What the maker puts in writing
- “Dual 5-Inch Fiberglass Woofers With Rubber Surround: Made with a combination of rigid lightweight fiberglass cone and supple rubber surround, the CS5’s dual woofers have been tuned to offer a great balance of bass and midrange output, doing so with exceptionally low distortion at normal listening levels”
- “1-Inch Silk Dome Tweeter with Waveguide: …produces a smooth, extended, and predictable treble response with the help of its integrated waveguide”
- “The CS5’s enclosure is designed to minimize driver spacing, reducing the effects of off-axis lobing. Its rear-ported design allow for a more compact design. The magnetic grill system eliminates unsightly mounting holes”
- “Due to its passive design, the CS5 requires a separate amplifier or receiver in order to play audio from a TV, game console, or DVD/BD player”
It is the only listing here that names the real problem
The CS5’s enclosure is designed to minimize driver spacing, reducing the effects of off-axis lobing.
That sentence describes the one acoustic difficulty a center speaker has and other speakers do not.
A center channel has two woofers side by side with a tweeter between them, and it faces an audience spread sideways across a sofa. When two physically separated drivers both produce the same midrange frequency, the path lengths to an off-axis ear differ — so their outputs partly cancel away from the center line.
One seat hears a dip in a man’s voice that the seat beside it does not. The effect worsens as frequency rises and as the spacing grows, so shrinking the gap pushes the cancellation up where it matters less.
At least four of the seventeen listings here address it. Dayton’s C40 and JBL’s 245C use a 2.5-way crossover, which stops both woofers covering the midrange at all. Micca’s OoO uses square-frame drivers and a small tweeter bezel. Polk’s TL1 calls it Time Lens.
Only this one calls the problem by its name.
Five-inch woofers for ninety dollars
The largest driver on this shelf below a hundred and fifty dollars, and by some margin.
2 × 2.5 in — Polk TL1, $79 · 2 × 3 in — Goldwood AA35CB $38.88, Micca OoO $79.99 · 2 × 3.94 in — Sony, $248 · 2 × 4 in — Goldwood PSC-43, Dayton C40, both Micca MB42X-C · 4 × 4.5 in — JBL, $439.95 · 2 × 5 in — this, $89.99 · 2 × 5.25 in — Klipsch, $149.99 · 2 × 6.5 in — Triangle, $459
Cone area goes as the square of the radius, so a pair of 5-inch drivers has about 56 percent more area than a pair of 4-inch ones and roughly 180 percent more than a pair of 3-inch ones.
On a center channel that buys the lower register of a male voice and the body of an impact. And 9.9 lb (4.5 kg) of cabinet at this price suggests the box was built to hold them.
Fiberglass is the material choice: rigid and light, which pushes cone breakup above the crossover point, paired with a “supple rubber surround” — the compliant ring that lets the cone travel while sealing the gap. Rubber outlasts the foam surrounds that perished on older speakers.
The waveguide, which is the right idea
A bare dome tweeter radiates treble in a wide, uneven pattern that narrows sharply as frequency rises — so the person directly in front hears a different balance from the person at the end of the sofa.
A waveguide is a shaped recess around the dome that constrains the output into a defined angle, making coverage more even across the seating.
Neumitech’s wording is honest: “a smooth, extended, and predictable treble response”. What a waveguide buys is consistency, not extra output.
Two other products here use the same principle at larger scale: Klipsch’s 90×90 square Tractrix horn — the only one on the shelf publishing a coverage angle — and JBL’s HDI horn.
The rear port is the honest weakness, and the listing admits why
Its rear-ported design allow for a more compact design.
So the port fires backwards because of the cabinet, not because of the sound — which is unusually frank.
And a center channel is the worst speaker to do that to, because it always lives in a confined space: shoved into a TV unit, or pressed against a wall. A rear port in that position is choked — airflow restricted, bass compressed, and at volume the port can audibly whistle.
The fix is clearance. Leave at least a hundred millimeters behind it, more if you can.
The shelf divides on this. Rear, published: this, Sony, JBL. Front: Triangle’s BRC2 at $459 alone, which claims bass “without placement limitations” as a result. Sealed: Goldwood’s AA35CB and Dayton’s C40, which have no port to choke.
And it says twice that it needs an amplifier
Due to its passive design, the CS5 requires a separate amplifier or receiver in order to play audio from a TV, game console, or DVD/BD player.
Stated in bullet 2 and again in the description — and it names the three sources people actually try to plug in.
Every speaker on this shelf is passive. Only this one, and Micca’s OoO indirectly, says so.
What is not published
No frequency response, no sensitivity, no impedance, no power handling.
Sensitivity is the omission that costs most, because it decides what amplifier you need — every 3 dB being a doubling of power. Four products here publish it, from 95 dB (Klipsch) to 86 dB (Micca G2), a factor of eight. Both Goldwoods publish a recommended amplifier range as well.
And 216 mm tall — the third tallest on this shelf, against 89 mm for the Polk. Measure the gap under your television before anything else.
4,500 g and 373 × 216 × 145 mm are published. A magnetic grille with no visible mounting holes is the sort of detail nobody else here bothers to mention.
Prices quoted in this text were read on October 4, 2026. The live price is at the top of the page.
