Subjective Listening
Tests
High prices
should mean high sound quality and I'm very sorry to report that I heard every
FR flaw in spades. In a nutshell, the 7500's sounded rather thin, phasey and
sloppy. Let me address one at time...
The thin
sound arose from the weak midrange driver that had no highs whatsoever beyond
10KHz. This fundamentally changes certain sibilant instruments (like the female
human voice) into something much smaller and more distorted. Cymbals were
reduced to sounding very un-harmonic and always dull. Even the ubiquitous
double barreled shotgun sound from Quake2 took on a tinny character. BA's
marketing people must have just "made up" those ridiculous FR specs
which included an HF extension guaranteed to 20KHz (-3dB).
Phasiness
is the non-directive placement of the stereo sound stage. With only the front
satellites active, simple single channel monaural tracks appeared to have
the 1970's "stereo wide" effect applied to them. This was not a
pleasing effect to endure for hours on end.
The sloppiness
is directly attributed to the woofer. I suspect that little or no internal
damping was used and/or that was combined with a high Q (loose) driver. While
not as bad as other units I've ranted about in the past, the 6.5" driver
loved to boom away like so many of those annoying modified autos that rumble
down the street, shaking your rear view mirror as they pass.
I did fiddle
briefly with the digital input. I used the digital out from the SBLive! and
a classic Rotel RCD-855 stand alone CD player. Both sounded slightly better
than the standard analog inputs. The surround quality wasn't tested as I have
my doubt's about the endurance of the 5.1 standard since HDTV made its debut
here in Ohio over a year ago. I'm not big on investing in potentially dying
formats.
Conclusion
If you haven't
figured out by now, I simply cannot recommend the BA7500's at this time. Especially
when considering their high price, they require a complete redesign in my
opinion. The two other reference systems I have on hand, one of $10K American
(not Japanese) lineage, and the other, my still favorite Altec ACS-48's computer
speakers, simply put to shame the Boston's. After a few minutes of discount
web pricing, I was able to turn up an online price of about $240 and these
don't impress me as being worth half as much. Sure, the BA's have the proverbial
boatload of features, but I suspect that most TargetPC readers look for more
than just gadgets.
Boston Acoustics
needs to redesign the power supply, change the midrange drivers and tweak
the subwoofer enclosure to reflect typical in-room computer configurations
before the 7500's can rise to class-leading status. As for the UL safety issue,
I sincerely hope it's in the works.
William
Yaple
11/11/00
