Big Picture Big Sound

Space. No, not the final frontier. The "thing" that is so lacking. City dwellers living in apartments know exactly what I am talking about. I fondly remember my first apartment; all 600 square feet of it. I used my dining room table as my desk, ironing board, perch for my surround speakers, and as a place to eat. My living room was so small, I had to use my bedroom as my listening/review space. Imagine the fun I had at 3am bumping into a pair of six feet tall MartinLogan reQuests in the dark as I felt my way to the bathroom. It took some time but eventually I realized that bookshelf/monitor loudspeakers are where it's at. I broke my minimonitor cherry with a pair of NHTs.

Fast forward about a decade to my current home with its huge rooms, 9-12' ceilings, screaming and (sometimes) out-of-control children. It is a bloody miracle that my Spendor A6 speakers are still standing. My surround channels are six feet above the ground and firmly attached to the walls. In my office, a pair of DeVore Fidelity Gibbon 3 monitors flank my 20" computer screen with the attached speaker wires taped to the underside of the desk. You can never be too careful. I also can't get away with fugly looking speaker stands anymore. Mrs. White found a great listening position for them; it's called the garage. Speaker cables? Forget about it. If kids can touch them, they will. Nothing like watching a $2,000 pair of monitors get yanked off their stands and come crashing down on the floor (or on the kid).

The problem with little speakers (and this is a generalization) is that they sound "little." I can hear the Pulitzer committee rushing down the hallway with my award after that literary gem. It may be an ugly thing to say, but little speakers generally can't reproduce bass worth a damn, nor can they reproduce music and soundtracks with the sense of scale that their larger brothers and sisters can. The aforementioned DeVore Gibbon 3s are an exception to that rule; midrange resolution to die for, taut bass, and terrific balance across the frequency range. They were also close to $2,000 when they were available, so we're not talking about overly affordable. Spendor, Harbeth, and Sonus Faber (pick your poison) all offer monitors that can get it done, but you will pay a mighty price (at least $2,000 per pair on the low end) for that magic. If you take the next step and try one of their "larger" models, you will certainly get the additional resolution, bass response, and scale that you are craving, but the jump in price will be a source of sticker shock.

Been there. Done that. Never going back. Okay, perhaps not for a third time because I do use floorstanders in the big rig. You get the point. Sheesh.

NHT is one of those rare companies on planet speaker that actually gets it. It's one thing to offer products at price points that people can actually afford; it is quite another to make them as good as these products actually are. NHT has been around for a while and between the original Super Zero, 3.3 tower speakers, and the funky looking Xd series, they have proven that they know how to make good speakers. Really good loudspeakers. The Absolute Zero (under review here in a 5.1 channel configuration) is no exception to that rule. I'm willing to hang my neck out there and state that the Absolute Zero are the best loudspeakers you can buy for under $500. The MartinLogan Motion 4, which I only recently heard are a close second for under five big ones. I would be a proud owner of either one. But let's get back to our story kids...

So what's in the little black box...

The Absolute Zero bookshelf loudspeaker is exactly that; a bookshelf loudspeaker. It has had a long and storied run for the folks at Now Hear This, in its many incarnations. Many moons ago, the original "SuperZero" was the little darling of the high-end reviewing community (I owned two pairs back in 1994 and our editor Chris Boylan still has a few around for reference in his own home theater system).  It was a great sounding little speaker back then. Guess what? It sounds even better now in its evolved and beefier "Absolute" version.

The design of the Absolute Zero in 2010 is far less boxy looking that the original Super Zero minimonitor, although I am not overly crazy about the new feet. The Absolute Zero is a 2-way acoustic suspension design that utilizes one 5.25" polypropylene cone, and one 1" aluminum dome tweeter. At 9.75"H x 5.625"W x 7.25"D, the Zero is fairly compact. It barely tips the scales at 8 pounds, though this does make it a lot more beefy than much of its competition. The high gloss black finish is superb for such an inexpensive pair of loudspeakers.

