tant-sounding “King of Bohemia” from Richard
Thompson’s Mirror Blue, the Definitive Tech
towers accurately conveyed the space in which he
performed, positioning his voice a few steps back
and slightly to the right.
Bluegrass and old Hot Tuna fans interested in
surround sound music would do well to pick up
Jorma Kaukonen’s Blue Country Heart SACD.
As heard on the Definitive Tech system, the gui-
tarist’s slightly raspy voice sounded warm, seam-
less, and natural coming from the system’s front
speakers. Acoustic instruments in this multichan-
nel recording came through with striking clarity
and presence. I could almost feel the gritty texture
of a fiddle’s bowed strings as its sound glided
around me, and the plucked guitars and mandolin were
clear and distinct. The well-defined notes of the stand-up
bass, meanwhile, let me know that the BP7001
SC
towers
could also deliver a tuneful, tight low end.
The pure sound quality of Jorma’s surround sound out-
ing was also evident on classical SACDs. The Definitive
Tech system did a great job conveying the full, sweet
tones of massed strings and woodwinds in John Adams
The Chairman Dances from the opera Nixon in China, as
performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Norrlands
Opera. At the same time, it delivered the extended highs
and dynamic snap of the percussion instruments — sonic
elements that splash around the room like light colors in
an Impressionist painting and drive the dense composition
forward. Although the surround channels in the recording
provided little more than ambience, the BPVX surrounds
helped the presentation by meshing with the BP7001
SC
towers to create a seamless sound field from front to rear.
Moving on to discs with pictures, the punchy rap
soundtrack of the 8 Mile DVD sounded awesome on the
Def Tech speakers. The system proved up to the task of
reproducing the ambience of the metal-stamping shop
where aspiring rapper B-rabbit (Eminem) works, creating
a brutal industrial swirl along with thunderous bass when
a machine stamped out a set of steel bumpers.And watch-
ing the final rap battle keyed me in to the advantage of
having a center speaker with a built-in sub. When the
deep-voiced MC shouted out to the crowd, the C/L/R
3000 gave a convincing sense of vocals coming from a PA
in a packed club, loud microphone pops and all.
It was a stretch to go from the urban grit of 8 Mile
in the arrangement Definitive Tech recommends, with one
set of drivers angled toward the listening position and the
other facing the rest of the room.
Since only a precious few DVD-Audio and SACD
players provide any kind of bass management, what
to do with the bass can be a problem in a typical surround
sound setup with small, bass-limited satellite speakers.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that with
this system.
Both the BP7001
SC
and the C/L/R 3000 provide
a variety of hookup choices. Besides the subwoofer input
options (line- or speaker-level), the tweeter and woofer
of both models can be biwired by removing jumpers
connecting the two sets of binding posts. Of course, you
could simplify setup by selecting “no” for the subwoofer
option in your receiver or preamp’s setup menu and run-
ning only one set of wires to each speaker. That way your
receiver sums the subwoofer/LFE channel with any full-
range signals that it sends out.
Balancing built-in subwoofers on the three front speak-
ers seemed like an intimidating prospect at first, but in
practice it turned out to be fairly easy. In my processor’s
setup menu, I selected five “large” speakers plus
subwoofer and used a Y-connector to route the sub-
woofer/LFE output to the front left/right towers. I then
tweaked bass levels using the processor’s subwoofer-out-
put control setting for the towers and the back-panel sub-
woofer volume control for the C/L/R 3000, which was
hooked up using only the speaker-level connection.
Aside from the obvious space-saving advantages,
a benefit of having subwoofers built into the main speak-
ers is that you won’t have to deal with subwoofer place-
ment — or worse, misplacement, which can cause the
bass to sound overly boomy or lean. I found the Def Tech
system’s bass performance to be extremely smooth on
most material, but settling on an ultimate bass level
proved more tricky than with systems I’ve used that had
one separate sub.
Although I was eager to listen to multichannel SACDs,
I limited my first tests to stereo tracks with little more than
male vocals and simple instrumentation. The intimate
manner in which “Taphead” from Talk Talk’s Laughing
Stock was recorded makes it sound like there’s an enor-
mous head singing in the room. The BP7001
SC
speakers
cast a tall wide image that was nonetheless locked dead
center between the speakers. Moving on to the more dis-
to the digital-enhanced fantasy world of George Lucas,
but I wanted to see how the system would hold up on Star
Wars II — Attack of the Clones. The Speeder Chase scene
in Chapter 7 is a literal showcase of sound effects. I found
that the Definitive Tech speakers injected life into the arti-
ficial environment Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi
careened through, conveying an exciting sense of contin-
uous motion as their vessel blazed through sky-bound traf-
fic. And in a subsequent scene where the assassin they’d
been chasing is killed, the sound of a poison dart as it
zipped from high above my shoulder to the center of the
screen was frighteningly real.
If you’re looking to take your audio rig to the next level
and want some serious home theater speakers, Definitive
Technology’s BP7001
SC
-based system demands your
attention. It might cost twice as much as many of the
speaker systems we review, but when you factor in its
great performance with both movie soundtracks and
music, solid construction, and the substantial powered
subwoofers built into the front towers — which would
normally cost a couple grand all by themselves —
the price seems more than fair.
The Definitive Tech speakers injected life into the action
of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones.
11433 Cronridge Dr. • Owings Mills, MD 21117 • (410)363-7148
Visit us at www.definitivetech.com
BP7001
SC
C/L/R 3000 BPVX
(L/R front) (center) (surround)
TWEETER two 1-inch domes 1-inch dome two 1-inch domes
WOOFER four 61/2-inch cones two 61/2-inch cones four 61/2-inch cones
SUBWOOFER 10-inch cone; two 10-inch cone —
10-inch passive radiators
ENCLOSURE sealed transmission-line sealed
SUBPOWER 1,500 watts 150 watts —
INPUTS AND
bi-wirable gold-plated tri-wirable gold-plated gold-plated multiway
OUTPUTS
multiway binding posts; multiway binding posts; binding posts
line-level input for subwoofer line-level input for subwoofer
DIMENSIONS 81/2x 48 x 15 25 x 81/4x 16 143/8x 221/8x 73/4
(WxHxD) inches inches inches
WEIGHT 131 pounds 61 pounds 30 pounds
FINISH piano-gloss black or piano-gloss black or piano-gloss black;
golden cherry end caps; golden cherry end caps; golden cherry, or white
black knit sleeve black knit sleeve end caps, black or
white knit sleeve
fast facts
Excerpted from Sound & Vision Magazine, July/Aug. 2003.
