RBH Sound Impression 85-i Floor-Standing Loudspeaker Review

RBH Sound 85-i - Subwoofer like bass from a modest tower?

For a good few years now, RBH Sound hasn’t had any offerings in the entry-level segment of the loudspeaker market, likely due to their shift from China to the USA in manufacturing. The fact is that China can manufacture most consumer electronics goods far more inexpensively than can be done in the US, and this makes it difficult to find a profit in larger volume and lower margin speakers. However, the supply chain problems during the COVID-19 years taught American consumer electronics companies that dependence on Chinese manufacturing can be a double-edged sword. In order to have a more reliable supply chain, RBH went through the painful move to US manufacturing, and now that the shift to domestic cabinet manufacturing is complete, they are set to offer loudspeakers over a wider range of prices. For this reason, RBH Sound has now brought back their entry-level Impression series loudspeakers which are surely the lowest-cost loudspeakers made in the USA in their class. In for review today is the Impression 85-i, their 3-way tower speaker from this series featuring a side firing 8" woofer with subwoofer like bass, a 5 1/4" midrange and 1" fabric dome tweeter for a modest asking price of $1,195/pair. In evaluating these speakers, we will ask how they fare against other floor-standing speakers in their class? How do they perform, and can American manufacturing still compete with Chinese manufacturing for the cost? Let's now dig in to find out…

RBH Sound Impression 85-i Packing and Appearance

 

The RBH 85-i towers are not large speakers so they do not arrive in big boxes at your doorstep. The speakers are double-boxed, but the inner box lies underneath some polyethylene foam blocks that sandwich the top and bottom and also the vertical edges. Inside the inner box, the 85-i speakers are wrapped in a soft foam bag to protect against scuffs. Make sure not to cut deeply when opening the inner box since it is essentially right on top of the speaker, otherwise, your cutting tool will cut into the speaker’s finish. Overall, the 85-i speakers are well-packed against rough shipping, and I have seen more expensive speakers use flimsier packing than these.

 

Once unpacked, the 85-is stand as a pair of modest tower speakers that have a simple, clean look. Without grilles, the only distinguishing features of the speakers are the drivers. Outside of the drivers, they are black towers with a satin black finish and rounded vertical edges.  Since the drivers are all black, they don’t do a whole lot to stand out visually. It may be for the best that RBH eschews any other styling cues since speakers that are this small could get busy-looking quickly if ornamentation is applied to them. There are two grilles for each speaker: one to cover the front drivers and one to cover a side-firing bass driver. Users can opt for the grilles if they want to have an even more minimal appearance for the speakers. The front grille does have a small RBH badge near the lower edge, so the speaker doesn’t have to be completely featureless. The grilles use magnetic adhesion (unusual at this price) so they don’t have grille guides marring the front baffle. One nice touch is that the speaker has a true satin black finish instead of a faux-’satin black’ textured vinyl. It doesn’t have the finest satin black finish on the market, but at least it is an authentic one unlike many other speakers in its segment. Buyers who want a finer satin finish will need to step up to costlier speakers from RBH.

RBH Sound Impression 85-i Design Analysis

 

As floor-standing loudspeakers go, the 85-i is not especially complex, but it does have some notable attributes that set it aside from the competition (outside of its US manufacturing). Let’s start our discussion of the 85-i from the top with the tweeter. The tweeter appears to be a normal 1” fabric dome, and that is a perfectly fine recipe for a good tweeter. It does use a ferrite magnet which has a ⅝” thickness and a 2 ¾” diameter. Many inexpensive speakers use neodymium tweeters with no heatsinking, but Ferrite is often a better magnet because of its superior thermal dispersion; more surface area means more area in which to radiate heat. The midrange is a 5.25” aluminum cone with an actual solid phase plug. Some loudspeaker drivers in this class look like they have a phase plug, but the ‘plug’ are attached to the moving assembly and are cosmetic only. It also has a cast aluminum basket instead of a stamped steel frame (again unusual at this price). Cast aluminum is usually a better option over stamped since it’s often more rigid and paramagnetic.The tweeter and midrange driver have a separate sealed compartment in the cabinet, so the backwave pressure from the bass driver does not interfere with the midrange cone and vice versa. The bass driver has an 8” diameter and also uses an aluminum cone. It has a ¾” thick magnet with a 4 ¼” diameter, and the motor’s venting is done through the backplate.

