General Asylum: REVIEW: OPTIMUS PRO-LX8 Speakers by ROBERT G

These are maybe the best speaker that RS has ever sold (though there were others that I have not heard). Though it has the cheap and ugly appearance of black woodgrain vinyl (don't manufacturers realise that this and "oak" look so fake and cheap that maybe they should just offer in primer gray and let people paint them) the rest of the build quality (from strength and design) is actually quite good. The drivers are isolated (the tweeter is on top of the cabinet), gold five-way binding posts (strange that it doesn't take their version of the double banana... come to think of it neither does any of their other speakers with binding posts), 5/8" cabinet with internal bracing and dampening material, a large cross-over network on a 4" x 6" circuit board with 16g wire to the woofer and 18g to the tweeter, and grills are are honey-combed plastic with a black covering (some sort of plastic) material. To show you how much faith that RS had in this product they have a five-year warranty without requiring you to keep the original box or packing materials (I assume that they assume you will be buying the display model). By the way the woofer is made of some type of poly-propolyene plastic and you won't have to worry about rotting due to age of the driver.

The speaker is placement sensitive from the perspective that the tweeter needs room to breathe so you will need to make sure that it is away from any walls, cabinets (including TVs, entertainment centers, etc...), and plants. Also getting speaker stands for this isn't cheap by any means since these speakers are bulky and quite heavy (need about 20" stands myself and wanted a bracket that allows hanging these from the ceiling upside down which cost $275). I have mine placed about 15' feet apart with a slight toe-in about 2' from any other structure of the house (what was described from the first sentence). I use these for all four corners of my theater with the PRO-CS5 center channel and an AudioSource 8" subwoofer.

How does it sound? The speaker has a slight coloration of female vocals as the only negative thing I can really say about it. It is somewhat warm with the ability to throw a huge soundstage (depth and width) but not with a pin-point accuracy done by direct-radiating speakers have. Bass response goes down to about 50hz very clean and should be able to match-up with subs quite easily for blending purpose. With a good amp the bass on this is fast with correct pitch accurancy within the limits of the speakers ability to reproduce (50-25000hz freq response). The main thing this speaker can really do is string accoustics as the tweeter gives such an air that it seems almost breathe taking. I have heard many expensive speakers at specialty audio stores on good electronics, with good source players, with good inter-connects, and I can honestly say this is definately where this speaker is very competitive to them (for bass and female vocal clarity you will know this is a budget speaker). If I had to categorize these speakers I would say these are very competitive with the NHT SuperOnes with this speaker having the better treble and bass but with the NHT having the better vocals and size (if this is a factor with the significant other). For movies this might be one of the best rear speakers money can buy since you will be able to set the rears to large and will not be drowned out by towers that most small speakers suffer from in loud dynamics.

REVIEW: OPTIMUS PRO-LX8 Speakers Review by ROBERT G at Audio Asylum