Infinity TSS-450 Speaker System

What is It?
This is a home theatre package designed for smaller spaces and smaller budgets or for secondary "less critical" systems. It includes a single Subwoofer cube and 5 small speakers. Also included: Swivel wall mounts for the speakers, speaker wire and one subwoofer RCA cable.

Setting it Up
This is a very well engineered item. You will need to provide the wall mount screws (whatever type you need) unless you are placing these on shelves or stands. The wall mounts work very well and allow a liberal amount of swivel action in an easy fashion. The sub is a solidly made item that has a RCA input for a LFE out (sub out) or speaker connections for older amps. There is also a level control, but no crossover adjustment for the sub.

Initial listening tests
I currently own Revel, SVS, Denon, Rotel and other mid to high end audio products. I've had ribbon speakers and tiny Royd monitors paired with Creep amplification. In other words, I own and have owned "the good stuff" that most people would consider excessive. So how does a 200 dollar home theatre in a box sound? Well. I can't lie and say these are anywhere near a match for even a 225 dollar pair of Paradigm Titans, but then these are for mainly for movies. My initial reaction was that they were bright, open and thin sounding, lacking midrange. After playing them more and adjusting the sub level and crossover on my reciever (set for 100KHZ), I started to like them more. Much more. Using a Nora Jones CD and several reverence DVDs, I found these little speakers very open and clear, though they probably could get fatiguing with amps from Sony, Yamaha and Outlaw. (I recently tested the new Outlaw Receiver and found it even brighter than the previous version.

More Listening tests
Using the Denon AVR 1907 brought more life from the system and added some detail. In spite of the very small center, dialogue was clear and well placed. I still noted a lack of depth in some vocal areas though, but this is something I've heard with even very pricey small centers. Still, the small speakers were able to produce good levels, avoid compression and remain intelligible, if not utterly musical.

The Low end
The sub claims a response down to 39hz. I find that claim realistic, but this is not very loud bass, nor is it the type of bass you'd here from a true sub, such as a SVS or higher end M&K. The 8" sub is basically doing a job of making very tiny speakers sound like bigger ones and doing a pretty good job, but this is NOT earth shaking bass at all. On occasion, while watching Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the small sub did impress me on musical and effect passages, but there is MUCH more bass there if you own a true subwoofer.

Who's it For?
Okay, I'm an audio snob with a dedicated theatre room, 126 inch screen, overhead HD projector, twin SVS subs and two speaker systems; one for music and the other for movies. BUT, when I needed a tiny system for my 32 inch LCD in the living room, I wanted something small and unobtrusive. Not being a fan of Definitive Technology or Bose, I decided to give the Infinity set a try and I'm not disappointed. .It's great for my wife and son, or just watching shows and movies when we don't need the whole "BIG" theatre experience downstairs. At the same time, a LOT of people will find a system like this perfectly fine as a primary system. It plays most material fairly well and the brighter quality is well suited to speakers that will often be mounted above ear-level anyway, where high frequency falloff would typically result. Keep in mind that this system originally sold at around 350-400 dollars, so you can expect somewhat better quality than several other boxed systems. Infinity is also not into making junk, even at the lowest end. For example, this is a far better sounding system than those sold by Onkyo for example and I even owned one of those for a while.

And so?
I can recommend this system as above along with the somewhat larger versions that are quite close in sonic chraacter. If you want to spend more money, you can do better, but this is pretty reasonable if you want a very small system that will not take up a lot of space. It also does well enough on music for me to retire my shelf mounted pair of Paradigm monitors.

*** 1/2

Capt RB