Definitive Technology PowerMonitor 700 User manual

test report BY RICH WARREN
Definitive Technology
PowerMonitor 700 Home Theater Speakers
STEREO REVIEW’S SOUND & VISION
2500 has a 150-watt amp. And in the tradition of big,
bad subwoofers, Def Tech’s PF15
TL
+comes loaded
with a 500-watt amp.
The clearly written manual lays out setup options and
supplies all the information you’ll need to maximize
the speakers’s performance. You can simply wire the
PowerMonitor 700 as you would a conventional speak-
er, using the binding-post connections on its rear panel,
but Definitive also provides a line-level LFE (low-fre-
quency effects) input to connect its powered woofer to
the corresponding output on your receiver or
preamp/processor. I skipped the LFE connection and
wired all five main speakers to my 100-watt-per-channel
McIntosh amp in normal fashion.
I arranged the system in a typical layout for my 12 x
22-foot home theater, which is designed to THX speci-
fications. The left and right front speakers were on
waist-high stands about 2 feet from either side of a
widescreen rear-projection TV and toed-in slightly. I put
the center speaker on a paving block under the screen
and angled it up toward the listening position. All three
speakers were oriented vertically, which gives more
seamless front-stage imaging if you have the room for it.
The subwoofer sat about halfway between the left front
and center speakers. All of these speakers were at least 2
feet from the nearest wall. The surrounds were mounted
on the side walls, about 9 feet from the front speakers
and slightly above and behind my listening position.
I set the woofer-level controls on the PowerMonitor
700s to the one o’clock position and the level control on
the PF15
TL
+sub to 11 o’clock with a 40-Hz low-pass
crossover setting. The sub’s back panel also has contin-
uously variable high-pass crossover and phase controls.
Setup chores complete, I popped Cast Away into by
DVD player. Tom Hanks gives a remarkable perfor-
mance as an executive whose jumbo jet veers off course
efinitive Technology’s PowerMonitor 700
home theater speaker system might be a
good thing to have wash ashore if you’re
ever a castaway on a desert island. The
PowerMonitor 700 left/right front and
C/L/R 2500 center speakers are small
enough to hang from a palm tree, yet their
powered woofers could shake loose all its coconuts.And
you’d better hope no dormant volcanoes wake when the
PF15
TL
+powered subwoofer rumbles the ground.
Throw in a pair of Definitive’s tried-and-true BP2X sur-
round speakers, and you have a complete home theater
speaker setup—island or no island. (Of course, since
four of the six speakers require power, you’d need AC
outlets for them—but why ruin a good fantasy?)
Def Tech takes a mix-and-match approach to putting
together its home theater systems. For example, if you’re
short on space and cash, going with a smaller, less
expensive subwoofer would mean only a modest sacri-
fice in bass, or you could save $200 and half a foot in
shelf space by using a third PowerMonitor 700 for cen-
ter-channel duties instead of the beefier C/L/R 2500.
Both speakers carry on Definitive’s styling traditions
with classy but simple black lacquer end caps and a
wraparound black knit grille. The wall-mountable
BP2X bipolar surround also has a black knit grille on its
two angled faces but vinyl wood grain instead of lacquer
end caps.
The PowerMonitor series, however, diverges from
tradition in a more significant respect. Definitive is best
known for its bipolar tower speakers, in which two sets
of drivers radiate sound both forward and rearward. The
PM 700 is in the middle of a three-model line of for-
ward-radiating bookshelf speakers. In addition to mag-
netic shielding, which allows the speakers to be next to
a TV without distorting the image, all PowerMonitor
models sport side-firing powered woofers and can be ori-
ented either vertically or horizontally.
The idea behind using powered woofers is to reduce
the burden on your receiver or power amplifier, which in
turn lowers distortion at high volumes. And because the
built-in amp is matched to the characteristics of the
woofer, you can get surprisingly deep, powerful bass
from a relatively compact speaker (loading the woofer in
the side of the cabinet keeps the baffle slender). The
result can come closer to the Dolby Digital ideal of full-
range frequency response in every main channel, instead
of a typical subwoofer/satellite system where even the
upper bass is relegated to the sub. Each PowerMonitor
700 packs its own 250-watt amplifier, while the C/L/R
D
“Exceptional…I heard imposing monoliths,
but all I saw were bookshelf speakers.”
HIGH POINTS
Wide dynamic range.
Smooth, broad frequency response.
Ample bass even without subwoofer.
Exceptional imaging.
Compact, easy to place.
LOW POINTS
Requires four AC outlets.
Heftier surrounds would be icing
on the cake.

louder yet remained distinct rather
than a blur of noise. Every distress
call spoken into the microphone by
the co-pilot amid the cacophony was
clearly audible, as was the ticking of
Hanks’s pocket watch. The sub-
woofer more than justified its exis-
tence when the plane hit the water.
At the other end of the spectrum, the
high-pitched whine of the engine
turbines drilled into my ears as if GE
had dropped one in the backyard.
All in all, this system did an impres-
sive job of conveying every audible
bit of this catastrophe.
If white noise provides a good
test of frequency-response smooth-
ness, then the nearly constant surf
through the middle portion of Cast
Away proved that the Definitive sys-
tem’s response is even and its speakers are tonally well
matched. Whenever the surf subsided, subtleties
revealed themselves—the creaking of palm trees sway-
ing in the breeze, the thunk of a falling coconut.