  

Crossover frequencies are 3kHz between tweeter and midrange, and 100Hz between midrange and bass driver, and the filters use 2nd order slopes. 100Hz is an extremely low crossover frequency and requires an inductor with a high value and may lead to significant insertion losses. It could also complicate the addition of a powered subwoofer for proper calibration when using conventional crossover frequencies like 80Hz. The reason is that the phase rotation that occurs in the filter will make it hard to match the filtration of the sub’s low-pass filter since that will also have phase rotation. It may be difficult to properly align the powered sub with this speaker since the phase will be very busy at typical crossover points. For that reason, we recommend running the 85-I full range for easier integration with your powered sub(s) by just setting the speakers to full range in your AVR bass management.

These crossover frequencies do give the midrange a lot of bandwidth, and an advantage of that is that there isn’t going to be any phase distortion from crossover filters over a wide range of speech and music spectrums. Those looking for a loudspeaker that should be good for speech intelligibility in particular may have a very good choice in the 85-i.

One interesting feature of the crossover circuit is the use of a self-resetting poly-switch. This protects the tweeter by raising resistance above certain electrical current levels that would place the driver’s voice coil in danger. There are some much more expensive speakers that have passed through my hands that I wish had this feature (I admit to having killed a tweeter or two). The RBHs are all internally wired with thick twisted pair cabling to minimize losses and crosstalk; a nice detail for a speaker of this price class.

The enclosure is made from high-density fiberboard (again, unsual at this price) instead of medium-density fiberboard, so it is a bit tougher than the norm. It uses 1/2” thick panels, and there is a window-pane brace about ⅔ of the way up the cabinet. Porting is done through a rear-mounted slot port. The slot port construction, tweeter/midrange compartment interior panels, and window pane brace help to make the enclosure quite inert. There is a generous amount of acoustic stuffing to help damp internal waves as well. This is a well put together speaker for its class of product!

 

The 85-i uses a single pair of 5-way binding posts set in a terminal cup. Thankfully, RBH Sound has avoided the audiophile nonsense of using dual binding posts for a modest home audio speaker. The feet are some rubber domes that are mounted on aluminum outriggers. As was said before, the grilles use magnetic adhesion, and it does provide a good hold; some other speakers that had magnetic grilles had pretty weak force to hold the grilles on, and they could be knocked off easily.  Thankfully, this is NOT the case with the RBHs.

Zooming out at the overall design, it can be seen that the 85-i is a lot more like a typical bookshelf speaker mounted on a subwoofer than ordinary tower speakers. This can be seen in the 100Hz crossover frequency as well as the low mounting of the bass driver (a benefit for minimizing ground bounce). That should help the 85-i attain deep bass extension for a smaller tower speaker, although it does come at the expense of dynamic range since the midrange has to deal with a lot of the mid-bass frequency band. That shouldn’t be a problem since I don’t think many people will be rocking these speakers loud enough to notice. These aren’t large tower speakers, and I would imagine that people will set their expectations accordingly. Nonetheless, I would guess that they will have more than sufficient dynamic range for a typical living room or bedroom system. But this is all just speculation based on looking at its design, so let’s now hear for ourselves how all of this audio engineering adds up in some real-world listening…

RBH Sound Impression 85-i Listening Sessions

In my 24’ by 13’ (approximately) listening room, I set up the speakers with a few feet of stand-off distances between the back wall and sidewall and equal distance between the speakers and the listening position. I angled the RBHs to face the listening position. The listening distance from the 85-i speakers was about 9 feet. No room correction equalization was used. Processing was done by a Marantz 7705 and the amplification was done by a Monoprice Monolith 5x200 amplifier. No subwoofers were used.

