AMC Audio Tornado 5.1 Theater

Yes, you read the title correctly; these speakers are being sold by AMC. Thought they only did electronics? I did too, but while at CES I was glancing through the list of companies that sell multimedia speakers and their name came up. These speakers were initially only sold in China and did very well. They are now being brought into the U.S. market, so let's see how they measure up.
I’ve owned a set of the Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 4.1 speakers for a while now and love them. The only downside is their lack of a center channel for Dolby Digital DVD watching, which is a major bummer. The AMC speakers fill that gap and definitely show its strengths in this department. First thing I like about them is that it has both optical and coaxial digital inputs. A number of sound cards, which have a “digital output”, usually have one or the other so it is nice for a speaker manufacturer to take this into consideration and provide both.

To try out the AC-3 capabilities, I fired up a copy of Toy Story 2 (I know my first disc should be The Matrix , but let it be known that there is somebody who owns a DVD player and has not yet gotten The Matrix) and the AMC decoder box picked up that I was running Dolby Digital without a hitch. Excellent! I tried out the toy store scene (Chapters 20 & 21) and both the dialog and action effects were powerfully emitted. The speakers cranked to my ears’ threshold and still sounded clean.

I then popped in my new copy of last year’s big rap tour, Up in Smoke (Bet you never saw someone use that one in a review!), which was remixed in Dolby Digital. Ice Cube and Eminem’s voices sounded right in my face and the rears did a great job purveying the audiences din as well as the echo of the music. I was lucky enough to attend the very concert that was filmed for the DVD and the sound was worlds better on the DVD.

Next, I felt that a little Ah-nold was needed, so in went Terminator 2. Again, the new speakers did a great job of portraying gunfire and explosions. Surrounds were also heard loud and clear. Just for kicks, I popped in The Patriot and was again welcomed by powerful barrages of bullets and the deep rumbling of explosions that were brought on by the cannons.

After I was satisfied with the speaker’s 5.1 performance, I decided to kick in some tunes. Here, I became a bit disappointed. The sound was still clean, but the highs were not quite as distinct as compared to my Cambridge system and the imaging was not quite as good. The midrange, however, was more defined with these speakers and the bass was deeper and more powerful, due to the 6.5” driver verses the 5.25” on my Cambridge sub. The sound, in general, was fuller than the Cambridge, mostly due to the 3” satellite drivers on the AMC system verses the 2.5” driver on my other set.

One main problem with using these speakers for music is that I could not find a suitable speaker mode for listening to music. My choice was either Pro-Logic, which heavily accentuated the center speaker and was weaker on the sides and rears, or Stereo, which only used the right and left channels and skipped the other three. I finally decided on using Pro-Logic mode sans the center channel. This setting put music through the left and right channels and some through the rears. One way to improve this situation was increasing the balance setting of the rear speakers. My Cambridge speakers are able to play music, at equal volume, from all four speakers; why wouldn’t these? I recommend that the next incarnation have a setting that follows suit and doesn’t require that the balance setting be changed.

Finally, I tried a few games to see how the speakers performed. They do well, but suffer from the lack of all speakers having equal volume, especially for games that support EAX or A3D and are supposed to be heard by having four speakers that play at equal volume. Again, the balance setting had to be changed to hear the full effect of the surround sound.

As for the aesthetics of the system, I enjoyed having a remote control with so many options. The credit card-sized remote includes a volume control, power button, speaker mode button, surround mode button, input mode button, test mode button, and mute button. The actual processor unit, which receives the signal of the remote and doubles as a Dolby Digital decoder, has a backlit LCD display which shows the volume level of all six speakers, the current speaker mode, the current surround sound setting, the current input, and (if applicable) which digital mode is being used. It is an easy to read display, if you are close enough. It could stand to be a bit larger, as it contains a lot of info. In terms of controlling the unit, it’s pretty easy. The remote can vary the volume and the surround mode can be changed from “Stereo” to “Pro-Logic”, if your listening preferences desire. One problem I had with the volume changing is that the processor unit has a very limited range of volume, meaning that you can only increase and decrease the volume by a small margin, with the remote. The subwoofer module, however, has a master volume control and a subwoofer control, which both need to be used if you wish for the volume to be higher or lower than it can be set by only adjusting the processor. Usually, I like the subwoofer to be set in a corner of the room and forgotten about. With this system, the user is forced to be a frequent visitor to the sub’s controls. In addition, the median level of the subwoofer does not provide near sufficient bass; on my unit, I was forced to max out its’ volume for the bass to have a strong presence. The benefit of this, I suppose, is that it would be difficult for the user to overdrive the sub.

These speakers seem to be marketed as a “home theater in a small room” system and, in that respect, it excels. Its sound is loud and distortion-free. However, if you wish to use this more for music or games, I’d suggest looking at one of the 4.1 systems instead (Cambridge, Boston Acoustics, Klipsch, etc.)

By Russ Ain