But the human voice is the ultimate test of speaker
accuracy because we’re all intimately familiar with it.
While I’ve never personally spoken with Tom Hanks,
the Def Tech system seemed to reproduce his voice in a
natural, neutral way. In general, voices spilled from these
speakers with clarity.
I replayed the crash scene repeatedly with and
without the PF15
TL
+subwoofer. The PowerMonitor
700 system on its own acquitted itself with authority.
But adding the subwoofer delivered the floor vibration
and visceral kick that made me feel I was in the middle
of the disaster.
The Definitive Technology system did equal justice to
music. However, I found that turning the woofer control
on the PM 700s down a couple of notches from the
movie setting provided a more accurate and appealing
sound. I confronted the system with a warhorse record-
in a storm and ditches somewhere in the Pacific. Hanks,
the lone survivor, washes up on an idyllic deserted atoll,
where he spends several years in increasing despair until
he lashes together a raft and sets out to sea.
Randy Thom’s sound design is one of the most com-
plex and varied in recent memory. Even before the plane
crash, the various noises on the aircraft sounded authen-
tic. (I should know—I’ve flown about a million miles.)
The way the PowerMonitor system reproduced the mon-
tage of sound during the crash might be a little too real-
istic for those with a weak heart. Layer upon layer of
wind noise, engine roar, cockpit alarms, shouting crew
members, and rolling carts and loose cargo careening
around filled my home theater, yet each strand of sound
was clear enough to seem real.
As the plane dove toward the sea, the sounds became
ed in Dolby Digital 5.1, Richard Strauss’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra performed by the Dallas Symphony con-
ducted by Andrew Litton on the Delos DVD Space
Spectacular. While the PF15
TL
+helped make those
rumbling pipe-organ notes at the opening palpable, even
without the sub the system produced enough low bass to
impressively recreate the ambience of Meyerson Center
in Dallas, transforming my theater into a concert hall.
With the volume set to my maximum tolerance, the
sound seemed effortless, without the expected rise in dis-
tortion or speaker breakup. I heard imposing monoliths,
but all I saw were bookshelf speakers.
To round things out, I spun the new CD, Under
American Skies (Appleseed), by Tom Paxton and Anne
Hills, a folk duet. I’ve heard Tom and Anne perform live
and recorded them innumerable times. Playing this
recording on the pair of PowerMonitor 700s brought
them into the room, with highly accurate vocal repro-
duction.
Next I played Suzanne Buirgy’s The View from Here
(Atune). This full-throated pop vocalist also entered my
room with flawless imaging. I tired of jumping up to
confirm that the center speaker was off and eventually
turned it on its face. Finally, acoustic guitarist Badi
Assad’s CD Rhythms (Chesky) tested the transient
response and damping of these speakers, which articu-
lated her artistry with definition and body.
You’ll be hard pressed to find another $3,200 home
theater speaker system that delivers better sound than
this Definitive Technology setup, and you could reduce
that ticket to $2,500 by forgoing the subwoofer —bass
performance without the sub was that good. The com-
pact PowerMonitor 700s and their well-chosen compan-
ion speakers provide big sound while fitting in small
spaces where larger systems would be obtrusive or
impractical. No matter where you listen, they can trans-
port you to your own tropical island. S&V
Excerpted from the PowerMonitor 700 Speaker System Review, Sound & Vision
Magazine, October 2001.
11433 Cronridge Dr. • Owings Mills, MD 21117 • [phone]
Visit us at www.definitivetech.com
Tom Hanks never gave up in Cast Away, and neither did the
Definitive Technology speakers.
fast facts
PowerMonitor C/L/R 2000 BP2X PF15 TL
+
700 (front L/R) (center) (surround) (subwoofer)
TWEETER 1-inch dome 1-inch dome two 1-inch domes —
MIDRANGE 5
1
/
4
-inch cone two 5
1
/
4
-inch cones ——
SUBWOOFER 8-inch cone 8-inch cone two 5
1
/
4
-inch cones 15-inch cone
ENCLOSURE vented vented vented vented
POWER 250 watts 150 watts —500 watts
(woofer only) (woofer only)
INPUTS AND gold-plated multiway gold-plated multiway binding gold-plated multiway speaker-level inputs
OUTPUTS binding posts, LFE input posts, optional full-range binding posts and outputs, LFE Input,
line-level woofer input line-level inputs and
high-pass outputs
DIMENSIONS 6
7
/
8
x 16
3
/
4
x 14
1
/
8
6
3
/
4
x 23
1
/
2
x 14
1
/
8
14
1
/
2
x 19
1
/
4
x 6 17
1
/
4
x 17 x 17
5
/
8
(WxHxD) inches inches inches inches
WEIGHT 32 pounds 42 pounds 11 pounds 54 pounds
FINISH black laquer and caps, black laquer or cherry woodgrain black or white black ash vinyl,
black knit grille end caps, black knit grille vinyl, black knit grille black knit grille
PRICE $599 each $799 each ($899 cherry) $250 each $699 each
Total: $3,196
MANUFACTURER Definitive Technology, Dept. S&V, 11433 Cronridge Dr., Owings Mills, MD
21117; phone, 410-363-7148; Web, www.definitivetech.com