NHT Has three different sized center channel speakers in their line-up, and the Absolute Center channel loudspeaker is the entry-level model for those keeping score. It is also a 2-way acoustic suspension design that utilizes two 5.25" polypropylene woofers and one 1" aluminum dome tweeter. The Absolute Center is fully shielded and weighs a whopping 17 pounds. At 19"W x 5.7"H x 7.37"D, the Absolute Center is pretty compact and will easily fit inside most television stands. It is short enough to be placed under most wall-mounted televisions with plenty of clearance. It needs a little more power than the other models to really open up, but you should be safe with 75-100 watts of good clean amplification.

Rounding out the package is the NHT Ten subwoofer. The Ten is a beast; in the best of all possible ways. It houses a very impressive looking and sounding 10" long-throw aluminum cone woofer that is driven by a gutsy little 150 watt Class G amplifier. At 18"H x 11.25"W x 15"D, the Ten is not one of those HTiB-like subwoofers that you can just toss in the corner and attach. It weighs 41 pounds and you'll feel it in your lower back the moment you try lifting it. It is rated down to 31Hz, but I would suggest that it goes down even lower in the right room with proper placement.  Two subwoofers usually work better than one, but you'll be fine in a small-medium sized room with a single Ten subwoofer. Apartment dwellers are forewarned.

Opening shot across the bow...

Setting up this system was easy as pie, but I would have preferred to mount the front left/right speakers and the surround speakers on the wall; as opposed to the stands I had to drag out of storage. If you have little kids (or a home overrun with their evil minions), stands are asking for trouble. My Analysis Plus speaker cables are flat and I do run them down into the floor (my basement ceiling is open underneath) and to the rear of the room where the equipment rack is, but my kids love to pull on them or trip over them. My 24" high stands weigh almost fifty pounds each and they provided a solid foundation for the Absolute Zero. If memory serves me, I used to mount Super Zero loudspeakers on 28" stands, but I could be wrong. Not everyone is 6' 3" tall, but I like em mounted higher than most. I also don't love the sound of speakers toed-in directly at me. The improvements in imaging are duly noted, but I almost always prefer the tonal balance with just a tiny modicum of toe-in.

I positioned the Absolute Center directly beneath my Stewart screen on top of a Symposium Svelte isolation platform, which made a significant impact on the sound; better clarity at really loud levels, low-end extension, and a warmer tonal balance. The Symposium isolation shelves work well, but are certainly not mandatory to make the Absolute Center sound great. It does that all by itself.

Positioning the Ten subwoofer was significantly easier than most subwoofers; although I think my REL T1 is as good as it gets when it comes to little "boomsticks." Rather than position the Ten directly in one of the corners (my media room is located in the rear corner of my home and has very solid walls, although the floors are suspended), I pulled it out a few feet. The bass extension was just as deep and sounded faster to my ears.

The Absolute Zero is rated down to 71Hz (+/- 3dB), but I crossed the subwoofer over at 100Hz which made for a more seamless sounding set-up. The Absolute Zero can dig fairly deep, but why stress them out when the Ten is so good?

What makes this system so special is its cohesiveness and overall level of resolution for such a low asking price. Turn the volume down and it still sounds good. Crank the volume all the way up and it doesn't fall apart at the frequency extremes. the NHT 5.1 may not be the ideal surround system for a large room, but position these little puppies properly and dial in the subwoofer in a small to medium sized room and you'll achieve the desired sound quite easily.

Is that a Huey gunship in your pants or are you just glad to see me...

There are a lot of okay sounding loudspeakers than can play loudly. Most of them sound less coherent the more you push them. The Absolute Towers that I reviewed last month were brilliant at loud levels; superb clarity and tonality. Their little sibling certainly shares that familial trait, just not to the same extreme. The Absolute Towers can be driven to insane levels (which is fine for movies, but not my chilled bottle of Boylan's Creamy Red when listening to music). The Absolute Zero? Not so much. The more I listened to them, the more I realized they might be the ideal monitors for those people who value tonality and resolution; aside from just transparency at loud levels.

