PSB Imagine T Floorstanding Loudspeaker Review

PSB Imagine T Introduction

From humble beginnings 35+ years ago, PSB Loudspeakers International has grown to become a fixture of the Canadian loudspeaker industry. This growth, based largely on the design efforts of its founder, Paul Barton, has its basis in a well-earned reputation for excellent value for dollar.  Much of this success can in turn be traced back to Paul’s decades-spanning all-things-loudspeaker work at the Canadian National Research Council’s world-class research facilities in Ottawa.  Following a 3-year long R&D effort, we now get to enjoy the fruits of Paul & crew’s latest efforts; an outstanding product at a surprisingly affordable price, with loads of SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor). Now there’s a formula for success!

Design Overview

The Imagine Ts arrived in 2 shipping cartons, each weighing in at just over 52 lbs (23.6kg). The cabinets are well braced within the cartons at 3 points, as are the grill covers, which must be attached if you’re inclined to using them once the towers are removed from their respective cartons.

Each tower was wrapped in a large cloth sock and then again in a larger plastic sock. In the photo above at left we see a T still in its shipping carton and on the right, removed. The dark left side band on the T showing on the right is the grill cover

Looking over the beautiful finish on the T’s cabinets, it's easy to see why they were wrapped and packaged with the thought obviously given the details. Each tower shipped with a collection of 4 spikes, 4 rubber feet and a wrench to bolt them into the base of the cabinet. Incidentally, the base was the only flat surface to be found in possession by these cabinets. (More on that later). The review samples supplied were provided with a cherry veneer polished beautifully and emerging in pristine condition from their shipping cartons.

The Ts are a 3-driver, dual-ported, base-reflex passive system, featuring a pair of 5 ¼” woofers and a single, 1” ferrofluid-damped titanium dome tweeter.

They’re rear-ported, featuring a pair of 2” ducts. Each T also comes supplied with a port plug that can be used in either duct; plugging one or the other alters the system’s response, offering a degree of response-altering flexibility to help the end user better fit their response to the acoustical characteristics of whatever space they are placed in.  The cabinets themselves are constructed of a curvy 7-layer MDF laminate and 1.5” thick MDF faceplate. Cross-braced internally at roughly 1 & 2 – thirds the height of the cabinet, the Ts presents a relatively vibration-dead enclosure.   Each T also features a twin pair of heavy gold-plated, 5-way binding posts, equipped with a removable jumper. Removing the jumper allows for either bi-amping or bi-wiring. The cover is a black, fabric-on-metal construct that does not detract from the good looks of the rest of the cabinet when fixed in place.

The Ts come in either a Black Ash or Dark Cherry wood veneer. The samples provided for this review were finished with the latter and had a most excellent appearance, scoring major points in the SAF challenge. Fit & finish are, simply, excellent.

The Drivers

          

 
At left: The drivers; Center: rim cover in place; Right: rim cover removed

The woofers are noteworthy for their injection molded, clay/ceramic-filled polypropylene diaphragms, bucking magnets and a molded basket, designed with both strength & aerodynamic characteristics in mind. The aluminum phase plug helps smooth response at higher frequencies as well as providing a handy heat sink for the motor structure. The tweeter features an overhung voice coil, a computer-optimized neodymium magnetic structure and as already mentioned, ferrofluid damping.  Each of the drivers, individually gasketed, is recessed into the cabinet’s faceplate and have their front rims covered over by a heavy rubber collar that serves an aesthetic purpose along with minimizing any surface discontinuities.

It's obvious that PSB have gone to substantial lengths to eliminate or otherwise minimize response-bending discontinuities, no matter how minor, wherever possible.

The Crossover

The Ts crossovers (far right) are affixed to a panel (near right ) which, in turn, is bolted into the bottom of the cabinet, the only flat panel to be found in the otherwise curvy Imagine T cabinet.

The crossovers comprise a collection of inductive, capacitive & resistive components that are all strapped and/or epoxied to the circuit board, and where appropriate, arranged so as to minimize electromagnetic crosstalk. Inter-component connection is handled beneath the board. All leads connecting the drivers and binding posts are soldered at the board as well. The Ts are a 2.5-way system featuring acoustically 4^th-order (24dB/Octave) LR slopes. The HF/LF crossover point is at 1800 Hz and the 2^nd of the two woofers comes into play only below 800 Hz (hence the “.5”).

The Backside

The Imagine Ts are dual-ported in the back and both ducts are flared externally. The vertically arrayed heavy gold-plated binding posts come equipped with a jumper that can be removed allowing for bi-amping or bi-wiring. You can see the jumper in place as well as the lower port (and the duct behind it) at right. The jumper does exactly what it's designed to do but it can take a bit of fiddling when connecting the Ts to your speaker cables with it in place.

