Outlaw LCR Speaker

Outlaw Audio has tenaciously earned a reputation as a maker of well thought out surround electronics, speakers, subwoofers, and other products. The company offers a favorable performance/price ratio by selling directly to the consumer via the Internet. And once in a while, it gets downright iconoclastic, dramatically rethinking flawed product genres and pushing them unexpectedly forward. The Outlaw LCR loudspeaker is one of those. Surround sound, the stage upon which this speaker has arrived, is a mixture of inspired innovations and bad old habits.

Going from two channels to 5.1 solves several longtime problems. The center channel eliminates stereo�s potential for a �hole in the middle� and firms up movie dialogue which, as it never tire of pointing out, is often murmured at low levels.

When you combine the front and surround channels, the soundstage becomes a soundfield, adding depth to cinematic storytelling as well as music. And the sub not only extends bass response it also allows the other speakers to be smaller, a major revolution in itself.

How unfortunate, then, that implementation of this almost divinely inspired scheme must be left to mere humans.

Among the many weaknesses they introduce, the worst is the non-matching horizontal center speaker, which purports to do a better job of handling dialogue but often just ends up collapsing the soundfield. Compounding this error is the use of overly simplistic woofer tweeter woofer designs in both center and left/center/right speaker designs. Dual woofers that operate over the same frequency range sum and cancel each other differently at varying angles, creating a lobing effect that�s audible as uneven frequency response when you move your head from side to side.

With the LCR loudspeaker, Outlaw Audio reconsiders the whole concept of this problematic genre. How can a speaker incorporate dual woofers while avoiding this design�s characteristic weakness? Outlaw�s solution is a crossover switch. In one position, it crosses over both woofers at 2,200 hertz. Toggle it into the other position, and it gives each woofer a different crossover, 2,200 Hz for one and 300 Hz for the other. While three way left/center/right speakers are not unprecedented, they usually add a midrange driver. Outlaw�s selectable 2.5 ways design effectively plays the game by a different set of rules.

Two More Toggles
The LCR is 19 inches tall and fairly slender. Its metal grille fits into narrow slots at the sides. Behind the grille is a pair of 5.25 inch treated paper cone woofers with cast magnesium baskets and rubber surrounds and a custom 1-inch silk dome tweeter that speaks with a charming Scandinavian accent. The machined MDF baffle is thick, slightly rounded, and ribbed at the sides. On the back are a pair of metal-nut brass binding posts with satin nickel plating that gives them an eye catchingly unorthodox gray finish.

Outlaw offers 12, 10, and 8 inch subwoofers. The LFM-1 Compact subwoofer is the man in the middle with a 10 inch down firing woofer in a small footprint box with rounded edges and corners. Designed for modest-sized rooms, it�s rated down to 25 Hz within 2 decibels.