Music Listening

Julia Cooper’s “Oculus” is an impeccably recorded new release that I found through Qobuz’s ‘Discover’ magazine. Cooper is known for her musical scores for many television and film productions from England, but she has gathered acclaim for her original album ‘Continuum’ which was released in 2022. “Oculus,” her most recent release, is filled with lush orchestral pieces with modern compositions, many of which place the piano, harp, or female vocal at the forefront. It was recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios, and, in this 96kHz/24-bit streaming resolution, can sound fabulous, especially on a good sound system.

As a studio album, “Oculus” puts the orchestra in your room rather than trying to transport the listener to a concert hall or a cathedral nave. The 85-i speakers reflected this, and placed the performers in front of me. The album opens with piano to the right of me and a harp to the left with strings filling the center space, and the 85-i relayed their positions with good definition. The second track brought in a vocalist who imaged in the center of the soundstage, and the 85-i left no ambiguity as to her position. The tonality of the instruments was good, but here I should mention that I did have to experiment with placement to elicit what I felt was a balanced sound. On prior listening material, I had the speakers facing me directly, and I felt the on-axis sound was pretty forward, not quite to the point of being abrasive but definitely hotter in treble that I would have cared to listen to for long durations. I moved them closer to the back wall and angled them outward to face straight ahead, instead of directly at me. That elevated the bass a bit more and also shaved off much of the excess treble. In this positioning, they achieved a nicely balanced sound, and I didn’t notice anything recessed or over-emphasized in the sound of these instruments. Indeed, the music sounded quite lovely, as in the standout track, “Echo,” a choral piece of tremendous beauty. It’s possible some imaging precision is lost in angling them to face forward instead of having a toe-in, but the soundstage was still quite good, and it was very much a worthwhile trade-off for my tastes.

Another new release that showcases excellent production is “Unknown Rivers” by Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio. Stewart is the bassist for many bands in the DC area, and the Silt Trio is largely his formation with Trae Crudup on percussion and Brian Settles on Saxophone. This album lies on the highly improvisational end of jazz music, and the playing is loose and lively. As a simple trio, we get a clearer picture of the sounds of these instruments than we would if they were part of a larger ensemble. Again, I streamed this album from Qobuz in high resolution.

A tenor saxophone serves as the lead instrument, and the 85-i speakers gave it a very clear center stage placement. Stewart’s double bass playing had some real oomph as well, and even though the 85-i speakers were on the smaller side of towers, they still were able to project the heft of the double bass. Likewise, the percussion had a liveliness and verve that belied the speaker’s modest size. Bass drums thumped nicely, and the toms and snares popped without overwhelming everything else. Indeed, the instruments of this trio were nicely balanced, and this isn’t just an act of the recording but of the speakers as well.  The track “Amilcar” opened with a terrific drum solo, and it gave the 85-i a chance to shine with its larger-than-expected dynamic range. Some of these tracks are live recordings in what is presumably a jazz club, and they had that thicker sound that isn’t as polished as studio recordings. The 85-i rendered the coarser nature of those recordings well, and they had an immediacy that helped to reproduce the live experience. Jazz lovers have a lot to like about the RBH 85-i speakers as I found out in listening to “Unknown Rivers.”

For something to place emphasis on a sole voice, I found another new release titled “Family Feud” by Julia Pratt. This is an EP of folk music with an accent of R&B. Pratt keeps her subject matter down to earth, so this isn’t the pretty Americana of folk music but rather somber contemplations, even though Pratt’s voice can be quite lovely at times. The recording quality is top-notch and serves as a terrific exhibition of Pratt’s voice as well as her guitar playing and accompanying bass, percussion, and keyboards. This album could sound good even with a mediocre sound system, so on a good one, it should sound stellar.

The album opens with a simple acoustic guitar with Pratt singing, and the 85-i nailed these sound sources to the center stage. Choruses spread Pratt’s voice out with choral multi-tracking, and the speakers gave her an ethereal quality that the mix doubtlessly intended. Pratt’s voice was articulated with clarity, and we get an intimate portrait of the texture and inflection of her singing. A good example of this occurs in track 3, “Carolina,” a melancholy song about how personal change alters feelings for the places and people of youth. A touch of reverb gives a sense of space and depth that is neatly rendered by 85-i speakers. Pratt’s voice as well as the instruments sounded full and natural. “Family Feud” was a pleasure to listen to, but a short lived one since it is just a 17 minute EP. Nonetheless, it’s easy to hear how tremendously talented Pratt is, and she undeniably has a big future in music ahead of her. RBH’s 85-i speakers were a great vehicle to hear what has to be a major achievement in this young artist’s career.

