TDK Tremor S-150 Speaker System
Let me first begin with the two satellites. I must admit these were one of the coolest looking satellites I have ever come across so far. However anyone looking at it for the first time will be very skeptical without a doubt. I had my doubts too. It looks no bigger than those normal desktop speakers you get along with a new PC. As the specs say the satellites are only 2.5cm wide, which makes them look exceptionally thin. TDK includes two types of mounting devices for the speakers. One is for placement on your desktop as shown in figure.
The other is for mounting the speakers on a wall. The wall mounts include self-adhesives on the back, so need not have to damage the walls mounting them.
The two satellites are rated at 16.5 Watts RMS each. This is quite impressive considering the fact the satellites have only a 2″ driver. The volume, bass and treble controls are placed in the right hand satellite. However I must mention now that the controls are a real pain. First off, you need quite long nails to operate the controls (may be a bit exaggerated : ) and what’s more adjusting the controls is quite a task on its own. Not one of the brightest ideas in my opinion. I cannot think of a reason why they couldn’t keep it simple by putting in knob controls.
Nevertheless they look incredibly cool.
How does TDK make these satellites so thin you may ask yourself? Well the secret is these are not normal cone shaped drivers you see in most speaker systems. These are flat panels, produced by NXT technology (Click here for more information) . Flat-panel speakers are the latest buzz word these days in the speaker arena. This does not mean they’re necessarily better than every cone-shaped speaker system; nevertheless they do have a lot going towards them. The difference between conventional speaker systems and flat-panels is this. Conventional speaker systems produce sound by pushing and pulling air by way of the cone shaped device in the speaker.
However flat-panel drivers work on a different principle. Simply put it, these speakers produce sound by way of vibrating a special surface, also know as exciters. This eliminates the need for the driver to move as conventional speakers and thus we can reduce the size of the speaker as well. There’s much more to this technology than mentioned here, nevertheless this is the basic principle. I’ll deal with the performance and quality issues later on, so now lets look at the sub.
The Sub
With two 3″ drivers on either side and a huge aluminum back plate acting as a heat sink, it looks like a solid piece of machinery to me. However I must also mention that this is the first time I have come across a sub with only 3″ drivers. The Tremor S-150’s subwoofer features dual bi-amplified drivers in a compact, tube-shaped enclosure designed to cancel unwanted distortions and produce maximum bass output.
The two amps used by the sub are National LM1876 amplifiers. The LM1876 is a stereo audio amplifier capable of delivering typically 20W per channel of continuous average output power into a 4Ohm or 8Ohm load. Each amplifier has an independent smooth transition fade-in/out mute and a power conserving standby mode.
Furthermore all connectors are attached to the rear of the sub. They are properly color coded so that even a newbie won’t make any mistake.
The red DIN-connector you see here is for the connector from the right satellite, which is used for the sound customization controls (volume, treble, bass). However one fact I didn’t like about this whole setup was the inclusion of the main power switch in the sub. In most cases we place the sub in places where we cannot reach easily. As a result if you’d want to switch off the system, you’d have to creep under you table and do it. Not the most convenient now is it? I hope TDK looks into these minor elements in their future releases. However the system goes into stand-by mode after a few minutes if no sound source is detected.
