numbers.
It’s not easy to adjust frequency
response, but some products can
accomplish the task with varying
degrees of success. Time, on the
other hand, well, time waits for
no one—at least until Audyssey’s
MultEQ XT technology came along.
After he heard an early experimental version of the technology,
Hecht decided to begin working
with Audyssey to develop a version
specifically for his new system.
It’s simple to describe what
Audyssey’s MultEQ XT processing
does in Phase Technology’s dARTS
package. It dynamically adjusts the
speakers’ output so the system will
sound the same no matter which
room you install it in. By itself, that
feat is pretty amazing, but there’s
more to the story.To hear a great
stereo or multichannel image
through most systems, you’d have to
lock your head and your butt in one
listening position. (The music may
move you, but you’d better not
move if you want to hear the music.)
But MultEQ XT expands that singleseat sweet spot into a shared, multilistener experience.
It’s not so easy to explain how
Audyssey does what they do. In
the typical dARTS installation, an
installer takes audio measurements at various points throughout the listening room. Hecht tells
me that 12 to 14 measured points
are optimal in most rooms, but an
installer can do 32 (or more) if
necessary.The installer then feeds
the numbers into a computer running a proprietary version of the
MultEQ XT processing program.
The program painstakingly analyzes the room’s acoustics and, using
512 filters per channel, calculates
the frequency and time changes
that it needs to make for each indi-
vidual driver in the system.
The system downloads the data
into memory onboard the dARTS’
unique 16-channel, 250-wattsper-channel digital amplifier. Each
speaker driver has its own individual amplifier channel, and no
passive or analog crossovers are
needed anywhere in the system.
Hecht says this makes Phase
Tech’s dARTS the world’s first
digitally controlled and digitally
amplified system.
What’s Half a Decibel
Between Friends?
MultEQ XT doesn’t make crappy
speakers sound good. It keeps rooms
from making good speakers sound
crappy. Speaker quality is incredibly
important, and Phase Tech doesn’t
need Audyssey’s, or anyone else’s,
help when it comes to creating
excellent speakers. Having listened
to the dARTS package, though, I
think the 50-year-old company has
outdone themselves this time.
You can get the dARTS system in
one of three flavors: freestanding,
in-wall, or unfinished for a behindthe-wall installation. I heard the
behind-the-wall version. It’s hard to
believe, but, before any dARTS
package leaves the factory, Phase
Tech matches each and every
speaker’s driver to within
+/– 0.5 decibels of their
reference driver. (Even the
best passive speaker systems are hand tuned to
only +/– 1 dB.) This
ensures that, once installed,
the complete system
matches the factory’s equalization capabilities to
within +/– 0.5 dB.
As each driver couples
directly to its own digital
amplifier channel, Hecht
discovered that he needed
to design new drivers in order to
take full advantage of the amps’
superior resolution and dynamics.
These include an updated soft
dome tweeter developed specifically for the system (“the best
we’ve ever designed”), as well as
new woofers that use a three-layer,
woven-glass, honeycomb com-
PHASE TECHNOLOGY dARTS DCB1.0-LR SPEAKER SYSTEM
AT A GLANCE
SPEAKER: DCB1.0-LR DCB5.0-C DCB-SURR
Type: Two-way, monitor Two-way, center Two-way, monitor
Tweeter (size in inches, type): 1, soft dome 1, soft dome 1, soft dome (2)
Woofer/Midrange
(size in inches, type): N/A 6.5, glass/honeycomb N/A
Woofer (size in inches, type): 6.5, glass/ 6.5, glass/ 6.5, glass/
honeycomb (2) honeycomb honeycomb (2)
Nominal Impedance (ohms): 4 4 4
Recommended Amp Power (watts): 250 250 250
Available Finishes: Black (paintable) Black (paintable) Black, White ( paintable)
Dimensions (H x W x D, inches): 14 x 14 x 8.57 8.25 x 18.75 x 11.5 20.25 x 10.5 x 4.63
Weight (pounds): 27 28 12
Price: $17,500 for system $17,500 for system $17,500 for system
> SUBWOOFER: DCB210-S
Connections: Line-level
Enclosure Type: Sealed
Woofer (size in inches, type): 10, mineral-filled,
ultrarigid poly cone (2)
Power Rating (watts): 500
Crossover Bypass: N/A
Available Finishes: Black (paintable)
Dimensions (H x W x D, inches): 28 x 14 x 17
Weight (pounds): 74
Price: N/A
Ken Hecht, president of Phase Tech,
provides a demonstration of the dARTS system for Darryl.
^
posite instead of
polymineral cones.
The subs use
woofers made from
an extremely stiff
polymineral composite material.
