|  Here
in Southern California we spend a lot of time outdoors thanks to great weather.
Making the outdoors more enjoyable has been a focus of many homeowners who want
to improve their backyards and adding music to the surroundings is often on the
list. However, placing speakers in a setting with greenery and not making it look
out of place can be challenging. Niles Audio has a clever solution with the introduction
of the new PS6si Indoor/Outdoor Planter Speaker. The PS6si is a large 10 gallon
capacity planter that also serves as a stereo loudspeaker. The PS6si stands 19"
tall and measures 19" in diameter at the top. The PS6si is solid and weighes
26 pounds when empty (35 pounds shipped). The sturdy design can easily handle
a plant or small tree making the environment look good while covertly placing
sound in the area. The PS6Si is available in terracotta or concrete finish to
match your outdoor colors. The acoustically transparent vents at the base of the
planter let the sound out, but keep the bugs in check.
 Speaker
Configuration
The PS6Si has a downward firing driver (proprietary, 6.5"
dual voice coil woofer) and two 1" fluid-cooled Tetron tweeters that are
mounted on opposite sides of the base, angled slightly upwards to provide a stereo
soundstage. The bass driver is in a sealed (Acoustic Suspension) enclosure. Each
channel has its own crossover circuitry and the dual voice coil electrically isolates
the two channels from each other. Signal polarity is very important especially
since a single driver is used for bass. Miswiring the speakers could cause complete
bass cancellation. The PS6Si is designed to handle the harshest of environments
and is made of fiberglass and protected with UV-resistant paint. The 10-gallon
capacity provides a lot of volume for plants or small trees. Three drainage holes
allows for water to exit the container. Sound exits the base through a set of
four acoustically transparent MicroPerf™ aluminum grilles designed to keep
the bugs out while looking great.
 The
Niles PS6si can be configured in stereo for two channel reproduction or as a single
mono speaker where two units would be required for stereo sound. Since we only
had one PS6Si speaker on hand, we configured it to accept two channel audio. When
configuring the speaker for mono, the impedance is reduced to 4 ohms. This needs
to be considered when choosing an amplifier to drive the speakers since many amplifiers
have difficulty driving low impedances. There is one aspect of the PS6Si that
is not obvious in the stock photo, so I took a picture to point it out. While
the tweeters come from the factory 180 degrees apart, there are some applications
where one might want to place the planter in a corner. This would prevent good
high frequecy dispersion with the factory tweeter placement. Niles provides a
secondary tweeter positioned between the two mounted speakers (90 degrees from
either speaker) to accommodate this type of installation. By simply moving the
tweeter to the spare location, the user can have better sound quality from their
PS6Si. This is an excellent design that was not mentioned in the literature. Hopefully,
customers take advantage of this opton.
 Impedance
The
PS6Si has a nominal impedance rating of 8 ohms per input channel. We measured
the impedance of the speaker to get a better idea of what the connected amplifier
might encounter. Like many speakers, the impedance of the PS6Si varies significantly
as a function of frequency. Using a 1/3 octave sweep on our Sencore SP295 Audio
Analyzer, we found typical peaks and valleys in the impedance spectrum. We measured
a maximum impedance of 27.6 ohms at 63Hz and a minimum of 6.5 ohms at 10kHz. Our
Sonos Digital Music system which is rated at 50W per channel had no problem driving
this speaker to reasonably loud listening levels. Slightly higher levels could
have been obtained using a 100W per channel amplifier, but for us the Sonos provided
plenty of power.
The
PS6Si produced a substantial amount of low frequency response with the dual-coil
6.5" bass driver. We measured significant bass output below 50 Hz with a
gradual roll-off as the frequency dropped. The sealed (acoustic suspension) design
of the PS6Si has many advantages over ported enclosures including a more gradual
roll-off of the bass frequencies (approximately 12dB/ocave) and better overall
transient response. Performance
Niles
recommends using a 10 to 100 Watts RMS amplifier per channel. In our case we used
a Sonos ZP100 Digital Music Player that provides 50W RMS per channel. This gave
us adequate power output with good volume and headroom. The sound quality from
the Niles PS6Si is amazingly good for an outdoor speaker considering the environment
is often difficult to control. We have a good level of background noise due to
a somewhat busy street located near us and the PS6Si helped to dilute the unpleasant
sounding noise floor. Playing music through the planter produced great sounding
midrange with clean bass. High frequencies were a bit attenuated depending on
the listening angle, but overall produced crisp sound without any harshness. The
audio level was great for our backyard with plenty of loudness. Depending on the
installation, Niles provides a couple of options for the tweeter configuration
that helps improve the sound quality. Conclusion
The Niles PS6Si is a great addition to a patio or deck where high quality
music is desired without the intrusive looks of ugly speakers. The planter speaker
serves dual purposes and blends nicely into the scenery. The weatherproof design
will provides years of reliable music while looking great with a live plant and
is built to last. Separate left and right inputs provide stereo sound in a single
enclosure. The dual 1" tri-laminate tweeters and 6-1/2" dual voice coil
injection-molded polypropylene woofer with butyl rubber surround will not deteriorate
quickly like most cheap speakers and are designed to handle up to 100 watts per
input channel. Even the dual 3-foot burial-rated speaker cables with waterproof
wire nuts are built to last and with a lifetime warranty Niles backs their design. -
Kevin Nakano | 
