Portly Sound, Pint-Sized Package

RSL Speakers CG3 5.1 Speaker System.

- Daniel Kumin

WHEN IT COMES TO LOUD speakers, how big is big enough? How small is too small? What size is j-u-u-ust right? Speaker buyers have been asking these questions, and speaker makers have been answering them, ever since a certain Brand B shook the world years ago with micro-sized satellites employing 2.5-inch drivers that struggled to reach down to 200 hertz, mated with similarly challenged Lilliputian subs. Physics notwithstanding, buyers took to them in droves—and since then, the race to the bottom, cubic volume-wise, has been on.

RSL Speakers, no stranger to the trend (though with a history of fine results), has debuted their most recent answer in the form of a new, compact design, the CG3. RSL, originally known as Roger sound Labs, was reborn a few years back with the introduction of the CG4, a small bookshelf design that met with wide approval, including from me in these pages (review at soundandvision.com). The CG3 is slightly smaller and (at an individual price of $135) substantially cheaper than the CG4 ($250), employing a same dimensioned but visibly different (and presumably less costly) driver complement: 4-inch woofer and 1-inch soft-dome tweeter. Like its predecessor, the CG3 exploits the California firm’s proprietary, labyrinth-like “compression guide” enclosure to reach a claimed –3 decibel point of 100 Hz—pretty good for a speaker that’s sized like a portly half-gallon milk carton. The new model also shares the same “upside-down” tweeter-under woofer layout, engineered in part to accommodate the diagonal plenum inside that bifurcates the internal volume to create the compression guide and feed the slot-shaped port on the bottom. You can see more about how and why this works on RSL’s website.