Cambridge SoundWorks Newton HD Home Theater System review: Cambridge SoundWorks Newton HD Home Theater System

Intro
It's a bona fide trend: sleek speakers that are designed, first and foremost, to look good next to flat-screen TVs. Sadly, most look better than they sound, but that's not the case with Cambridge's Newton Series HD speakers. The HD moniker stands for high-definition, and that's not just a trendy name--we found the Newton Series HD MC600HD speaker sounds clearer and purer than the vast majority of speakers we've reviewed. The HD MC600HD retails for $500 each, while a matching subwoofer, the HD P300HD, goes for $1,000. Conveniently, the company also sells the speakers and sub as preconfigured bundles: everything from 2.1 stereo--two HD MC600HDs plus subwoofer--to 7.1 surround (seven MC600HDs and the sub). We split the difference, and examined the 5.1 configuration, which retails for a whopping $3,500. The Cambridge SoundWorks Newton HD 5.1 Home Theater System is comprised of five identical HD MC600HD speakers and one HD P300HD subwoofer. The aluminum cabinet of the HD MC600HD is an impressive feat of industrial design. The rounded, perforated-metal grille is distinctive; around back, the speaker's deeply contoured curves add strength to the design and enhance sound quality by minimizing internal cabinet resonance. The speaker is finished in a medium metallic-gray, and the nonremovable grille is black; it's 25.2 inches tall, 7.1 wide, and almost 4 deep.

Each HD MC600HD weighs 14.5 pounds, and thanks to its pressure-cast, dual-wall aluminum housing, it feels a good deal more solid than those made of plastic, medium-density fiberboard, or even extruded aluminum speakers. The speaker's rear grooved channel provides a secure attachment point for Cambridge's wall-mount bracket (included), and the company's all-metal table and floor stands ($150 and $250 respectively, per pair). When used as a center-channel speaker, you can either wall-mount the HD MC600HD with the bracket, place the speaker on a shelf, or put it directly on the TV (a rear metal stand is provided to support the curved rear end of the speaker).

The matching HD P300HD subwoofer is the perfect visual and sonic complement to the HD MC600HD speakers. Its steel-wrapped, medium-density fiberboard cabinet exudes high-end class--it looks as if it would sell for at least double its list price. The steel panels are finished in a metallic gray, the top panel is gloss black, and the perforated metal grilles are black. It's a fairly large design, 27 inches high and 17.5 wide, but its 8.5-inch depth makes for a less imposing presence than your average cube-shaped subwoofer. The HD P300HD weighs 70 pounds. Each Cambridge SoundWorks HD MC600HD speaker is fitted with four 3.5-inch injection-mold copolymer woofers and one 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter. The speaker's internal crossover was designed with audiophile-quality parts; it sends treble frequencies to the tweeter and bass to the woofers. The spring loaded, all-metal connectors accept stripped bare-wire ends or cables terminated with metal pins. That's fine, but we were disappointed that the connectors didn't allow for the use of more secure banana plugs as well.

The speakers also feature a "boundary compensation EQ" circuit to tame the unnatural bass boost that occurs when they're wall-mounted (see the Performance section of this review). When the speaker is stand-mounted, you should turn off the circuit.

The HD P300HD subwoofer, meanwhile, boasts one of the more unique designs we've seen. Instead of relying on a single 10- or 12-inch woofer, the sub delivers a total of six 6.5-inch woofers (all powered by the sub's 300-watt amplifier). Actually, the HD P300HD deploys three speakers on each end of the cabinet; the design gambit effectively cancels cabinet vibrations. So if you place your hand on the HD P300HD, even when it's pumping out lots of bass, you won't feel it moving--not in the slightest. The subwoofer won't directly transmit energy through the floor to the room below your home theater some of the bass will, of course, be audible in that room, but possibly less than that from a conventional sub. We also noted that even when we stood right next to the HD P300HD, we couldn't detect it as a source of sound--all of the bass seemed to be coming from the HD MC600HD speakers! We can pay no higher complement to a subwoofer. The only other sub we've ever heard that can pull off that trick is B & W's bowling-ball-shaped PV1 subwoofer ($1,500), but the Cambridge sub is more powerful than the B & W, which uses just two 8-inch woofers.

