NHT MS Tower and MS Center Speaker Review

The Media Series speakers are offered to provide compact and affordable solutions to build home surround-sound setups that leverage the most current surround format requirements. Two of the speakers from this series, the MS Tower and MS Satellite, include height speakers built into their enclosures, which simplifies the implementation of Dolby Atmos or DTS:X surround configurations. The review will especially touch upon the performance that NHT manages to squeeze out of these relatively low-profile speakers.

NHT has been around since 1987 and is an audio brand that I have been very familiar with. In fact, NHT is one of the speaker brands that ushered me into the start of my serious audio-hobby journey. I have owned and still own some of their old speakers, including the original SuperZero, the SB1, and the Evolution T6 set. Not that I was drawn into the NHT sonic spell (or maybe I was), but I guess at the time NHT really offered speakers that fit my budget and my sonic taste extremely well. Some of these NHT speakers have been part of my audio systems for over 20 years!

I understand that NHT as a company has changed hands a few times since its inception leading to the evolution of the products the company creates and offers. The company’s marketing strategy has also been adapted to the change of time and, in its current iteration, NHT sells its products factory-direct only. Crucial to this factory-direct sale model is the implementation of NHT’s 30-day product return policy, which instills customers’ peace of mind in case the products purchased do not work out for their applications.

Needless to say, I was excited to get an opportunity to review the current offerings from NHT. For this review, NHT sent me the MS Tower and MS Center speaker package from its Media Series, which is Dolby-licensed and designed to be space efficient. The MS Tower houses the height speaker in the same cabinet enclosure, so it can serve as a building block for Dolby Atmos/DTS:X surround speaker systems. These speakers are priced attractively at $750 each for the MS Tower and $375 each for the MS Center.

The MS Tower is a slim and compact floor-standing speaker. It is basically a two-in-one speaker, as it also includes a height speaker on the top part of the same cabinet enclosure. The front-firing part of the speaker utilizes a three-way acoustic-suspension configuration with a 1″ aluminum dome tweeter, a 5.25″ aluminum midrange, and two 5.25″ aluminum woofers. The up-firing height speaker has a single-driver configuration with a 3″ paper-cone driver. This driver is located on the 20°-inclined top baffle of the speaker and is designed to reflect the sound off the ceiling to add vertical dimension to the sonic ambience. Two pairs of nickel-plated five-way binding-post terminals are located near the bottom of the rear panel of the speaker, one for the front- and the other for the up-firing drivers. Magnetically attached grilles for the front- and up-firing speaker portions are included.

The slim body of the MS Tower speaker is attached to a 1″ thick rectangular base plinth, which adds stability to its standing position. Screw-in metal spikes and rubber pads are provided, to be used based on the type of floor the speaker will stand on. The speaker’s cabinet is made from 15 mm MDF and feels solidly built and well-braced. The review samples come in a glossy black finish, which looks modern and handsome in its simplicity. An optional glossy white finish is also available.

The MS Center employs a two-way acoustic suspension design with a 1″ aluminum dome tweeter flanked by two 5.25″ aluminum woofers. To ensure timbre match, these drivers are of the same type as the ones used in the MS Tower speakers. The tweeter position is not aligned with the center of the two woofers, thus depending on how the speaker is horizontally oriented, the tweeter can lie above or below the woofers’ centerline. The manual suggests the speaker be placed immediately above or below the TV and oriented horizontally in such a way that the tweeter is in the position closest to the TV. The speaker terminals, in the form of a pair of nickel-plated five-way binding posts, reside in the recessed cup on the rear panel.

The MS Center is designed to accommodate flexible placement. It can be put on a stand/tabletop or be flush mounted against the wall using an optional bracket that can be purchased from NHT. It looks rather petite compared to the other center-channel speakers I currently have (the NHT M6 and the Revel C50). The MS Center is also constructed from 15 mm MDF. Its build quality seems solid, and the review sample has a matching glossy black finish as the MS Tower. The MS Center is also equipped with a magnetically attached fabric grille.

In this review, the NHT MS speakers were used in place of the front main speakers, the center channel, and the height speakers in my living room home theater setup. I drove the speakers using the Marantz CINEMA 40 receiver, which served as the hub for various sources: Xfinity 4K cable/DVR box, TV audio, and OPPO UDP-203 universal disc player. Occasionally, I connected the MS Tower speakers to my stereo setup driven by the Michi X3 integrated amplifier to evaluate their sonic performance in a stereo music application.

