Ask some old audiophile (like me) about Infinity, and he'll probably tell you about the Infinity Reference Series speaker, which broke the $40,000/pair price barrier way back in the 1980s. Or he might talk about the Servo Statik 1, which was the first subwoofer/satellite speaker system when it launched even further back, in the 1960s.
So what's Infinity done since, you ask? Good question. Since 1983, the brand's been owned by Harman International, currently parent company of JBL, Mark Levinson, Revel, and bunch of professional audio brands. Harman's interest in the Infinity brand seems to wax and wane. We've seen the brand on a lot of very nice products, especially the high-efficiency Compositions Series of the mid-1990s and the rectangular-woofered Cascade Series of the mid-2000s. But there hasn't been a real "Infinity sound" or "Infinity philosophy" since the days when MTV played music videos.
Additional Resources
The new Reference Series speakers represent something of a rebirth of the Infinity line, a colossal step up from the low-priced Primus speakers that the company's been pushing lately. The philosophy seems to be to take some of the awesome engineering that Harman has put into its Revel speaker line and bring it out at much more affordable prices. Who could argue with that?
The R263 I'm reviewing here has a driver complement similar to what's in the Revel Performa3 F206 speakers I own: two 6.5-inch woofers, a 5.25-inch midrange, and a 1-inch tweeter. The tweeter and midrange employ CMMDs, or ceramic/metal matrix diaphragms, which first found their way into Infinity speakers about 15 years ago. Combining the two materials stiffens the drivers' cones and domes, and also damps resonances. The waveguide in front of tweeter evolved from the one that's been used on other Harman speakers, including my F206s. Just as with my Revels, the goals are broad, consistent dispersion and a near-total lack of sonic coloration.
But very much unlike my $3,500/pair Revels, the R263 lists for just $1,099/pair. With an angular black woodgrain cabinet replacing the curvaceous, glossy enclosure of the Revels, the R263 certainly doesn't look as nice as the Revels. Of course, most serious audio enthusiasts would happily sacrifice looks if it meant the cost of their speakers was two-thirds less and the sound quality wasn't sacrificed.
The R263 sits at the top of the Reference Series, which also includes a smaller tower, the $899/pair R253; two bookshelf speakers; two center speakers; two subwoofers; and a surround speaker. For home theater enthusiasts, a tower speaker is no good unless there's a great center speaker to match. So, in addition to the pair of R263s I borrowed, I also snagged the $499 C253 center speaker so that I could hear how well it matched the sound of the R263.
The Hookup
There didn't seem to be anything unusual about the R263, so I moved my Revels away and put the R263s in the same places. The front baffles were about 36 inches from the wall behind them, and I put the speakers about eight feet apart, with my listening chair about 10 feet away from them.
After connecting the pair of R263s to my Krell S-300i integrated amp, fed by a Cambridge DAC Magic XS digital-to-analog converter connected to a Toshiba laptop, I gave the system a listen so that I could fine-tune the speakers' positions. It's then that I noticed something really weird about the R263: the sound didn't substantially change as I adjusted the toe-in of the speakers. Whether I pointed them straight out or angled them in to point straight at me, there was practically no difference in the sound. That should be a good thing because it makes the speaker less sensitive to placement and, typically, less sensitive to the acoustics of the room it's in. I ended up splitting the difference between straight out and full toe-in.
I later disconnected the Krell and set up the C253 center speaker, using my Revels as surrounds because I figured they'd be reasonably close to the sound of the Infinity speakers. For this setup, I used my Outlaw Model 975 surround sound processor, my AudioControl Savoy seven-channel amplifier, and my Panasonic DMP-BDT350 Blu-ray player.
Click on over to Page 2 for the Brent's Full Measurements of the R263, plus the Performance, the Downside, Comparison and Competition, and Conclusion . . .
Measurements
I also did full measurements of the R263, which you can see by clicking on the images and notes below:
Performance
One listen to the 24/96 download of "Duke's Groove" from David Chesky's great Jazz in the New Harmonic tells what the R263 gets right...which is a lot. Jazz in the New Harmonic is one of those classic Chesky recordings made in a large, reverberant church using just a few microphones and minimal audio processing. It's supposed to sound spacious and natural, and through the R263, it does.
