Home Theater Gear

PSB Speakers, one of Canada's leading speaker manufacturers, showed off their newly designed Image series speakers at the CEDIA Expo. The Image series speakers have been in PSB's line for several years, and while they have received rave reviews for their great sound quality at a very reasonable price point from owners and critics alike, they were never the best looking speakers one might find. PSB has redesigned the Image series, and those critics sould now be silenced.

The speakers are a far cry from the drab, monolithic boxes many people tolerated in the past. Like your obnoxious uncle that was a generous financial whiz, you kept the old Image series around for certain attributes, all the while cringing about others. Now, however PSB looks to have answered their critics and have ensconced the new Image series speakers in slimmer, more attractive cabinets with gracefully curved front baffles. Said baffles are hewn from 1-1/8" MDF to give the drivers a solid platform from which to work and reduce cabinet resonance. Such baffles are rare in speakers at this price point. The cabinet's are internally divided to optimize enclosure size for the individual drivers, eliminate interdriver interference, and reduce standing waves that can affect many slim cabinet designs.

Their total makeover doesn't stop with the cabinets, either. No, PSB has seen fit to completely redesign the Image series from top to bottom. They have completely new drivers. Instead of the aluminum coated poly mid bass units of old, they now sport slick yellow clay/ceramic filled polypropylene midranges and woofers. The tweeters have not escaped the redesign either. They are the same 1" titanium units, PSB fits to their higher end Imagine series. For that matter, the mid-bass drivers and woofers are the same as found in the Imagine speakers too.

PSB has seen fit to change the line in terms of models too. They have added a smaller bookshelf speaker with a 4" driver. This is a great addition to the line, giving consumers an additional option when budget, aesthetics, or room size dictate a smaller sized and lower priced little bookshelf speaker. Add a sub, and you have a high performance little 2.1 package at an amazingly low price. The Image B-4 crams a ton of performance into a cabinet only slightly bigger than 5" wide by 9" tall. Even better, you get this excellent sound quality for only $299 a pair. One caveat with the Image B4, they are rear ported, so you can't place them on bookshelves with their back to the wall if you want to get the best they have to offer. CEDIA goers had nothing but rave reviews for this little dynamo. Some listeners even compared it to bookshelves costing three times the price.

If you want to use the Image B4 as the front speakers in a home theater set up, you're in luck; PSB has also introduced a matching center channel speaker, dubbed appropriately enough, the C4. It uses the same driver complement, but has the traditional W-T-W center channel layout, with two woofers flanking the tweeter. The Center channel will be priced at $275/ea when the new Image series starts hitting dealers shelves before the end of this month.

The new Image line also includes two tower speakers, one with  dual 6 in woofers, a 5-1/4" midrange and a titanium tweeter, and another with 2 5-1/4" mid bass units and a tweeter. These are the T66 and T5 respectively. Bookshelf speaker aficionados are rewarded with a trio of choices as well, the B6 and B5, in addition to the B4 already mentioned. There is a a larger C5 center and a S5 surround rounding out the new Image line.

All in all, the improved driver complement and redesigned cabintets promise to produce an instant classic. The old PSB image series speakers were already one of my favorite speakers in the bang for the buck category, and the new series improves on them in every area. PSB founder Paul Barton even said "....the Image Series represents my best achievement." That's a pretty strong statement from a man with a 30+ year history of creating notable speaker designs.