Definitive Technology BP 2006TL Test Report

STEREO REVIEW'S SOUND & VISION
test report
BP 2006TL Home Theater Speaker System
"The highest praise any speaker system can garner"
S
equels dominate movie and home
theater screens: Star Trek surpassed
The Godfather in generations, and
Star Wars bent space and time into
prequels. So why not sequels for
home theater speakers, too? The
BP2006TL continues Definitive
Technology's tradition of producing bipolar,
floor-standing speakers with built-in powered
subwoofers. To create a home theater system
around the 2006TLs, I used Def Tech's new
Definitive Technology
CLR 2300 speaker to handle the center channel
— it also contains a powered sub — and a pair of
small BP 2X bipolar speakers for the surrounds.
"passed the test with
utter faithfulness"
The 2006TL columns stand about waist high
and are cloaked in a black knit "sock" with lac-
quered black end caps. Less than a foot deep and
half as wide, they occupy minimal floor space
BY RICH WARREN
and could ease some domestic disputes about
placing floor-standing speakers. Within each col-
umn resides pairs of front- and rear-firing tweet-
ers and midrange drivers, wired in phase to create
a bipolar radiation pattern (out of phase would be
dipolar). The 8-inch subwoofer, powered by a
250-watt amplifier, has its own transmission-line,
slot-loaded subenclosure, which is designed to
enhance low-bass performance. Each 2006TL
has a low-frequency level control in back.
"an amazing sequel — definitely
Academy Award material"
The CLR 2300, half as long as the 2006TL is
high, has the same enclosure styling, though it's
not bipolar. It can be positioned vertically or hor-
izontally, and I set it vertically on the floor under
my TV. It holds a front-firing tweeter, two
midrange drivers, and an 8-inch subwoofer pow-
ered by a 150-watt amplifier.
The subwoofer sections of the front speakers
accept signals either from the speaker outputs of
an amplifier or receiver or from the line-level out-
puts of a preamp or processor. While in theory
line-level signals are slightly cleaner, I used the
speaker-level inputs for the sake of convenience,
just as most people are likely to do.
The BP 2X surrounds come in white or
black trapezoidal enclosures and include
wall-mounting plates. Each speaker has two
woofer/tweeter complements, which fire in phase
in opposite directions.
"Definitive Technology
superbly matched the timbres
of this quintet of speakers,
which blended seamlessly"
Whether you call the BP 2006TL and CLR
2300 prequels or sequels, they beat most
Hollywood efforts, where second and third out-
ings often fall shy of the originals. In fact, this
$2,300 system could persuade you to buy the
2006TL instead of one of the company's earlier
and more expensive tower models as your "main"
L/R speaker.
I moved out my $7,000 reference speaker
system and spent a week with the Def Tech
combo, which I'll call the 2006TL system
from this point on. I fed it Dolby Digital DVDs
of shoot 'em up adventures and three-hankie
love stories, jazz and pop videos, some store-
bought CDs and a few CD-Rs that I burned
from acoustic studio recordings I produced
for radio.