"Boy, do these things have detail, subtlety, and air," I wrote in my lab notebook. I was amazed at how much sense of the room I got from a $1,099/pair speaker. (BTW, I've been to that church a couple of times, and I know what it sounds like.) I especially loved the way I could hear the ring of the ride cymbal echoing off the ceiling, the huge ambience of Chesky's powerful piano chords as they filled the front of the room, and the way the wall behind the musicians reinforced the low grunt of the bass clarinet.
I've been listening to 'Ohana, an album by the father/son team of Dennis and David Kamakahi, often since it was released in the late 1990s, and even more often since Dennis passed away in April. "Ulili'E," the tune that opens the album, is exceptionally tough for any speaker to reproduce. Dennis's deep baritone and the bass notes of the detuned lower strings on his guitar often bloat and boom, or they sometimes sound too thin. The upper strings of his guitar and David's concert ukulele sound etched and harsh through many speakers. Listening to this through the R263 shows that those errors are in the speakers, not in the recording. The R263 completely, totally nailed this tune, sounding unbelievably clear and natural. I had to wonder if it even sounded this good on the recording monitors in the studio. (I bet not.)
After hearing what the R263 did with 'Ohana, it was hard to stop listening to acoustic guitar. So I put on "233 Butler" from acoustic jazz guitarist Julian Lage's Gladwell. (Here's the live version.) The acoustic guitar, upright bass, and drums were wonderfully portrayed, stretching wide across the stereo soundstage and sounding incredibly detailed, but not in any way hyped or exaggerated. Every little scrape of Lage's virtuosic picking and every little acoustic subtlety of his ultra-fancy Manzer archtop came through, in a way I hadn't noticed before with the other speakers and headphones I've played this recording through. Despite all the string plucking going on, this tune often sounds a little dead to me, but it took on new life through the R263...and reawakened my interest in Gladwell.
I knew this review would be incomplete if I listened to nothing but pristine recordings of acoustic instruments, so I put on the exact opposite: "Who You Love," the pop duet by John Mayer and Katy Perry. (HTR insists I put in links to the tunes I use for reviews, but trust me, you'll hate us if you click on that link.) Mayer and Perry's voices, which I usually hear only through the ceiling speakers at Old Navy, sounded amazingly uncolored through the R263. No bloat. No edge with Mayer. No shrillness or thinness with Perry. It almost made me wish that Mayer and Perry could record a tune with David Chesky producing the recording and Chesky Records' Nick Prout engineering.
Hearing how good the R263 sounded with voices, I wasn't surprised to hear how good the C253 center speaker sounded with dialogue when I switched over to the full home theater rig. Because the center speaker has, apparently, the same tweeter and midrange driver as the R263, arranged with the tweeter above the woofer as in the tower speaker, the center sounded almost exactly the same as the tower.
The voices of the actors in the DVD of the children's movie Matilda vary greatly, especially when you consider the high-pitched whine of Rhea Perlman in contrast with the guttural, gruff growl of Danny DeVito. In the scene where the two of them struggle to get DeVito's hat off in a fancy restaurant, the C253 got both of them perfect; I felt like I was the sound guy monitoring the recording on Sony MDR-7506 headphones (the choice of countless pros, and for good reason), except that the sound through the C253 was a lot more detailed, especially in the treble.
Likewise, the superb match between the towers and center was evident when I put on the tiger attack scene from Apocalypse Now. In this clip, the ambience of the jungle wraps around you, and the sound of a flying bird soars around the room from speaker to speaker. The presentation of the flying bird and the buzzing bugs between the speakers sounded incredibly realistic - and made me wish I'd asked for another pair of the Reference Series speakers to use as surrounds.
The Downside
What does the R263 lack? Bass. The bass response sounds very restrained. It's tight and precise, but it has no oomph. "Sounds great but lacks body," I noted when I played R.E.M.'s "7 Chinese Brothers" from Reckoning, a tune that's a long ways from being tough on woofers.
