Thursday, February 02, 2006

Energy Connoisseur C-3 Speakers

I am pleased to announce that I now have the Energy C-3 speakers in my bedroom home theater. It only took a few days to ship from AudioAdvisor.com. I highly recommend buying from them as they sell high-end audio/video products at very competitive prices, plus they have great service. Since I auditioned several high-end speakers two years ago and found the C-3's to be my preferred choice, I've been wanting them ever since. I listened to several bookshelf speakers of similar size including B&W, Mirage, Boston Acoustics, and Paradigm - nothing compared to the C-3's in terms of sound quality and value. I really preferred the B&W's (Bowers & Wilkins) but the Energy's lower price point sold me.

My first impressions of the speakers came when I played "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits. This song is a favorite speaker testing song among the audiophile community. The high frequencies on the C-3's are very clear, detailed, and crisp. Boy are they crisp! The hi-hats and cymbal crashes of the drums are very lifelike. The mids are extremely clear, vocals and wind instruments are very warm and neutral. The bass is very deep, accurate, and punchy - what I prefer for my music genre preferences. In fact, they have such the right amount of bass that I find myself turning off the subwoofer when playing music. It really is amazing that so much punchy deep bass can come out of a speaker with only 6.5" woofers. For movies, on the other hand, the subwoofer is a necessity. Overall, the speakers put out a very neutral and well-balanced sound - exactly what I look for in a speaker.

While the speakers have a decent amount of bass production, the laws of physics only allow bookshelf speakers such as the C-3's to go so low. I adjusted my Energy e:XL-S10's crossover to about 60 Hz to match with the bass acoustics of the C-3's. Even though the speakers go down to 46 Hz, I felt that the subwoofer's crossover needed to overlap the lower end a little bit for this reason: the pairing of the punchy, tight bass of the C-3's and smooth, soft, and deep bass of the e:XL-S10 subwoofer really "smoothed" out the lower end frequency production.

As you can see from the pictures, the old Energy Take 2's that I used as my main speakers for a few years were moved to the back as rear surrounds for the ultimate home theater experience :)