Set-Up

As I do with all new speaker systems, I carefully experiment with location to determine just where the best spots are located within whatever room I happen to use for auditioning them. Using an accomplice who walks the room while speaking, while I listen, usually results pretty quickly in uncovering what I have seen elsewhere referred to as “zones of neutrality”. These zones, rather than being some acoustically ideal spot, are carefully chosen compromises that best support the speaker by acoustically interfering the least with it. Once the zones are located, fine tuning their location can further pull the acoustical image generated by the speakers. For this review, the Ts ended up being located approximately 10’ apart, 3’ in from the back wall and 2’ in from the side wall.

PSB Imagine T Listening Tests

Unless otherwise stated, all listening tests were conducted without a subwoofer in two-channel configuration with the Ts set to “large” in the A/V receiver’s (Denon AVR-3806) bass management. Other gear used was a Toshiba HD-A35 DVD/H-DVD player, a pair of custom built subs and the AVR/Imagine Ts connection was handled by some ordinary 10-ga speaker cable.

CD: The Pete Best Band - Hayman’s Green

This album was quite the surprise; suggested  by a friend of mine,  who is a rabid Beatle fan determined to own at least one copy of every note ever played by the Fab Four or anyone musically associated with that band.  I decided to give it a listen based on his recommendation. By now I’ve listened to it so many times, if it were an LP, I’d be onto my next copy of the disk! If you’re old enough to remember when the Beatles grew in an unstoppable swell to become a musical & cultural tidal wave, this album will almost certainly appeal to you. 

The Imagine Ts were certainly up to the task in presenting Pete Best’s band in my listening space! “Broken” and “Hayman’s Green”  were especially useful in confirming the unusually clean, very neutral-sounding midrange I’d noticed during my pre-review recreational listening.

Though the music contained within this CD obviously has its roots solidly in 60s pop, the production values (and the sonic demands placed on speakers) are 21^st century.  The Ts had no problem in conveying both detail and transparency, without sounding artificial, even when played loudly; the acoustic guitar in “Broken”, for example, never got lost or muddled in the mix. Percussion was likewise clean, dynamic, and overall imaged well across a very stable soundstage.  

CD: Frank Sinatra - Nothing But The Best (Remastered)

For Frank fans “Nothing But The Best” (Remastered) is, musically speaking, a welcome addition to Sinatra’s already substantial catalog but nevertheless a mixed bag, production-wise. One track that does stand out, however, as having been sonically improved is “Summer Wind”.

I like this track for its ability to cleanly demonstrate how well a particular system can (or can’t) present a focused, stable soundstage. By “focused” I mean in this context how well defined the images are in relation to each other. Success here depends, of course, to a large degree on the various engineering, production and mastering (or remastering) choices made along the way. As an example of a track you wouldn’t use, owing to some less than ideal production choices, I’ve heard some outtakes of this tune where the B3 was so up in the mix that if just buried everything – what a waste of the underlying orchestration!

But when everything’s been done well and you play such a well-crafted track back through a system such as the PSB Imagine Ts, you will be able to hear everything, regardless of where it sits vis a vis everything else across the soundstage. You’ll also find you can plumb the depths of low-level detail easily, especially through a system such as the Ts that sport a noticeably low-distortion collection of drivers.

The Ts like to play loud, too. I found them able to maintain a stable and focused soundstage at all but the most obnoxiously loud playback levels. This too (along with their ability to faithfully reproduce the track’s dynamics) I attribute to the already mentioned noticeably low-distortion capabilities of the drivers and their well executed crossover design ensuring the drivers don't operate out of their linear bandwidth or add a deleterious sonic imprint of their own.   

DVD: Chris Botti - Live In Boston

Pick up a copy of Chris Botti’s “Live In Boston” and it might become a favorite come time to showcase your new audio rig for family, friends & neighbors. Well engineered, produced and mastered it does a fine job of really putting a playback system  through its paces.

For this disk, the subwoofers (a pair of custom designed units) were brought online. With the Imagine Ts relieved of all duty in the lowest octave of their native frequency response, and now bass managed, they took off like a thoroughbred out of the starting gate, figuratively speaking, and I couldn’t help thinking while listening to the results that this is how they were meant to live! These towers love to play with subs.

I chose this disk and the “Indian Summer” track mainly for Billy Kilson’s drum work. With the Ts unburdened from having to deal with anything below 80 Hz, they seemed to build on the strengths already apparent in earlier listening session. Strengths such as their ability to faithfully reproduce dynamics in a musical, authentic way; play LOUD, yet leave the details clean and focused. For example, at numerous times in the track when Billy is pounding out yet another break, you could still pick out details and the “liveness” of the hall was never lost. The subtlety of the acoustics was not buried beneath  the sonic mountain of an orchestra, a jazz band and a horn player, no matter how much the gain inched upward. If you’ve ever seen Billy play, you’ll know he’s not shy working the cymbals heavily, which is another reason I chose this particular track. The 1” titanium domes seemed to take the workout in stride, with none of the annoying harshness you’d encounter in a lesser system.

