ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM SEPTEMBER 2006
Infinity Cascade Speaker System
Flat and fit.
in ways that correct ailments
common to most speakers.
Oh MoMA
The Cascades could be in an
exhibit at the Museum of Modern
Art. Their newly designed, flat,
rectangular woofers share the front
with a conventional dome tweeter.
Although they’re trimmed in plas-
tic, the drivers actually attach to
the underlying wood. The Model
Seven floorstanding speaker pre-
sents an unbroken front surface;
the high-gloss black of the speaker
transitions to the stand’s gray
matte aluminum.
The top of the Model Seven
tapers back, making it appear
slightly smaller than it really is. This
tapering reappears on both ends of
the Model Five monitor, the Model
Three C center speaker, and the
Model Fifteen subwoofer. The sides
and the rear are constructed of
curved extruded aluminum in
matte black. When I knuckle-
rapped the enclosures, I heard var-
ious pitches in various places, but
they were all muted compared with
the pitches of my fiberboard-
enclosed reference speakers. These
speakers are solid.
Conspicuous in its absence is
the cone-shaped woofer that 99 per-
cent of speaker designs employ.
Round cones and sharp-cornered,
rectangular speaker enclosures are
easy to manufacture, but fitting
the former into the latter is a waste
of space. Boxy enclosures also
BY MARK FLEISCHMANN
have either the purest soprano or
the noblest baritone. In fact, you
have both. I think this metaphor
may be getting a bit perverse.
How would you feel if you
woke up one day in a perfect body?
You’d pull back the blanket and
look down on a perfectly flat
tummy (something I haven’t seen in
years, although heaven knows I’m
trying). Combination skin is a thing
of the past—you seem to have been
remade in some wonderful mate-
rial. Eager to check yourself out
in a mirror, you cross the room to
find yourself resculpted in new
and slimmer proportions. And,
when you open your mouth,
depending on your gender, you
The point I’m meandering
my way around to is that Infinity’s
new Cascade line reimagines every
aspect of the loudspeaker. The
newest feature is a reshaped
woofer, a flat, rectangluar dia-
phragm that’s not cone shaped.
The woofer and the tweeter
are both made of a proprietary
ceramic/aluminum blend not
unfamiliar to Infinity fans. The
look is as distinctive as a finger-
print, and the sound is superlative
Infinity immediately scored ergo-
nomic points by reducing the
assembly instructions for the Model
Seven to one step: Put the speaker
on the stand. Assembly time: three
seconds. The smaller Model Five
required two screws to attach a tri-
angular metal bracket that grips a
metal tongue at the top of the stand.
Assembly time: half a minute.
The stands are cast aluminum
and extremely heavy. They give the
speakers a nearly resonance-free
foundation and would make excel-
lent murder weapons. Round gold-
nut binding posts face directly
downward in the Model Seven and
diagonally upward in the Model
Five, providing access for spade
lugs but not for banana plugs.
Blobs of plastic in the holes block
banana-plug insertion. These are a
requirement for sale in Europe and
are removable. I used an elderly
but reliable set of Monster THX
ribbon cables with bare tips.
izontal shape that’s designed to sit
close to a wall. Inside is a quartet of
6-inch, square, down-firing woofers
in an enclosure that’s tapered at the
sides, like the other speakers.
Equalizing the sub was part of
the setup process. Infinity calls this
R.A.B.O.S., the Room Adaptive
Bass Optimization System. Sup-
plied R.A.B.O.S. accessories
include a test-tone CD, a sound
meter that specializes in bass, a
plastic overlay, and a set of instruc-
tions. The latter seems formidably
intricate at first glance, but the
process is fairly simple.
aware of the sub’s existence except
at peak bass moments (and that’s
how it should be). The handoff from
sub to speakers at the crossover fre-
quency was seamless.
My reference gear, as usual,
included a Rotel RSX-1065 A/V
receiver. The Rotel combines
dynamically potent high-current
amplification with a scrupulously
defined top end—don’t use the
Cascades with anything less. Because
the speakers are so fond of high-rez
signal sources, my Integra DPS-10.5
universal disc player took on a more
prominent role than usual.
As each test tone plays, you plot
points on a frequency-response Strange Work if You Can
graph. When the curve is complete,
connect the dots to determine the
correct settings for the sub’s volume
and crossover controls. To deter-
mine the width—that is, how much
of the audible spectrum the correc-
tion will affect—place the plastic
overlay atop the graph. A few
simple calculations are necessary. I
did them on scrap paper, but there’s
also an online calculator. Twist three
knobs, and you’re done.
Thus, reducing room interaction
soon paid dividends. The peak in
response at my room’s resonant fre-
quency pretty much disappeared.
Eliminating this distraction freed me
to focus more intently on story lines
and musical moods. I was rarely
Get It
In search of something dynamically
taxing, I rented Get Rich or Die
Tryin’, based on the life of rapper
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and got
an unexpectedly nuanced drama
instead. As the movie started with
Jackson’s voiceover, I turned up the
volume. I wanted to catch the
softly but precisely enunciated con-
sonants that are part of his signa-
ture vocal style, affected by the
bullet lodged in his tongue. At
some point, I figured, as the all-
too-realistic violence kicked in, I’d
have to engage the Dolby Digital
midnight-movie mode or at least
drop the volume. But the subse-
quent gunplay was dynamically
Grilles come in the form of a
scroll-like object made of the
thinnest, softest, most lovely mate-
rial ever used to cover a baffle.
Although it’s synthetic, it feels like
silk. The ends attach magnetically.
I tried one, and it was beautiful—
but not as interesting as the
unadorned speaker. I decided to
leave the grilles off.