The much heavier sound of Band of Skulls fared worse. "Totally lacks kick," I noted when I played "Nightmares" from Himalayan. I tried pushing the R263s back closer to the wall behind them to reinforce the bass; while this action pumped up the lowest notes some, it didn't seem to do anything for the midbass region between 40 and 80 Hz. I didn't hear any other noteworthy colorations in the sound; it just didn't have much bass.
Rock recordings that tend toward the bright side, such as Julian Cope's "Planet Ride" from Saint Julian sounded really bright through the R263. It's not that the speaker's treble is elevated; it's just that, when you have a flat treble response and overdamped bass, the speaker tends to sound bright.
The problem definitely wasn't the room or the other gear, by the way. When I swapped my F206s for the R263s, the sound became fuller and more balanced, even though the F206 is a long way from being a bass monster.
Comparison and Competition
As I noted in my review of the Cambridge Audio Aero 6, there's a lot of tough competition in this price range. The Aero 6, for example. This speaker, which is now selling for $999/pair, has a comparably smooth midrange but can't touch the R263's ultra-detailed, ambient treble. Then again, the Aero 6 sounds more balanced; for most music, it doesn't need a subwoofer, where in my opinion the R263 is definitely in need of a sub for anything but acoustic jazz, classical, and folk music.
If you don't mind stepping up a little in cost, you can go with the $1,298/pair PSB Image T6 or the $1,399/pair GoldenEar Triton Seven. I doubt either can quite match the incredible midrange and treble transparency of the R263, although they'd both come close. Both sound more balanced, though, and neither really needs a sub unless you listen to a lot of heavy rock, hip-hop, or action movies.
Conclusion
I expected that a fairly large tower like the R263 would be built for mass-market tastes -- refined mass-market tastes, to be sure, but in the $1,000/pair range, I'd expect a tower speaker to be oriented toward rock/pop and movie sound. The R263, though, seems aimed totally, completely, and absolutely at audiophiles.
The mids and highs of the R263 are the cleanest I've heard from a tower speaker below, let's say, $2,000 (and probably even higher). It comes pretty close to my $3,500/pair Revel F206s, and it might come even closer if the R263 had more bass to balance out the highs better. It reminds me of some of the best speakers that the late Jim Thiel made, speakers that were beloved for their clarity and spaciousness but never, to my recollection, praised for their bass or dynamics.
If you're a devoted audiophile who's looking for an affordable tower speaker, I'd say look no further. If you listen to a lot of hip-hop, rock, R&B or pop, or if you're going to use your new speakers in a home theater system, you'll have to add a subwoofer or choose another speaker.
Additional Resources
2021-03-16 18:46:07
both JBL and Infinity Speakers are owned by parent company Harman Kardon. in March 2017 Samsung Electronics purchased Harman for $8 billion
2021-03-15 06:54:04
Honestly, it sounded amazing. Better than I imagined. But... I ended up giving my entire system to my fiancé father who was equally blown away, and I upgraded to the polk lsim707 and jbl 590 and, even though I spent a lot more on the polk and jbl, it didn't equate in noticeably better sound, maybe a 3-5% improvement. But go ahead and do it, I don't think you will be disappointed. I will say this though, the Infinity speakers are amazing for the price I got them at, but the biggest difference in sound was when I bought a 7 channel x 200 true watt amplifier the "Sherbourn 7/2100"... That amplifier has been the best upgrade, along with a good receiver, which I'm using an integra DRX-5. Now, I know what true audiophile quality truly sounds like, and I am just blown away...
2021-03-15 06:41:22
Hello Jesse! I wanted to ask you several questions about your infinity RS152 on the ceiling for Atmos? I hope you don’t mind? I was wondering not only how you have them crossed over in your A/V but how have they been working out so far? I would think since the woofer is facing the ceiling, there would be a lack of sound, poor dispersement of sound? Have you had any problems like that or any complaints? I may just go ahead and do the same for my setup using the RS152 speakers but wanted to know your opinions on the matter since you’ve done it.
2020-08-04 17:55:16
Think they have a ton of bass, a bit too much to my liking actually (using with an Audiolab 6000a). That little spike above 15k, could that cause fatigue? I've been using the minimum phase filter on the Audiolab which to my ears provides a softer sound with the R263s.
