B.I.C. Home Theater Speaker System Review

The four different components that make up BIC’s home theater speaker system are available separately. Indeed, the system price is simply the sum of the prices of the components that make it up, meaning you don’t get a break for buying them all together. But that shouldn’t pose a problem: It is one of the least expensive complete home theater speaker systems with any pretension to quality.

Most numerous in a complete BIC home theater setup are the V52 satellite speakers ($165 per pair). You’ll need two pairs of V52’s because they do double duty as both front left/right and surround speakers. They are of ported design with a 4-1/2-inch woofer and a 1-inch dome tweeter in a cabinet measuring 7 inches wide, 11-3/4 inches high, and 7-1/4 inches deep. Presumably to reduce diffraction problems, the side edges of the cabinets are beveled. Nominal system impedance is 8 ohms; sensitivity is given as 90 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) with a 1-watt input. Those two specs apply to all the speakers in the system, as does the use of spring-type cable connectors.

The V52 manual suggests that you can use one as a center-channel speaker, which would have the virtue of providing an exact sonic match among the left, right, and center speakers. But V52’s are sold only in pairs, so you would end up with an extra speaker. You might prefer to use BIC’s dedicated center speaker, the V52 Plus ($159 each). It uses the same tweeter and two of the same woofer as the V52, all mounted in a horizontally oriented ported cabinet measuring 18 x 6-1/2 x 11-3/8 inches. Recommended placement is directly above or below a television screen.

Bass for the system—the satellites and center speaker are thin-sounding when used alone—is provided by the V-12 subwoofer ($300), which in turn is driven by the SWA-100 dedicated subwoofer amplifier ($399) with built-in crossover circuitry. The V-12 and SWA-100 are also sold together as a general-purpose powered subwoofer system for $699.

The V-12 consists of a 12-inch long-throw woofer in a large vented cabinet measuring 16-1/2 x 21 x 18-1/2 inches, including the removable grille. Compared with other subwoofers reviewed here recently, the V-12 is relatively lightweight. The resulting ease of positioning is further enhanced by (saints be praised!) built-in wheels. For those who want to use an amplifier other than the SWA-100 with the V-12, the subwoofer’s recommended crossover frequency is 85 to 120 Hz (the V-12 has no internal crossover), with a recommended amplifier power of from 20 to 100 watts.

As its model number implies, the SWA-100 amp is rated to provide 100 watts into 4 or 8 ohms over its power bandwidth, which in this case extends over bass frequencies only (specifically from 20 to 70 Hz ±3 dB). Into 8 ohms, the continuous power rating falls to 70 watts, but with 2 dB of dynamic headroom. Calculations incorporating the V-12’s sensitivity lead to a predicted maximum short-term peak subwoofer SPL of around 110.5 dB at 1 meter, which is plenty loud enough for most domestic listening.

The amplifier’s internal crossover has a high-pass section to remove bass frequencies from the signals to the front left and right speakers at a rate of 6 dB per octave below 85 Hz. The crossover’s corresponding low-pass section removes high frequencies from the subwoofer signal at 24 dB per octave above 85 Hz. Input sensitivity is given as 25 millivolts for the SW-100’s rated power output.

From the front, the SWA-100 looks like a basic power amplifier: a black box measuring 12 x 4-1/8 x 12-3/4 inches with one knob (volume) and one switch (power). From the back, things look a bit more complicated. The SWA-100 can receive its signals either from line-level outputs (preamp outputs or the pre-out jacks on some integrated amplifiers and receivers) or from speaker-level outputs. The various input-hookup options are clearly explained and illustrated in the amplifier manual, as is the use of the different types of rear-panel input connectors (spring clips for speaker inputs and outputs, phono jacks for line-level signals). The amplifier proper has only one output, a pair of multiway binding posts for connection to the subwoofer. A back-panel switch must be thrown from its 8-ohm to its 4-ohm position if you connect two V-12’s (or any other 8-ohm subwoofers) in parallel to the SWA-100’s output or use a single subwoofer with a rated impedance of less than 4 ohms. “Do not attempt to use two subwoofers that are rated less than 8 ohms each with the SWA-100,” the manual warns.

Thanks to the well-written and well-illustrated manuals, I had no trouble hooking up the system. BIC gives somewhat conflicting advice on where to locate the surround speakers, however. The manual recommends that the surrounds “be positioned behind and slightly to the sides of the viewer/listener,” but the accompanying diagrams show what I interpret as placement to the sides and slightly behind, a preferable arrangement.

The wheels on the V-12 subwoofer were particularly welcome because even with a microphone connected to a spectrum analyzer, finding a good location for it proved more difficult than expected, and it had to be moved more than usual. The V-12’s output peaks slightly at around 60 Hz, and it can tend toward “one-note” bass if it is poorly located. Our standard locations, where other subwoofers had been used successfully before, did not produce the best results. Instead, the BIC V-12 worked best on the center line of our listening room, a placement not normally conducive to flattest bass response because of room resonances. Experimentation with subwoofer positioning is still the order of the day.

Getting a good “splice” of the subwoofer’s response curve with that of the other speakers in the system also required some trial and error. In this case, the amplifier’s manual was no help. It merely said to “adjust the SWA-100’s volume control until you are satisfied with the amount of bass,” which will lead most novices to a setting that produces too much bass. Correctly adjusting a subwoofer’s output level is always a difficult problem, so I cheated by using the spectrum analyzer again. In our listening room, the amplifier control ended up at 10 o’clock, as good a place as any for you to start your experimentation. I also got a better splice of the response curves when I inverted the subwoofer’s phase relative to that of the other speakers in the system, something you might want to try by simply reversing the subwoofer connections (amplifier red to subwoofer black, and vice versa).

When pushed hard with sine waves of 40 Hz and below, the V-12 emitted a considerable amount of disharmonious “port noise” as the air flow though its two ports became turbulent. The effect was never noticeable as such on the music I played, however, most of which doesn’t have very strong signal content below 40 Hz. Even with explosive movie soundtracks, the port noise couldn’t be heard over all the other loud sounds in the program.

The V52 satellites and the similar-sounding V52 Plus center-channel speaker had basically the same slightly colored but generally pleasing frequency response. The speakers had a “forward” sound quality, which I attribute to the roughness of the transition to the subwoofer and the corresponding slight dip in the upper bass.

The responses of the satellites and center speaker also exhibited a possibly intentional deep dip at around 3 kHz. That response characteristic, which the BIC speakers have in common with at least one small, highly regarded, and very expensive high-end loudspeaker, can impart a good sense of image depth to a lot of recordings without totally sacrificing tonal quality. (This is a fascinating psycho-acoustical “trick” that you can simulate with a parametric equalizer and a set of speakers with flatter response.) Image precision was very good on both soundtracks and music.

In sum, although the BIC home theater system isn’t the be-all and end-all of surround-sound speaker systems, it won’t be the end-all of your wallet, either. It is a good bargain for anyone on a tight budget who wants a taste of the excitement of home theater.

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