On their own without the Ten subwoofer, the Absolute Zero speakers are resolute sounding loudspeakers. My behemoth stands had an obvious impact on their bass response, but they will certainly work in small-medium sized rooms if placed on a shelf or mounted on a wall. The addition of the Ten subwoofer had an immediate impact on how loud the Absolute Zero could play, but it didn't take away from its rich and musical sounding presentation. They complement one another very well.

When I gathered the meshpucha and we watched James Cameron's Avatar on our 100" screen, the quality of the surround sound was not overshadowed by the breathtaking picture quality (nice job JVC... way to replace my projector already... bugger). The Absolute Zero reproduced every nuance of sound on Pandora with startling clarity and spaciousness. I'm still waiting for the 3D version of the film to blow me away at home, but the surround mix is beyond reproach. The little NHT Absolute 5.1 system certainly did not disappoint. My children were sufficiently frightened by the surround mix to bring a huge grin to my face; and a wickedly angry stare from my wife. You can't win folks.

My children are obsessed with SpongeBob Squarepants, so out came the collection. The NHT made watching the same episodes we've seen 100 times, that much better. My son, who usually remains dead silent during each Bikini Bottom adventure, was utterly fascinated by the new world that was enveloping him. I wasn't so thrilled when he tried to pry off the grille covers, to take a look for himself, but he clearly liked what he was listening to.

I'm still waiting with pathetic angst for the Blu-ray release of Apocalypse Now (so soon...I love the smell of napalm in the morning), but that didn't stop me from watching the horrible DVD copy. The beach attack scene is a film classic, with its thunderous Wagner and napalm strike. While not as good as the opening moments of battle in downtown Mogadishu from Black Hawk Down, it still sounds fantastic in 5.1 surround. The Absolute Zero excels at putting things in their proper place from a sonic perspective and I never strained for one second to make out any dialogue, even when it was surrounded on all sides by the sounds of rotor blades and exploding RPGs. They clearly did not design this system using My Dinner with Andre as a reference disc.

No loudspeaker is perfect and the Absolute Zeros do have a few areas where they are not going to work for everyone in every situation. While their bass response is rather solid, it does not go down deep enough to replace a full-range floorstander or larger bookshelf speaker. The reality is that, if you want to use the Absolute Zero as your main left/right speakers, you must supplement with a subwoofer such as the Ten. Considering how little NHT charges for the Ten, it would actually be sonically prudent to buy two. $500 for this dynamic and taut sounding subwoofer is a killer deal.

At 17'L x 13'W x 8'H, my home theater room most falls into the "medium-sized" category and while the Absolute Center loudspeaker did a great job, it still came across as slightly small-sounding for the room; certainly in comparison to my significantly larger reference Spendor C9e.  At $199.00, the Absolute Center channel loudspeaker is downright highway robbery. In my not so humble opinion, nobody on planet speaker is making anything as good as this for the money. It has no competition. Zilch.

NHT made its mark long before home theater had reared its scary head, and its speakers over the years (and I've owned a few of them) have always been good with all kinds of music, unlike some other high-end products that sound great with jazz and classical but sound like a jumbled mess with rock and heavy metal. Their bass limitations, notwithstanding, the Absolute Zeros are all-around great loudspeakers. They do not reproduce music with the same sense of scale as the larger Absolute Towers, or even the Threes, but what they do for their asking price is very impressive indeed.

It doesn't matter what you throw at the Absolute Zero/Ten combination; large scale classical, jazz trios, prog rock bands (you knew there would be a Rush reference here somewhere), or vocals, it just delivers the goods. Yup.

If I may conclude with a paraphrase of a line from Apocalypse Now;

"Buy with extreme prejudice."

Turn Ons

• Insanely cheap for the high level of fidelity
• Excellent build quality not usually seen at this price point
• Superb tonality and coherence across the frequency range
• Easy to set-up
• Sounds great at loud levels
• More fun than human beings should be allowed to have