2020-06-18 17:43:17
Slickdeals just had these for $199 each direct from HarmanAudio. I imagine they sold quite a few thousand of them. Thanks for this 6 year old review. I bought a pair of these Infinity R263 towers and added their Infinity R12 subwoofer and 4 pairs of their RS152 180 degree sound dispersion surround speaker for the rears and atmos, all for around $1000. Retail for all of it would have been around $4000. God is good
2014-10-07 07:14:52
Thanks for reviewing these will help a lot to music lovers
2014-09-29 04:03:28
How do the R263 compare to Beta 40? Are the R263 much better? Worth upgrading?
2014-07-20 22:39:56
In terms of how big the sound will get and how much space it can fill how do the r263's and lores compare.
2014-07-17 02:36:43
Hey andrew how do the new infinity r263 compare to the triton 7's?
2014-07-16 15:01:33
I still have my Infinity IL36C 3-way center channel from way back. I really enjoyed the clarity of the CMMD drivers and are excited to see if these new ones will match up. I noticed https://huppins.com/audio/speakers/infinity had them in stock.
2014-07-15 20:23:53
For every 3dB in volume you must double your power. So if your speakers are 89dB @ 1 Watt/1 meter you're acheiving 89dB of volume using 1 Watt of power seated 1 meter away. To go from 89dB to 92dB you'd need 2 Watts. 95dB would require 4 Watts. 97dB, 8 Watts. etc. etc. But you don't sit 1 meter (3 ft) from your speakers, you sit further away. When you double the distance you drop an additional 3dB. So if you sit 12 feet from your speakers an 89dB efficient speaker becomes an 83dB efficient speaker -barring things like carpet, absorption materials etc.So at 83dB @ 1 watt at 12 feet (4 meters) you'd need an amp capable of producing 250 Watts (give or take) to hit dynamic peaks around 107dB. If you listen louder than that, say 110 or greater you'll need around 500 Watts. If 100+ dB is too loud you could likely get away with 125 Watts, though anything below 100 and you might run into issues with compression. Hope this helps and wasn't too confusing. Good luck!
2014-07-15 19:11:56
Thank you. Is there a formula that will tell me based on sensitivy and power rating how many watts I need to properly power speaker?
2014-07-14 19:31:00
Dollar for dollar they're both tremendous values. The question you need to ask yourself is (do you feel lucky, joking) do you like a sound that is more "live" and "immediate" or do you prefer something a little more "studio-like." High efficiency loudspeakers are going to sound as if the music (or movies) are more in the room with you, with less electronics in front of them, whereas more traditional speakers are going to sound like wonderful masters of a studio recording. Again, neither way is right nor wrong, just different. I couldn't nor would I attempt to tell you which one you should buy, suffice to say either way you go I doubt you'll be disappointed.
2014-07-14 19:25:49
I understand. I was just referring to dollar for dollar... I.e. The lores and r263. If one offered better sound.
2014-07-14 18:40:34
Comparing the two is a bit unfair -sort of apples and oranges thing - for the Tekton designs are known as a high efficiency designs, whereas the Infinity product is a bit more traditional. High efficiency speakers require less power than their traditional counterparts in order to "come alive," which many listeners equate to a sense of "ease, transparency and fluidity." Not that you cannot get that with Infinity's new loudspeakers, or more traditional loudspeakers for that matter, you're just going to have to bring a bit more power to the table in order to do so. At the end of the day, there is no ideal speaker, just what is going to work for you, your needs and your budget, but both Tekton and Infinity make great products.
2014-07-13 23:47:52
Can anyone speak to whether these or the tekton design speakers would be the way to go?
2014-07-10 04:41:29
For those who are interested in the R263 but want more oomph in the base response may want to check out the JBL Studio 290 which comes with the same CMMD tweeter and dual 8" woofers.
2014-07-07 15:31:26
I had the Infinity RS625 towers, in the 90's, and wish I still did! They had a great upper register, and tight 'bass extension', not to be confused with a big muddy bass.