OTHER TECH

Nothing tests the veracity of a system better than voices, and the Instant Theatre told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Video aside, Dickens's characters sounded like they populated the front of my home theater. Male and female voices, whether Nathan Lane as Vincent Crummles or Anne Hathaway as Madeline Bray, shouted, chattered, and whispered with natural and neutral tonality. In fact, the KEF speakers reproduced voices so accurately that I could detect the difference between those recorded in a sound booth and those recorded on the set. Similarly, clanking chains and other street sounds, like blacksmiths at work, did not ring hollow. The KEF system gave authority to the movie's sound effects in both impact and subtlety.

The KEF KIT100 reproduced voices and period sound effects accurately and withauthority in the Nicholas Nickleby DVD.

The musical score by Rachel Portman sounded lush and full. The strings were warm and sonorous, and the high end was clear without harshness or emphasis. And the bass left nothing to the imagination - the subwoofer could probably reproduce a Richter 8.2 earthquake with ease and authenticity. However, the system's maximum volume was somewhat limited, so it's most suitable for small to medium-size rooms.

My squarish room, with a 42-inch widescreen rear-projection TV in the corner, is not what the system designers envisioned, however, so there was minimal surround effect in my initial setup. Even after fine-tuning, surround sound never fully bloomed there. The front sound field was magnificent - very broad and fairly deep - but it didn't wrap around the sides the way I've heard with other virtual surround systems in the same room. The result was much the same, though, when I set up the system in a room with the side walls closer together, as KEF had in mind, and played other DVDs besides Nicholas Nickleby, including the surround spectacular Moulin Rouge.

Video performance using the progressive-scan component output was smooth, without noticeable jaggedness on diagonals or any color smearing. In Nicholas Nickleby, after Smike runs away and Squeers takes off in the carriage at a gallop, with Nicholas running behind, the background stayed in focus, and I saw no jagged edges. The movie in general is shot in soft focus, with muted colors to evoke the era, and the KEF system faithfully reproduced it. However, the player took more than 2 seconds to switch between layers of the DVD.

The Instant Theatre excelled with stereo audio. I spun a CD-R that the legendary singer-songwriter John Stewart, who first became known as a member of the Kingston Trio, made in my radio studio. The sound was spot-on, from John's mouth to my ears. For contrast, I listened to a recent CD, I Can't Be New, by pop-folk artist turned cabaret performer Susan Werner that included plenty of piano and bass. Having heard Werner perform live many times (without amplification), I felt the KEF system reproduced her voice with great honesty and that the acoustic bass was really there in my room. The system defaulted to Dolby Pro Logic II for these discs, and it provided a good image across the front plus a degree of depth and side ambience.

The KEF Instant Theatre doesn't replace a true-blue 5.1-channel system. But if elegance and space saving are essential for your home theater, or a secondary system, and if you can set it up optimally, you owe it to yourself to audition KEF's KIT100. Set up properly in the right room - perhaps a bedroom, den, or summer home - this system can provide a far better movie experience than a plain old two-channel rig or many of the less expensive home-theater-in-a-box systems.

PDF: In the Lab