Tower Speaker Reviews

Setup
Thanks to the EF50T tower's dainty 5x6.5-inch footprint, the speaker isn't all that stable on its own, so EMP provides a larger plinth base you attach with four screws. The base can then be outfitted with adjustable metal spikes or rubber-tipped feet.

Towers are usually full-range speakers, and since the EF50T boasts four—count 'em, four—4-inch woofers, I assumed these slender towers would generate a fair amount of bass on their own.

EMP's specifications claim they're good down to 80Hz, which isn't all that low, but in my room, the towers weren't getting anywhere near that. In the spirit of due diligence, I started listening with my Onkyo TX-SR805 AVR's bass-management crossover set to 80Hz and heard an obvious bass gap/suckout between the speakers and sub. Midbass was way too lean, and even after I reset the Onkyo's crossover to 100Hz, I wasn't happy with the sound.

Goosing the crossover up to 120Hz for all channels and moving the sub out of the corner and three feet closer to the left tower smoothed out the blend a bit more, but it was still less than ideal. Every room is different, but you may have to invest a little extra effort to get the HTP-551T system to sing.

One more thing—speaker break-in is rarely that big a deal, but this system showed steady improvement over the first three or four days of heavy use.