  

To see what the 85-i could do when pushed, I selected a heavy-duty dubstep EP titled “Collisions” by Fearful and Mtwn. While not a large tower that promises endless dynamic range, it is still equipped with an 8” bass driver with a substantial slot port, so it should have some grunt in lower frequencies. “Collisions” would certainly have the bass utilization to reveal what the 85-i is capable of.  We last encountered the duo of Fearful and Mtwm in Audioholics’ pages with their delirious brawler of an album “Exordium.” “Collisions” predates “Exordium” by a year which continued their spree of hard-hitting bass, inventive compositions, and exploration of grisly new sounds. I streamed this 2020 release on the innovative Diffrent Music label from Qobuz.

The tracks on this EP dig unusually deep in frequency, and although the 85-i speakers are not large for floor-standing speakers, they seemed to catch most if not all of the deep bass here. They did so with a good sense of muscle as well. The 85-I bass drivers couldn’t quite match a large subwoofer for sense of unlimited dynamic range in bass, but they did better than one would expect of a loudspeaker of their size. In fact, this bass-heavy music was still perfectly enjoyable, and the low-frequency prowess is key to making that happen. A great example of the deep bass potency of the 85-i speakers can be heard in the third track, “Depths,” which lives up to its name as an almost ambient piece with deep sea noises combined with prolonged bass synths which must of extended to the limits of what the speakers could do. In my room, I was getting a strong response to below 30Hz before it started to lose steam, and this track exhibited that nicely. At high loudness levels, the speaker did have its limits, particularly with deep bass, but I don’t expect anyone would listen at such high levels. The 85-i speakers had dynamic and bass extension well past what anyone should reasonably expect of a loudspeaker of its size and pricing.

Movie Watching

A movie I had long been excited to see after watching its trailer was “Late Night With the Devil,” a 2023 horror film that has gained some popularity through word of mouth. This movie is about a late-night talk show host who concocts a very special live Halloween episode to save his show from sinking ratings. He uses this occult-themed episode to lead up to a summoning of a demon from a possessed young girl. The idea was neat, and the trailer was intriguing. This movie looked like it would have some wild sound effects that could be a good exhibition of a stereo speaker pair’s abilities to reproduce an unusual sound mix.

“Late Night With the Devil” turned out to be a terrific horror movie, and it benefited from being watched with a competent sound system like the RBH Sound 85-i speakers. The movie’s sound was largely dialogue with a smattering of eerie effects sound up until the end where the sound mix goes all out in a dramatic climax. Dialogue intelligibility was excellent throughout the movie. I never had a problem understanding any of the speech, and that is crucial for a film like this. Effects sounds ramp up as the supernatural elements intensify, and the 85-i’s imaging abilities and low-frequency extension created a convincing atmosphere of unnatural activity. The music was mostly diegetic and consisted of the talk show’s band, the Nite Owls Studio Orchestra, and the 85-i gave an energetic reproduction of their playing (one laugh-out-loud moment was the band’s ‘ethnic’ walk-on music for Christou’s introduction). One the moments where the sound mix asked for some real force, the 85-i speakers were happy to oblige. I truly enjoyed “Late Night with the Devil” and would encourage anyone with an interest in scary movies to check it out, but make a point of doing so with capable speakers as I did.

 

One movie I had long been interested in but hadn’t taken the opportunity to do was “Molly’s Game,” based on a true story about an olympic-class skier that has to retire from athletics due to an injury and so goes to Los Angeles to study law. However, circumstances end up with her running an illegal poker game for high-rolling clientele. It seems like easy money until the FBI becomes involved. As a big Hollywood production with a major cast and creative team, the sound mix should be as good as money can buy. With the RBH 85-i speakers in house, it looked like a good time to finally give this movie a chance.