In the home theater evaluation, the MS Tower speakers were positioned symmetrically to the left and right of my Samsung 75″ TV at about 8 ft. from each other and 3 ft. from the wall behind them. No toe-in was applied to the speakers. The MS Center was put slightly in front of the TV on a 13″ high center-speaker stand that has a 6o inclination to direct the drivers of the speaker to about the ear level of my sitting position about 9 ft. away. With this below-the-TV placement of the center speaker, I positioned the MS Center to have its tweeter above the speaker’s centerline. Four NHT Absolute Wall speakers were used for the side and back surrounds and two SVS SB-3000 subwoofers were utilized to complete the 7.2.2 surround speaker configuration. Hence, only the height speakers built into the MS Tower were used to handle the height channels.

To get a sense of the sonic characteristics of the MS Tower speakers, I connected them to the Michi X3 amplifier in a stereo setup with the grilles off. I did not expect much during this evaluation, but my impression of the speakers changed almost immediately from the get-go. I was delighted with the musicality that the MS Tower speakers exhibited. Their sonic characteristics were smooth with good balance across the frequency spectrum. The bass was surprisingly strong, belying the compact size of the speakers and their relatively small woofers. This good bass foundation meant the musical presentation of the MS Tower never sounded lean.

If you look at the nearfield frequency-response measurement result of the MS Tower, you might think that the speaker sounded a bit bright because of the slightly sloping up response towards the high frequency. However, this was not the impression that I had when listening to the speakers in my setup. I did not notice a trace of brightness at all in the resulting sound. This was confirmed from the measurement at the listening position, which showed a relatively flat frequency response from 200 Hz to 20 kHz. The slight mid to upper bass hump that appeared in the response due to the room interaction could be eliminated by pulling the speakers further into the room. But I did not find this to be too much of a distraction, hence I kept the speakers where they were. Although the MS Tower was not shy in bass, their in-room bass response only reached down to around 50 Hz or so. Hence, I felt that a subwoofer was necessary to get a fully extended bass response down to the lowest octave region.

The MS Center shared a similar frequency-response trend with the MS Tower. I noticed a sloping upward trend from the upper bass toward the treble region in the nearfield measurement, but at the listening position 9 ft. away from the speaker, the frequency response in this range showed relatively good flatness. The similarity of the frequency responses between the MS Center and MS Tower translated into nicely matched seamless three front-main speakers for anchoring surround applications.

I found that the MS Tower and MS Center were capable of generating larger sound in home-theater applications than their sizes suggested. These speakers might be designed for space-restricted applications, but they certainly had no problem filling even relatively large rooms with sufficient sonic energy. The speakers maintained their composure well even at rather loud listening levels and only showed signs of strain when pushed to really loud volume levels.

In the side-to-side sound panning situations, the MS Tower and Center trio formed seamless and smooth sonic transitions, which elevated the whole surround sound experience. I thought the built-in height speakers in the MS Tower speakers worked quite effectively in my setup, delivering overhead sound effects convincingly. They might not convey the height information as focused and defined as the separate height speakers placed on the ceiling or way above the ear levels, but they still presented the height effects with sufficient believability. For example, the sound of ornithopters flying overhead in the movie Dune unmistakably sounded as if it were coming from above the head through the MS speaker presentation.

Despite showing the ability to convey attacks and dynamics in the soundtracks involving action sequences, the three front NHT MS speakers exhibited adeptness in handling delicate music in the movies. The speakers’ musical quality never failed to convey the moods of the scenes through their competent reproduction of the accompanying background music.

The MS Tower and Center speakers from NHT combine appealing low-profile space-saving design and good sonic performance at a reasonable price.

In a relatively low-profile fashion, I am glad to learn that NHT quietly continues its tradition of offering great-value speakers. The NHT MS Tower and Center reviewed here convincingly delivers balanced sonic performance for music and home theater applications in their compact forms. Additionally, the effective built-in height speakers within the MS Tower enclosure offer a simple solution for building up solid Dolby Atmos/DTS:X surround setups. Moreover, these speakers are reasonably priced and overall, they are well-built and look modernly appealing in their simplicity. These MS speakers should be on the short audition list for people who desire a versatile good- sounding compact surround speaker system at a price that does not break the bank.