As mentioned above, the speakers that comprise the Newton HD systems can be purchased separately. Each HD MC600HD costs $500, while the HD P300HD subwoofer goes for a cool grand. But most folks will likely opt for one of Cambridge's four packages: one stereo (2.1) and three surround (5.1, 6.1, and 7.1). We just wish that Cambridge had offered a price break for the bundles--as it is, they're little more than a more convenient way of ordering.

The Newton HD Home Theater System's ability to deliver awesome sound on disc after disc was apparent from the get-go. The Pixies' new Live at the Paradise in Boston DVD sounded as if it was coming from a set of much larger speakers. Totally engaged by the Pixies' hyperactive rhythms, we nudged the volume higher and higher, and the visceral thrills never let up; the vocals remained clear and very present, so we felt like we had the best seats in the house. The treble detail on the drums and the cymbals was very precise; we were starting to really believe Cambridge's design engineers took that high-definition designation seriously. With sound this detailed, we were a little concerned about how the speakers would wear over long listening sessions, but we never experienced listener fatigue. However, the Pixies DVD revealed that the rear HD-MC600HD speakers didn't completely fuse with the sound of the front speakers, and the wrap-around ambiance and applause wasn't as seamlessly presented as we've heard from some bipole, wedge-shaped surround speakers (such as Aperion's 534-SS). On the other hand, the advantage of using five identical speakers was the evenness of the surround effects; whenever the sound moved from speaker to speaker, the tonality remained the same.

The HD MC600HD had no trouble delivering home-theater thrills and chills. The sound was exceptionally three-dimensional and realistic, floating free of the actual locations of the speakers--we were immersed in the movie locations. On the forest scenes in the House of Flying Daggers DVD, we detected even the tiniest twig breaking under Ziyi Zhang's footsteps. Along with each shallow breath and the distant birds and wind, the sheer delicacies of the soundtrack were all revealed with rare transparency.

CDs sounded no less impressive. Acoustic music was beautifully rendered on Tony Bennett's lavishly produced Sings Ellington disc. Mr. B is backed by a large jazz orchestra, and the HD MC600HD speakers projected a crystal-clear picture of the massed strings, guitar, bass, and drums. Bennett's smooth vocals had the natural warmth we associate with pricier high-end speakers.

Even when turned down low for late night listening, the HD MC600HDs still sounded clear. In fact, the neutral balance was evident at any volume level to as high as very loud, and that's unusual--most speakers are at their best at moderate volume levels.

As great as the HD MC600HD satellite speakers are, the HD P300HD subwoofer added even more sonic gravitas to the set. The bass blend between the speakers and sub was not only excellent, the detailed "character" of the designs perfectly complemented each other. Also, we conducted most of our listening tests with the speakers mounted on Cambridge stands located two feet from the wall. When we simulated wall-mounting by placing the speakers up against the wall the sound was dimensionally flatter, but the HD MC600s produced substantially more--albeit less-defined--bass (effects common to virtually all wall-mounted speakers). We next experimented with the HD MC600HD's boundary compensation EQ, which did reduce some but not all of the bass thickness generated by the speakers' close proximity to the wall, though the spatial flattening was unaltered. The speakers' exacting sonic detail might reveal the performance limitations of inexpensive or harsh-sounding A/V receivers, so we'd recommend mating the HD MC600HD with a capable model--one of the better models from Denon or Harman Kardon, for instance. With speakers in this price range, that's not an unreasonable expectation.

Our listening evaluation was conducted with the $3,500 5.1 configuration. If you must have a 6.1 or 7.1 setup, it'll cost you $500 and $1,000 more, respectively, though 5.1 is perfectly adequate for great home-theater surround, in our opinion. It's those rich price tags that are the only thing from keeping the Cambridge SoundWorks Newton HD Home Theater System from being named an Editors' Choice. That said, these are rock-solid speakers that will provide years of service that will please even the most discriminating audiophiles. Similarly, the Newton HD system will be welcome by those who just want surround-sound speakers that are worthy of their expensive new HDTV: marrying HD sound quality to HD picture will pay off by elevating the total home-theater experience.