“Molly’s Game” turned out to be a fun movie, and the 85-i speakers gave the film experience a big-screen sound. The main component in the sound mix is the dialogue which was the usual quick, witty banter that comes from Aaron Sorkin-written projects. Using the 85-i speakers, I didn’t miss a word of Sorkin’s snappy patter, and the dialogue intelligibility was extremely good. Since this movie didn’t deal with the fantastical, there wasn’t much in the way of effects noises outside of the usual sounds of everyday life, but the speakers and sound mix were able to create a busy, vibrant world, especially in the poker scenes which were filled with background conversation, clinking glasses, and thrown chips. The music was a rock score by the prolific Daniel Pemberton: the 85-is rendered its crunchy guitars nicely, and it was an appropriate accompaniment to the many scenes of gambling debauchery. I don’t know how much of “Molly’s Game” is authentic, but for me, it works more as a character study than an expose of gambling circles of the powerful elite. I enjoyed it, although the world it created felt more like a Sorkin conjuration rather than something resembling reality. While his dialogue proclivities are amusing, they aren’t really convincing.

RBH Sound Impression 85-i Loudspeaker Measurements

The RBH Sound 85-i was measured in free air at a height of 7.5 feet at a 1-meter distance from the microphone, and the measurements were gated at an 11-millisecond delay. In this time window, some resolution is lost below 250Hz and accuracy is completely lost below 110Hz. Measurements have been smoothed at a 1/24 octave resolution.

 

The above graphs depict the speaker’s lateral responses out to 90 degrees in five-degree increments. More information about how to interpret these graphs can be read in this article: Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II. While this is not a flawless showing, there is a lot to like here, and it does explain some of what I heard. The midrange is well controlled and has a very flat response. At and near the on-axis response, we do see a somewhat elevated treble response, and this is what I heard in my own listening when I had the speakers angled to face me directly. Off-axis, this elevated treble calms down and becomes even with the rest of the frequency range. In fact, off-axis, the response becomes very neutral. We do see a slight directivity error develop at the hand-off from the midrange woofer to the tweeter, but it is not severe, and I wouldn’t expect it to manifest into any significant audible issue.

 

The above polar map graphs show the same information that the preceding graphs do, but they depict it in a way that can offer new insight regarding these speakers’ behavior. Instead of using individual raised lines to illustrate amplitude, these polar maps use color to portray amplitude, and this allows the use of a purely angle/frequency axis perspective. The advantage of these graphs is that they can let us see broader trends in the speaker’s behavior more easily. For more information about the meaning of these graphs, we again refer the reader to Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II.

Here, we can see that the 85-i is a pretty wide dispersion loudspeaker and offers coverage over a broad area. We have at least a 50-degree angle off axis where these speakers will retain a full sound. We would have even more if we ignored that off-axis notch below 2.5kHz where the midrange integrates with the tweeter, but no one is reasonably going to be trying to listen outside a 50-degree angle, so it doesn’t matter much. The tweeter keeps a fairly wide dispersion up to a high frequency. Typical dome tweeters on a flat baffle usually have their tweeters begin constricting dispersion well below 9kHz, but the 85-i starts constricting its dispersion at around 14kHz. When it does start to beam, it does so at a rapid rate, and those who want to be met with high treble above 14kHz will want to angle the speakers to face them directly. However, without equalization, that treble will be a bit elevated.

 

The above graph compares the on-axis response against a 25-degree off-axis response that would typically be where a listener would be with respect to the speaker where the speaker pair facing straight ahead rather than toed-in to face the listener directly. In my own listening, I felt the high frequencies were a bit aggressive when I had the speaker angled to face directly at my listening position, but when I angled them to face forward in parallel, the sound was a lot smoother to my ears. This graph explains why that is. In the on-axis angle, there is a dip at 3.5kHz that accentuates a rise in treble above that point which peaks at about 14kHz.This makes for a somewhat forward sound that, while it wasn’t immediately bothersome, I found to be a bit fatiguing after awhile. However, after angling them to simply face outward, I was met with a pleasant and balanced sound that I could listen to perpetually. In fact, the tweeter’s bandwidth at this angle is nearly ruler flat up to 14kHz. Above that range, output drops off precipitously, but there isn’t much content at such high treble frequencies nor do many adults hear well in that range anyway. Some users might prefer the hotter on-axis treble, and to get that, simply angle the speaker to face the listening position directly. 

