Bookshelf Speaker Reviews

Was just curious as to why these speakers didn't get a Top Pick as they scored very well and Mark seemed to like them? Thanks a lot.

Thanks for the question, Jarod. One of the challenges that we face at Home Theater in recommending a specific product as a standout (which is what the Top Pick logo is supposed to designate) is that we very rarely review a real stinker. Being unable to test anything but a small sample of what's out there, we tend to screen for products in different categories and price ranges we think will have a reasonable shot at a positive review.

What this means in practice is that selecting a product for an honor like Top Pick really comes down to delineating the fine distinctions between products that are merely very good and those that are truly great -- those that, by virtue of performance or value, have risen like cream and genuinely wowed the jaded reviewer (who presumably has seen and heard enough to easily distinguish the real gems from "just another good one." Frankly, as the still relatively new editor of the magazine, I don't think we've done such a great job in the recent past of making those distinctions clear for our readers.

In this particular case, the answer to your question is right in the review, though I admit it's subtle. With a careful read you'll see that on various program material Mark found the speakers could sound "fatiguing," or "edgy," and he closes by suggesting the speakers performance can be "content dependent" and that they should be mated with "warm" electronics. The latter is audiophile code for saying you should avoid cheap receivers that, when pushed near their power limits, can tend to add a bit of brightness on their own and possibly make these speakers sound strident. If you go further and dig into our lab measurements (which are available from the Specs page of the review), you'll notice that the frequency response curve we measured shows a rather pronounced spike in output right around 15 kHz. This is something Mark would not have known while doing the review--we never share our measurements with the reviewers before they complete their subjective evaluation. But this time the measurements proved out what Mark heard: these Energy's have been voiced with a rising top end that's intended to etch out extra detail in the highs and give them more sizzle than you'd find in a more accurate monitor. That was the designer's choice, and it's perfectly legitimate -- with speakers, it takes all kinds to meet different tastes. But that lack of accuracy and tendency to sound strident in some conditions prevented these from getting Mark's whole-hearted endorsement. In hindsight, our 4-Star Excellent performance rating was probably generous given that tendency, and I've adjusted that down to 3.5 Stars, which should soon be evident in our ratings box.

Going forward, however, you will see our ratings applied more judiciously and consistently across all our reviewers thanks to new standards we've put in place. You'll also see fewer products getting a Top Pick, so the lack of the TP logo on relatively well-reviewed products won't seem so odd to you and the presence of a TP should have more impact. We've instituted a new policy whereby we are limiting TP status to, in most cases, only the best three (or in some categories four) currently available models we've tested in each price segment. To add a Top Pick, our reviewer must now make the case for which product needs to drop off the list, subject to internal debate and the editor's approval. Products that come off the list, either because they've been displaced by something better or are no longer available, will be designated on our Web site with a "Former Top Picks" logo. If these former Picks are still on the market, they're still highly recommendable and worthy of consideration, but not among our top three or four favorites at this moment. You can always see our most current list of Top Picks by clicking on the new Top Picks link in our navigation bar. We hope this policy will make the list more valuable by assuring that nothing sneaks on that isn't truly remarkable in its own right, and something that we ourselves would own or quickly recommend to family and friends.