Cambridge SoundWorks Tower II Speaker System Review

Cambridge SoundWorks (CSW) has earned a solid reputation for the quality and value of its loudspeakers during the eight years of the company’s existence. This reflects the technical expertise and quality standards of its co-founder, Henry Kloss, who has been responsible for many advances in consumer audio products, especially speakers, over the past four decades. He was also founder or co-founder of several other companies noted for significant advances in consumer electronics, including Acoustic Research (AR), Advent, and Kloss Video.

For most of its existence, CSW has been known primarily as a manufacturer of compact and inexpensive loudspeakers and music systems sold by mail order. A couple of years ago, however, the company began opening retail stores and now has a chain of outlets in New England and California.

CSW recently introduced its first floor-standing speakers, which are described as being equally suitable for music and home-theater applications. There are currently three models in the new Tower series: the Tower ($1,500 a pair), a three-way bipolar system; the Tower II ($1,000 a pair), the front-firing three-way system reviewed here; and the Tower III ($600 a pair), a front-firing two-way system.

The Tower II is a columnar speaker whose drivers are vertically aligned on the front panel. At the top is a 1-inch soft-dome tweeter, and under it is a 5-1/4-inch polypropylene midrange driver operating in a sealed subenclosure. Below that are two 8-inch polypropylene cone woofers operating in a vented enclosure whose port is near the bottom of the back panel. The four drivers are concealed by a removable black cloth grille that matches a small cloth-covered section at the bottom of the front panel, which is 1 inch thick. The cabinet has 3/4-inch-thick side and back panels and internal cross-bracing. The two sets of gold-plated binding posts on the back, which are linked together by removable jumpers, accept wires, lugs, and banana plugs (single or dual). If the jumpers are removed, the system can be operated in a bi-amplified or bi-wired mode.

The cabinet is finished in an attractive walnut-grain vinyl veneer; it is also available in black ash. The Tower II comes with removable floor spikes whose use is recommended by the manufacturer. Because spikes make it difficult to move speakers around on the carpeted floor of our listening room, however, we do not use them.

Although the instruction booklet contains all the information needed to set up the Tower II speakers, it provides none of the usual performance ratings and internal specifications, just the statement that the speakers can benefit from being driven by amplifiers capable of delivering 100 watts per channel or more. In addition, the serial-number label on the back panel states that system impedance is 8 ohms and that the speaker is magnetically shielded to prevent picture distortion if it’s placed close to a TV in a home-theater system.

We found, however, that the measured impedance of the system was less than 8 ohms over most of the audio range. It was between 3 and 4 ohms from 90 Hz to 1.5 kHz, and except at the bass resonance frequency of 50 Hz, where the impedance hit 15 ohms, it did not reach 8 ohms at any frequency. Although, technically speaking, the Tower II should be considered a 4-ohm speaker from the standpoint of amplifier compatibility, most amplifiers will be able to drive it without a problem given its relatively high sensitivity (more on that later).

The room response of the system, smoothed and averaged for the left and right speakers, was similiar to that of comparable speakers we’ve tested recently. The response variation in our room was +5 dB from 20 Hz to 18 kHz. The horizontal directivity over a ±45-degree angle was also typical of 1-inch tweeters, with a -5-dB response variation up to 13 kHz and an increase to -10 dB at 15 kHz.

Our MLS quasi-anechoic frequency-response measurements at distances of 1, 2, and 3 meters were very similar: Except for a sharp dip of about 8 dB at 3 kHz, response between 300 Hz and 20 kHz varied only +3 dB. The manufacturer provided no information on the system's crossover, but the 3-kHz notch appeared to be a crossover artifact between the tweeter and midrange driver and, as is often the case with such effects, was not audible with music. A similar effect also appeared in the impedance curve and the room-response curve (where the notch was insignificant, being comparable to the normal level variations of that measurement).

We measured the bass response of the system separately at the woofers and the port, combining the two signals for one reading. The results were excellent, within about ±2 dB from 20 to 120 Hz and rolling off at higher frequencies to about -6 dB at 150 Hz.

Output level with a 2.83-volt input (the standard signal voltage for speaker sensitivity measurements) was 90 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) at 1 meter. Distortion at that level ranged between 1 and 2 percent from 2 kHz down to 70 Hz, increasing to 10 percent at 35 Hz and 20 percent at 25 Hz. Although those numbers might seem large by the standards applied to CD players, power amplifiers, and other electronic audio components, they are not out of the ordinary for speakers, especially in the low bass range where large cone excursions are common.

A requirement unique to A/V speaker systems is a low external magnetic field. Ordinary speaker magnets can seriously distort the images on a nearby TV. We scanned the external surfaces of the Tower II with a gauss-meter and found a field strength of less than 0.5 gauss over almost the entire cabinet. The held strength inched up to only 1 gauss near the bottom of the cabinet, where the woofers are located. In other words, you don’t have to worry about picture distortion with these speakers.

The nearly 3-foot-tall Tower II is actually one of the more compact and lightweight floor-standing A/V speakers we have tested in recent month. A speaker designed for use in a good home-theater system is expected to reproduce high signal levels without damage or obvious distortion. Obviously, these qualities are also desirable for listening to music, though they may be somewhat less important. The Tower II proved to be a muscular, rugged speaker that easily handled the highest levels our ears could tolerate. While we did not use it to audition movie soundtracks in a home-theater system, it was obviously loafing along at any levels we cared to use.

Clearly, Henry Kloss has not lost his touch. Though small enough to fit into any room, the Cambridge Sound-Works Tower II can generate the gut-wrenching bass that seems to be a part of so many film soundtracks these days (including a palpable 30 Hz) and still do justice to a first-rate music system. To top it off, the price is right!

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