Athena Point5 Speaker System
May 2002
Good Sound Can Be Easy
By Grant Clauser
While many people would love a dedicated home theater room in their house, most of us settle for racking up a DVD player and a television in a living or family room. For that reason home theater speakers should be flexible enough for music as well as movies, and they shouldn't take over the environment, at least when they're not running. Most people would also add easy-to-use and inexpensive to their speaker wish list.
Athena Technologies, a Canadian speaker company, set out to build a home theater speaker system that was easy to use, good to the ear and easy to fit into your décor. The $799 Point5 system consists of four 8-ohm S.5 matched satellites with 1-inch teteron dome tweeters and 4-inch injection molded polypropylene woofers; a C.5 center with one tweeter and two woofers and a P.5 75-watts RMS powered subwoofer. The center and satellites, all five with rear ports, are made of medium density fiberboard (MDF) finished in a high-gloss black with either black, metallic gray or cherry front baffles and look very good alongside either traditional black TVs or the trendy new silver flat-screen TVs.
The subwoofer is particularly interesting. It's not terribly large, so you won't have to worry about hiding it if you choose. There are two knobs: bass level for volume and bass range for crossover adjustments. A unique feature is the Mode switch. When used with the Athena S.5 speakers the manufacturer recommends keeping the switch in the S.5 mode, which automatically selects the frequency crossover to match the satellites. In this mode the Bass Range control is bypassed. If used with different speakers then select the Sub mode to enable to Bass Range control to make the adjustments. There's an A/V switch that gets flipped depending on whether you're listening to music or movies. The audio side delivers a sharper, more, precise bass sound while the video selection creates a deeper, more resonant tone. The difference is very subtle. These are nice features to find, and makes system setup so much easier, especially for first-time users of home theater systems.
Another user-friendly feature was the inclusion of some ingenious built-in wall mounting brackets. The brackets assemble so easily and securely that you could have all four satellites mounted and pointed in 40 minutes. The speakers also fit nicely into some adjustable stands Athena sells for $89 a pair.
I hooked the speakers to a Harman Kardon AVR7000 receiver getting its audio signals from a Toshiba SD4700 DVD-V/A player. The sub was connected to the receiver via an RCA-style subwoofer jack. The sub also has spring clips for connecting with traditional speaker wire and high level inputs are optionally available. Although this is a sub/sat set, the Athena engineer insisted I run the speakers full range rather than selecting the small setting in the receiver.
I started off listening to music in stereo. Though small, the speakers were surprisingly sweet, even when played at high volumes. You won't blow your windows out with these speakers, but they do get loud and still sound good. Bass in stereo was nicely managed by the 75-watt sub. The system handled the heavy drums in Lester Young's Lester Leaps In without flinching but maintained the sweet highs of the horns.
I moved on to multichannel music first with some up-tempo tunes. Steve Stevens' DVD-A title Flamenco A Go-Go sent the sub plenty of dance-club style thumps, which it handled perfectly. However most impressive was the performance with the Teldec DVD-A recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The speakers brought out more assertiveness and bravado from the music then you'd expect from speakers near this price range.
The final test was movie listening. I selected the impact-riddled attack sequence from Pearl Harbor. The rear speakers let planes and bullets dash by while the center kept the dialog clear and audible. The sub never let up with the deep roaring of torpedo explosions and sinking battleships. At no time did I think there was too much or too little of anything, aside from the overacting and needless violence, but the speakers can't be blamed for that.
Yes, these are inexpensive speakers, but there's nothing cheap or shrill about them. I can't imagine a better put together or better sounding set of speakers at this price.
By Grant Clauser
While many people would love a dedicated home theater room in their house, most of us settle for racking up a DVD player and a television in a living or family room. For that reason home theater speakers should be flexible enough for music as well as movies, and they shouldn't take over the environment, at least when they're not running. Most people would also add easy-to-use and inexpensive to their speaker wish list.
Athena Technologies, a Canadian speaker company, set out to build a home theater speaker system that was easy to use, good to the ear and easy to fit into your décor. The $799 Point5 system consists of four 8-ohm S.5 matched satellites with 1-inch teteron dome tweeters and 4-inch injection molded polypropylene woofers; a C.5 center with one tweeter and two woofers and a P.5 75-watts RMS powered subwoofer. The center and satellites, all five with rear ports, are made of medium density fiberboard (MDF) finished in a high-gloss black with either black, metallic gray or cherry front baffles and look very good alongside either traditional black TVs or the trendy new silver flat-screen TVs.
The subwoofer is particularly interesting. It's not terribly large, so you won't have to worry about hiding it if you choose. There are two knobs: bass level for volume and bass range for crossover adjustments. A unique feature is the Mode switch. When used with the Athena S.5 speakers the manufacturer recommends keeping the switch in the S.5 mode, which automatically selects the frequency crossover to match the satellites. In this mode the Bass Range control is bypassed. If used with different speakers then select the Sub mode to enable to Bass Range control to make the adjustments. There's an A/V switch that gets flipped depending on whether you're listening to music or movies. The audio side delivers a sharper, more, precise bass sound while the video selection creates a deeper, more resonant tone. The difference is very subtle. These are nice features to find, and makes system setup so much easier, especially for first-time users of home theater systems.
Another user-friendly feature was the inclusion of some ingenious built-in wall mounting brackets. The brackets assemble so easily and securely that you could have all four satellites mounted and pointed in 40 minutes. The speakers also fit nicely into some adjustable stands Athena sells for $89 a pair.
I hooked the speakers to a Harman Kardon AVR7000 receiver getting its audio signals from a Toshiba SD4700 DVD-V/A player. The sub was connected to the receiver via an RCA-style subwoofer jack. The sub also has spring clips for connecting with traditional speaker wire and high level inputs are optionally available. Although this is a sub/sat set, the Athena engineer insisted I run the speakers full range rather than selecting the small setting in the receiver.
I started off listening to music in stereo. Though small, the speakers were surprisingly sweet, even when played at high volumes. You won't blow your windows out with these speakers, but they do get loud and still sound good. Bass in stereo was nicely managed by the 75-watt sub. The system handled the heavy drums in Lester Young's Lester Leaps In without flinching but maintained the sweet highs of the horns.
I moved on to multichannel music first with some up-tempo tunes. Steve Stevens' DVD-A title Flamenco A Go-Go sent the sub plenty of dance-club style thumps, which it handled perfectly. However most impressive was the performance with the Teldec DVD-A recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The speakers brought out more assertiveness and bravado from the music then you'd expect from speakers near this price range.
The final test was movie listening. I selected the impact-riddled attack sequence from Pearl Harbor. The rear speakers let planes and bullets dash by while the center kept the dialog clear and audible. The sub never let up with the deep roaring of torpedo explosions and sinking battleships. At no time did I think there was too much or too little of anything, aside from the overacting and needless violence, but the speakers can't be blamed for that.
Yes, these are inexpensive speakers, but there's nothing cheap or shrill about them. I can't imagine a better put together or better sounding set of speakers at this price.
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