 

The above graphs show the 85-i speaker’s low-frequency responses that I captured using groundplane measurements (where the speaker and microphone are on the ground in a wide-open area). The low-pass filter point on the bass driver made it difficult to get a fair representation of the low-frequency behavior of this speaker, and it is possible that the port-produced output is a bit under-represented here. In my listening room, I had a good bass response down to a bit below 30Hz, so while I think that the port response is a bit damped relative to the bass driver, it probably isn’t quite as damped as what is being shown here. My room doesn’t get a whole lot of gain either, so I think anyone in a small to medium sized room will have even stronger bass below 30Hz. Something to note here is that there is a slight ridge that develops just under 200Hz, and this comes from how the midrange blends with the bass driver. With such a far distance separating the two and such a low crossover frequency between them, it would be hard to get a ruler flat low-frequency response, but that’s okay since any normal room acoustics will royally disfigure the response. The room dominates the response at such low frequencies, and your acoustic situation will be what is heard far more than the native response of the speaker.

 

The above graph shows the electrical behavior of the 85-i speaker. This is a very benign load and will be friendly to any amplifier that it is hooked up to, even very inexpensive ones. RBH specifies this to be ‘6 ohm nominal,’ and that is correct, but I think many other manufacturers would more liberally specify the same impedance response as 8 ohms. The minima occurs at around 600Hz and bottoms out at just over 5 ohms, but it happens at a very shallow angle of phase. This is one of the easier electrical loads I have seen, and few amps in the world would have any problems driving this speaker. One other item of interest to note here is the dip in the low-frequency saddle which gives an indication of the port tuning frequency, and it happens at 30Hz, so even though these speakers aren’t large as towers go, they are still rather deep digging in bass.

I measured sensitivity to be 85dB at 1 meter for 2.83v which is a bit below RBH’s own spec of 87dB, although RBH does not specify the context of its sensitivity spec. The 85-i is not an especially efficient tower speaker and has about the same sensitivity as one would normally find in a bookshelf speaker. Two design aspects that bring its sensitivity down are its size and its low-frequency tuning. It’s trying to wring deep bass out of a modestly-sized enclosure, and efficiency must be sacrificed for that to happen. Nonetheless, it isn’t badly inefficient, and normal AVRs will have enough power to drive the 85-i speakers to pretty loud levels. However, people with 15-watt chip amps or 5-watt tube amps should not expect monster SPLs out of them.

RBH Sound Impression 85-i Conclusion

Before bringing this review to a close, I will briefly go over the strengths and weaknesses of the product under evaluation, and, as always, I will start with the weaknesses. RBH Sound’s 85-i is not perfect, but its only significant weakness is not severe and can easily be corrected for by simply placement angling. Its treble is a bit hot when the speaker is facing the listener directly, but if angled to face forward in parallel, it has a very neutral and balanced sound. Those listeners who prefer their sound to be a bit more forward and crisper can toe-in the speaker at various angles until they get the sound they want, but personally I prefer a more laid back sound than an aggressive one. So, in a sense, you can EQ this speaker by just adjusting the angle of its position. This is a flaw in the sense that the tonality is not consistent across the width of the speaker's dispersion. However, I don't consider it a major issue, as users can still achieve the desired sound by experimenting with toe-in angles.

Outside of the hot on-axis treble, I don’t have much else to complain about. I could say that maybe it looks a bit plain and perhaps RBH could have done something to add a bit more pizazz to its appearance, but that would have hiked up the cost, and this is a unit that RBH is trying to keep as budget friendly as possible while still meeting a slew of other criteria, so that would have defeated the point of the speaker. Besides that, it doesn’t look bad and does have a nice satin black finish. I don’t think anyone will complain about the appearance, but I don’t think anyone is going to be wowed by it either. It’s a straightforward tower speaker that looks fine.