The subwoofer has a unique hor-
INFINITY CASCADE SPEAKER SYSTEM
OVERALL RATING
Build Quality
Value
Features
Performance
Ergonomics
>Absolute solidity,
>It’s impossible to
compare this to other
products
>Infinity’s totally
redesigned woofer
makes its debut here
>Gets the most out of
>Plenty to catch the
flawless detailing
high-rez SACD releases
eye, nothing to offend it
95
95
>Ceramic/metal
woofers and titanium
tweeters
>Combination of wide
sweet spot and tight
image focus
>Stand mounting is
very easy
>New technology
doesn’t come cheap
>R.A.B.O.S. equalizes
the big sub
>Heavy aluminum
> Low dynamic-
Infinity’s Cascade Series uses a
newly designed flat diaphragm to
muster a large and well-defined
soundstage with exceptional
transparency, definitive detail,
and strong dynamics. For imag-
ing, it is the reference against
which we will judge speakers in
future reviews. Add equalized
monster bass, and you’ve got a
product that amazes.
stands
compression bass
95 90 96
98 93
General information
Cascade Model Seven Floorstanding Speaker, $799/each; Cascade Model Three C Center-Channel Speaker, $799
Cascade Model Five Monitor/On-Wall Speaker, $699/each; Cascade Model Fifteen Subwoofer, $1,499
proportional and not excessive. I
found myself with a growing
respect for both the star—whether
despite or because of his frosty
reserve, I’m not sure—and the
delicacy of the mix.
middle. The voluptuously disso-
nant string-and-brass textures that
open the Vertigo suite billowed like
the sails of a clipper ship caressed
by the wind, the ostinatos evoking
the opening credits’ unforgettable
spiraling graphics.
H I G H L I G H T S
Innovative flat woofer diaphragm
Ceramic/metal driver materials
Best-looking Infinity speakers ever
ꢀ
ꢀ
ꢀ
Munich, despite its heightened
moral complexity, came with an
extravagantly ultraviolent proces-
sion of explosions and gunshots
that tested the mettle of every
driver in the system. Right from
the opening frames, the Cascades
grabbed me with the soundtrack’s
mourning female vocal and string
orchestra, and they never let go.
The sub did well with minor
details, like the low ambient hum
of trains and buses, but also stood
up to the stiffer demands of the
hotel explosion—not a single det-
onation but an extended ballet of
destruction. It was convincing
enough to be unnerving, as a
movie on this subject should be.
The next thing I played after
Munich was the stereo SACD of
Bernard Herrmann: The Film Scores by
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los
Angeles Philharmonic. It includes
excerpts from six of the sound-
tracks Herrmann wrote for Alfred
Hitchcock, including a suite from
Psycho, a string-orchestra master-
piece that could outgun any heavy
metal band. Going from angst-
ridden terrorism and assassination
to a soundtrack that evokes some-
one being stabbed in the shower
was a soft landing of sorts—I could
almost hear Sir Alfred saying,
“Don’t worry, dear. It’s just a
moooovie.” Even with no surround
mix and just two speakers operat-
ing, the Cascades could throw
out a convincing soundstage that
dominated every seat in the room.
I could sit directly in front of the
left speaker and still hear continu-
ous imaging with no hole in the
[
An SACD surround mix of
Beethoven’s ninth symphony didn’t
fare as well. The 1977 analog
recording by Herbert von Karajan
and the Berlin Philharmonic was
mastered in 96/24 PCM before its
transfer to SACD. In my opinion,
the string sound is less refined than
that of a native or straight-from-
analog SACD, and the Cascades
didn’t hesitate to tell me how they
felt about that. Despite the skillful
performance, what should have
been a rich assortment of vocal and
instrumental tone color came out
monochromatic and lacking in spa-
tiality. I wouldn’t call these speak-
ers “ruthlessly revealing”—code
language for products that make a
large percentage of recordings
sound unpleasant—nor did they
add any sweetening of their own.
They were just finicky and truth-
ful, as an audiophile should be. In
this case I think they were actually
disappointed in the recording.
They cheered up when I got to
Sinatra at the Sands on DVD-Audio.
I could hear the effect of cigarettes
on Sinatra’s lungs and throat, the
precision of the consonants that
flowed delicately and precisely
through his teeth and lips, the way
all of this interacted with the
microphone and the acoustics of the
club, and individual voices in the
audience laughing at his awful
jokes. The focus couldn’t have been
tighter or the spotlight brighter.
Of the dozens of CDs I played,
the most memorable was 10,000
Clowns on a Rainy Day by Jan
Akkerman. The former guitarist of
Focus has lived down his former
band’s 1971 yodeling hit “Hocus
Pocus” to pursue a lengthy solo
career. His trusty Les Paul is the
focal (sorry) point of this mainly
instrumental live double-CD set.
The Cascades brought it to the
front of the mix, slightly in front
of the speakers in Dolby Pro Logic
II, while the band lingered slightly
behind. It was like looking at
a richly colored object against
a black-and-white background.
Akkerman’s supple intonation was
a living, breathing, dancing sonic
creature. Although visual responses
to sounds are routine for me, in
this case, I also tasted the guitar: It
tasted like dark chocolate.
Like waves breaking on a beach,
reviewing these speakers was a long
and steady succession of favorable
impressions. They looked great.
They were easy to set up. There
was no screeching, no distancing,
and no sweetening. The equalized
subwoofer nimbly sidestepped my
room’s bass hump. Broad off-axis
response from the flat woofers and
waveguide-enhanced tweeters lib-
erated me from the sweet spot. The
Cascades gave me an unparalleled
freedom to listen from any spot in
the room and with any kind of
material, and, for that, I am both
surprised and grateful.
HomThater
* Audio editor Mark Fleischmann is
also the author of the annually updated
book Practical Home Theater
(www.quietriverpress.com).
|