Phase Technol-
ogy’s dARTS is,
without a doubt,
one of the best systems I’ve heard—
and that’s without
the typical “within
its price range” qualification. It’s one of
the few systems that
can make you worry
that your own ears are the weak
link in the sonic chain. (I’m not
worthy. I’m not worthy.) The
system sounds exactly the way I
imagine a bullet-train ride must
feel. It’s as if the dARTS were gliding on air without the least bit of
effort or any hint of a rough spot
or bump in the road—but, in an
instant, it can accelerate to absolutely frightening speeds.
Do You Dream in
Multichannel?
The drum scene in House of Flying
Daggers offered a great glimpse
into the way the dARTS system
handles bass. Even at the loudest
levels, there was no sense that the
speakers or amp were ready to
give up or were straining in any
way. I was extremely surprised by
how much audible detail I heard
within each depth charge’s explosion in U-571,too.
It’s hard to overstate the MultEQ
XT processing’s effect. In The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen, when the
characters first meet and a free-forall shootout begins, the vocals from
the center channel were crisp and
clearly audible without the tonalbalance problems that often result
when you mount a speaker close
to the floor under the projection
screen. During the fight, the sweet
spot extended across the room
before it collapsed about a yard away
from the side and back walls.
There’s a scene in the movie
Open Range in which the rain is
pouring down on a classic Westernmovie’s muddy street. With the
MultEQ XT processing turned
off, the system sounded plenty
convincing—lots better than most,
as a matter of fact. But, with the
processing on, the effect was as dramatic as if you’d suddenly opened
a door and stepped directly out into
a real thunderstorm (without getting wet, of course).The expanded
sonic envelope brought that intense
sensation of pouring rain to each
seat in the room.
Dream systems are never cheap.
The system that I tested goes for
$17,500 plus installation, although
there are dARTS configurations that
start at $14,500. On the other
hand, dreams don’t always come
true. Thankfully, this is a case in
which a particularly advanced
dream has become a wonderful
reality. All the cutting-edge elements in the dARTS system—
processor, amp, speakers—function
flawlessly with one another to
create a system that can indeed
make just about any room sound
as close to the best home theater
as you can get. It totally comes
through on the promise of bringing the same experience to every
listener in the room. If you can
afford it, buy it. If, like me, you
can’t afford it, you should find a
dealer who can give you a
demonstration. And, if you’ve
become a little bored or jaded
with the whole home theater
thing, this system might just get
you dreaming again.
94 89 98 98
88
General information
DCB1.0-LR Monitor Speaker; DCB5.0-C Center-Channel Speaker; DCB-SURR Dipolar/Bipolar Surround Speaker
DCB210-S Subwoofer; DP-2000 Digital Amplifier/Controller; Entire System, $17,500 (plus installation)
Phase Technology, (800) PHASE-TK, www.phasetech.com > Locator Code PHA
It’s extremely rare to find a
system with so much performance that you can configure
to sound the same in any
room. The ability to expand
the sweet spot to every listener makes it a stellar system
that is virtually without equal
when it comes to home
the ater entertainment.
> The behind-the-wall
version has a quality
basic finish that you’ll
never see
> Extremely well-built
drivers
> Amplifier/processor is
well laid out and marked
> Performance like this
doesn’t come in an HTIB,
so don’t expect it to cost
the same
> Consistently out-
standing performance
in any room
> Expands the sweet
spot to everyone in the
room
> Unprecedented con-
trol of both frequency
and time domains
> Room-acoustics
problems? What roomacoustics problems?
> Extremely tight,
effortless bass
> Crystal-clear high fre-
quency with no sense of
strain or harshness
> The speakers are big,
so you’ll need a room to
dedicate to the system
> Placement is not so
critical, thanks to the
processing
PHASE TECHNOLOGY dARTS DCB1.0-LR SPEAKER SYSTEM
OVERALL RATING
Build Quality Value Features Performance Ergonomics
94
94
[
HIGHLIGHTS
Everyone in the room has the
same listening experience
Identical outstanding performance no matter which room
you install it in
Hidden, behind-the-wall design
NUVISION NVX32HDU LCD HD MONITR
from the test bench
PHASE TECHNOLOGY dARTS DCB1.0-LR SPEAKER SYSTEM
Darryl and Ken
examine the placement
of the center channel
and surround speakers.
^
Posted with permission from the October 2006 issue of
Home Theater
® www.hometheatermag.com. Copyright 2006, PRIMEDIA Inc. All rights reserved.
For more information about reprints from
Home Theater
, contact Wright’s Reprints at 877-652-5295
216-1010
Loading...