If you've just bought yourself a new television you're probably looking for a sound system to complement it. While you could go with a cheap $500 system that looks "nice", but really sounds no better than the TV itself, there are benefits to expanding your budget.
British manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins puts forward the VM6 system for your consideration. While the speaker itself certainly fits with modern TV styling, how does it perform?
Design and Features
The piano black styling of the VM6 is designed to complement the most popular flat-panel finish. The cabinets themselves are made from moulded plastic and the drivers are protected by a fixed mesh cover. The rear contains a bass reflex port and a hole to attach the stand and speaker cables — no speaker terminals as we'll cover shortly. Though the dressed-down finish doesn't give it away, the drivers inside are similar to what you'd find in B&W's 600 series. Each VM6 features a 130mm Kevlar mid/bass woofer and a 25mm Nautilus tube-loaded 25mm aluminium dome tweeter.
While the VM6 is available as a single speaker for AU$599, buyers are more likely to buy it as part of a system. The system we looked at included five VM6 speakers and the excellent PV1 subwoofer which is available for, a sharp intake of breath, at AU$5,195. The star of this package is really the PV1 subwoofer, and while it's almost expensive as the five satellites on its own it's definitely worth the money.
Supplied with the kit, but not included in the price, are two optional stands for the fronts available for AU$349 each. While putting these together, we were reminded how difficult this set is to assemble — whether using these stands or the supplied tabletop models, you need to thread the speaker wire through them and screw the wire into a complicated connection terminal at the top. As a measure of its complexity it requires the use of four different Allen keys, but at least they're supplied. Once this is done, the stand then slots into the speaker itself, and while it certainly looks neater it took us about two hours to set up the full five speakers. Most speaker sets take about 10 minutes to set up.
Performance
If installing these units as part of a home cinema set-up, we'd recommend a bit of tweaking in order to get the best sound out of them. Without calibration through our receiver, the sound was a little thin and weedy, which doesn't say a lot for this set.
However, post-calibration we found that the VM6 was capable of a meaty sound at moderate levels — even though the speakers are only rated down to 75Hz (or 55Hz against a wall). Music sounded best as a result, but movie soundtracks were well served thanks to the PV1 sub. But with or without the amp's processing, the PV1 was hamstrung by the performance of the VM6s and needed a larger system to stretch its legs. We had more success using it alongside a system built on B&W's DM602.5s.
But there were definite problems at high volumes: during our testing the centre speaker was resonating so much it sounded like it was shaking itself apart; and the foam bungs used to reduce bass response shot across the room so many times we just left them out.
Conclusion
Only at low volumes and with a degree of EQ calibration were we pleasantly surprised by the performance of the VM6 speakers — especially with music. This means that out of the box they simply don't have the performance to justify the hefty cost of the entire 5.1 system — or the hassle of putting it together. As a simple stereo system, the VM6 may suit users who want style first, but there are better options available in the B&W range if this isn't a consideration — such as the 685s.
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