PSB Imagine T54 Tower Speaker Review

Tower designs evolved, I think, from bookshelf speakers, that were all the rage in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember lusting after my uncle’s AR3a and some friends’ KLH speakers. They were too big for most bookshelves, so people stood them up and the sound was stunning.

Now, a lot of speaker designs are even taller, but now often thinner than the big bookshelf designs, and bookshelf speakers have remained, but more often on stands than bookshelves. So now we’ll examine this new speaker from PSB and see and hear if these speakers will find a place in listening rooms and home theaters.

First off, these are fine speakers, but where you listen and the type of music or movies you play through them is important. In my view, they are not a speaker for all rooms and all program material. Played within their limitations they are superb, with flat response, excellent imaging qualities, clean high frequencies, and good but not the deepest bass largely because the 2 woofers are only 5 1/4 inch in size. Many prospective buyers, especially home theater users, will want a subwoofer to extend the low end.

I’ve always heard good things about PSB speakers. They’ve been around since the early 70’s and the company was founded by Paul Barton who remains the chief designer. They are designed and engineered in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. The design goal at PSB has always been natural sound, a flat response measured in anechoic chambers, and very high build quality. I was anxious to hear a pair, so when PSB offered us the T54 speakers I was happy to get a pair into my home to evaluate.

The PSB Imagine T54 Tower Speakers are attractive and would work nicely in almost any room. I was sent the black finish, and upon close examination, you could see it was a quality piece of construction.

The speakers arrived very well packed, which is a weakness of some products that are manhandled by delivery services and often arrive with holes in their boxes or worse.

The T54 speakers survived the trip from Canada to Arizona and the speakers themselves were nicely offset from the packaging by Styrofoam strategically placed to keep the speakers safe. There was an inner and outer box and the speakers emerged undamaged and ready to go to work.

The speaker terminals were gold-plated and solid, allowing for banana plug connections, and the speakers allowed for bi-amping.

My first listening test was in my large, irregular living room. I removed my current speakers from the room to eliminate woofer interactions. At first listen, I did not find the speakers all that exciting. I played them at low levels, as I always do when first testing. Compared to what I had in that room, the T54 sounded meek. They lacked a low end, and part of that was the size of my room and the smaller woofers on the T54 speakers.

After a few hours, I cranked the speakers up, driven by a 200-watt per-channel amplifier. It was then that I got the full measure of the speakers. They were very comfortable driven loudly, and I never heard a hint of distortion or strain. As the volume went up the speaker’s imaging prowess increased, and at louder levels besides the center fill-in of the image, it also extended just slightly outside the speakers to the left and the right.

I listened with speaker grills off and on and heard no difference. The speakers are attractive either way.

Highs were very nice, never going off the rails with increased volume, and always realistic rather than ‘electronic’ sounding. In my living room, the bass was never ultra-deep, but organ music was pleasant as was percussion and acoustic music.

Moving to a mid-sized room, the speakers acquitted themselves nicely. They were realistic, again with silky but realistic high frequencies. The midrange was nice, especially with vocals. On the best of my vocal test albums, people singing sounded like people singing in a real space, not sounding like they were singing into a microphone hooked to PA speakers.

Bass was better and fuller. The T54 could more easily go deeper in a smaller room, and the 2 ports on the back utilized the rear walls for reinforcement. I can’t say it is the best bass I’ve heard from a mid-priced speaker, but the T54 had nothing to be ashamed of.

Here’s some of the music I tested:

There are so many speakers in this price range, and I can’t claim to have heard them all. Certainly, compare our many reviews of similar speakers to get an idea of what is out there.

These are well-engineered speakers, but buyers will need to do a bit of room matching and think about augmenting them with a sub. If being used for home theater duty, I think a sub would be a requirement. For more casual listening the speakers will perform well. Their frequency response, dynamic range, clean undistorted audio, and imaging skills are something I don’t always find in similar speakers. A lot of thought obviously went into the design and manufacture of the PSB T54 speakers.

Although the T54 doesn’t reach as deeply as some other speakers I’ve heard at the $1499 price, I haven’t heard other speakers do so many other things as right as the T54 speakers. Since the deepest low end (if you want it) can be solved with a good subwoofer, I think the T54 speakers represent a solid and competitive value. If you’re not considering using them for home theater, and you have a good match for a room, I have high praise for these speakers.