DVD: Bladerunner

From the 5-Disc Complete Collectors Edition Blade Runner HD-DVD box set I selected the “Final Cut” disk.  Audio-wise, the “Final Cut” was re-mastered by Warners to a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround (48kHz/16bit) soundtrack. If you’ve seen various incarnations of this 80s Sci-fi classic over the years, you’re in for a sonic treat with this latest version of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece.

Warner’s efforts result in a listening experience that is truly immersive. Everything from dialogue to sound effects, to Vangellis’ at times haunting score has been given a new lease on life.   Listening to this soundtrack through the Imagine Ts, it was obvious that Warners had done an excellent job of wringing out of this soundtrack the very best performance that’s possible with today’s technology. As impressed as I was with the sound effects and the score, the dialogue is what really stood out, though.  Clear, focused, with an engaging sense of presence; bits and pieces that weren’t clear or otherwise buried in earlier releases were now clear and natural sounding, no matter what else was going on in the acoustic vicinity. Between Warner’s new mix and the Imagine Ts, it was almost like listening to a new soundtrack.  

PSB Imagine T Measurements and Analysis

   

Impedance / Phase Measurements of the PSB Imagine T

I ran a series of amplitude response & impedance tests for the Imagine Ts. Above left we see a plot of both towers system impedance with the top port plugged, which was the configuration used for all listening tests, chosen for the purely subjective reason that it sounded  best in the listening space.  At the LF end of the sweep we see the twin impedance peaks typical of a vented system. Located between the peaks is a local minimum of 6.2Ω at about 34 Hz. This minimum is a good indicator of the systems tuning frequency. At just over 200 Hz we see a global minimum of 4.8 Ω. Based on this minimum the system can be described as having a nominal impedance of 6 Ω. The modest peak seen at approximately 1.5kHz appears courtesy of the LF & HF branches of the crossover network forming a parallel resonance.

Above right is a series of impedance plots showing the effect the various port dispositions have in tuning the resonance frequency of the system. The red plot is the top port plugged, green plot is the bottom port plugged, blue is both ports open and purple is both ports plugged.

The impedance moduli present no signs of any mechanical or acoustical pathologies (e.g. major panel resonances) being reflected back into the electrical domain. We also note a very good match between the two system’s impedance plots – a positive indication of attention to maintaining tight component values system to system. Both systems impedance phase lies between +53˚ and -67˚ between 20 & 20 kHz.

PSB Imagine T system amplitude response, 1m, on-axis, 2.828 Vac

 Above left is the amplitude response plot of the Imagine T system. Plot data were generated using a combination of both nearfield and gated measurements, with the resultant being normalized to 1m. Sensitivity was 87.5 dB (averaged 300Hz – 3kHz, 2.828V/1m) which was just under PSBs claim of 88 dB.  The major response swings seen in >20kHz portion of the plot are a commonly seen characteristic of metal dome tweeters and occurring as they do above the range of human hearing had no detrimental effect on the acoustical performance of the Ts.

Above right is a ratio plot illustrating the effects of the grill cover on the Ts amplitude response. If the cover were perfectly transparent acoustically, the ratio plot would be as straight as an arrow centered on the horizontal 0 dB axis. As can be seen, the cover does have an effect, particularly noticeable in the 2kHz – 20 kHz range. As can be surmised, all critical listening was done with the grill covers removed.

Overall, the response shows a commendably smooth characteristic across the audible portion of the plot.  The measurement results underscore the subjective impression of a very clean, well-balanced, neutral sounding loudspeaker capable of delivering impressive dynamics that make the Ts right at home in either 2-channel playback or HT mode.

Recommendations

The Imagine Ts are an outstanding product that gives excellent value & performance for the dollar. Take the time to position them properly in your listening space. The small investment in time you make up front will begin paying off immediately. My second recommendation would be to pair the Ts up with a sub (or preferably two) that qualitatively matches the strengths of the Ts. This isn’t to say the Ts are lacking in the bass department. But in freeing up the speakers from all responsibility below 80 Hz, you really give them a chance to bring their best features & qualities forward.

PSB Imagine T Conclusion

Hmmmm… Lets see. Refreshingly attractive aesthetics and a small footprint. That adds up to major SAF. Neutral, clean, low-distortion sound, thrives on dynamic source material. That adds up to top-notch performance. Toss in the fact that the PSB Imagine Ts come from a company that sports a well-earned reputation for top value for dollar and you have a winner on your hands!  Highly recommended.

PSB Speakers Imagine T Scorecard
MSRP: $2000/pair

 633 Granite Court,
Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1
1-888-772-0000

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The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Dynamic Range
Performance
Value