One aspect of its design that bears repeating here is that the very low crossover frequency between the midrange and bass driver means that those who want to integrate a subwoofer into a system with these speakers should probably just set up the system to have these speakers run full-range with the sub instead of high-pass filtering the speakers as would normally be done. With such a low crossover to the bass driver, the design of this speaker is essentially a bookshelf speaker resting on top of a passive subwoofer, so if one were trying to integrate a sub, having the sub crossover to the speakers would be like having a subwoofer crossover into another sub and then the speakers. There would be a lot of phase rotation around any normal subwoofer crossover frequency, and in my opinion, just not worth doing. For those who want to just have the subs deal with lower bass, I would recommend looking at the standmount speakers from RBH’s Impression series rather than the floor-standing speakers like the 85-i.

 

Moving on to discussion about its strengths, I would say its foremost strength is its sound quality. While I was just complaining about the hot treble, that only occurs when the speaker is facing the listener directly, but most users end up facing the speaker outward for a symmetrical stance, and in that positioning, it sounds quite nice. It has a good spectral balance and even tonality, and it has a decent amount of punch for a modestly-sized floor-standing speaker as well. Furthermore, its low-frequency extension is much deeper than would be expected of a tower speaker of its size. As I mentioned before, I was getting real bass to below 30Hz, and I doubt there are any other floor-standers in its size that can do that. The imaging and soundstage projected was also very good. It wasn’t as pinpoint precise as some other speakers I have dealt with, but those are much more expensive on average and also aren’t as small in size. As I said  in my listening impressions, even though the 85-i speakers aren’t large, they can produce a large sound.

Outside of its sound qualities, the build quality is also good for the class. It’s not a heavy speaker, but it’s reasonably dense for its size and does not feel cheap. The use of HDF as the cabinet construction material is likely the key to this quality, but there is also a good level of bracing and plenty of acoustic damping material inside as well. The drivers seem very capable too, and even though this isn’t an enormously expensive speaker, RBH certainly isn’t using the cheapest drivers on the market. They could have cut some corners in this regard but decided not to so that the speaker would be better.

Something else worth discussing at this point is that these are primarily made in the USA. The main structure of the 85-i, its enclosure, is built in the United States. Needless to say, that is a rarity, especially in this price segment. Almost all reasonably priced home audio speakers in this segment are built in China. RBH Sound has found a way to make an affordable loudspeaker with cabinet manufacturing and assembly done domestically. And it even has a real satin black finish instead of a vinyl veneer. Of course, it’s not all made in the USA, and some parts like the drivers and certain crossover components are imported, but overall it is largely USA-built. Those who want to support American manufacturing have a great choice here since it does not compromise much in terms of build or performance yet is still price competitive with other speakers in its class.

Competing Speakers

Speaking of competing speakers, just what do the 85-i speakers go up against? Looking at slim tower speakers in a similar price range, we have the Polk Audio Signature Elite ES60, Polk Reserve R500, Dali Oberon 5, JBL Studio 680, Klipsch RP-5000F II, and ELAC Debut 2.0 F6.2. What separates the RBH Sound 85-i from all of these speakers, aside from USA assembly, is deep bass extension. None of these other speakers are likely to dig below 30Hz, but the 85-i does. The trade-off is that most if not all of those competing speakers will have higher sensitivity, meaning that amplifier power will go a bit further with them. I don’t see that as a huge advantage since I doubt that any people will reach the limits of the 85-i speakers and amplifier power is cheap these days.

In the end, the RBH Sound 85-i speakers exceeded my expectations. I thought that their smaller size would make for a compromised sound, but it doesn’t. They are an overall well-executed and well-made design that is a strong class competitor even though it is largely made in America which I would have expected to necessitate a much higher cost. I don’t know how RBH managed to pull this trick off, but I am glad they did. Anyone wanting a full-range sound out of a small-footprint tower should definitely take a very close look at the 85-i floor-standing speakers.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value