Cambridge Audio TV 5 Review

Cambridge Audio is joining the sound slab craze with its own flat, one-piece home theater sound system, the TV 5. It’s a large black base for your HDTV, like most other sound slabs, and it packs a lot of power in its squat frame. At $399.99, it’s comparable with the Editors’ Choice Zvox SoundBase 570 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , though in testing we noticed a minor annoyance—occasional chassis buzz following deep bass—that held it back.

Design
The TV 5 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window)  looks like pretty much every other sound slab. It’s a large, black 3.9-by-28.5-by-13.5-inch (HWD) rectangle on which you can put your HDTV. The front is covered with a cloth grille over a slightly curved surface, distinguished only by the Cambridge Audio logo and an indicator light in the center. The light is a single LED that turns different colors to show it’s powered on and which source it’s using. It flashes when it receives remote commands, but it doesn’t display volume level or any other information besides power and source. The grille hides the TV 5’s two 2.25-inch drivers, while two 6.5-inch subwoofer drivers face downward on the underside of the system, which is lifted up slightly by four rubber feet. 

The back of the TV 5 houses the power connector and stereo RCA and optical audio inputs, along with two open bass ports to help sound resonate. This is an all-audio sound system; you can’t connect it with HDMI, and it doesn’t show any information on a screen.

The included remote is a slim black wand with a prominent Mute control sitting in the middle of a four-direction button that sets the sound slab to TV, Music, Film, or Voice modes. It’s oddly prominent, considering the speaker doesn’t need any sort of navigation pad and the actual volume controls are two tiny buttons located lower on the remote. The mode buttons are flanked by Aux (stereo RCA), Optical, and Bluetooth source buttons, plus a separate button for Bluetooth pairing. It’s an elegant remote, but the volume controls should have taken center stage.

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Streaming Music Performance
Since the TV 5 is equipped with Bluetooth, you can use it as a speaker for music streamed from your mobile device. Even in Music mode, however, it’s not the most balanced sound. The bass tends to win out over vocals, and while the lyrics in both Yes’ “Roundabout” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” could be heard clearly, they sat slightly back from the slappy bass guitar of the former and the steady kick drum of the latter. The bass is forceful, while the mids and high-mids don’t get quite enough presence to balance the mix out.

On the other hand, if you love low-end, you’ll find a lot to like here. At high volumes, the TV 5 reproduced the kick drum hits in The Knife’s “Silent Shout” with force, and without a hint of distortion. However, I occasionally heard some buzz from the speaker after the drum hits, as if part of the chassis was rattling, but not the drivers themselves.

See How We Test Speakers

Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” sounded excellent on the sound slab, with Zevon’s deep vocals balancing well against the steady kick of the drum. The piano notes punched through the mix just enough to complement Zevon’s voice and keep up the melody. I picked up a hint of buzz in some notes on this track as well, and also in some of the upright bass notes in Miles Davis’ “So What.” It isn’t terribly offensive, and it could be a quirk of the particular unit that we tested, but it’s something to be aware of.

Game and Movie Performance
The TV 5 handles television and movies much better, and with less noticeable rattle. In the T. Rex scene in Jurassic Park, the dinosaur’s stomps rattled the room despite the lack of a separate subwoofer. The sound of rain hitting the jeeps was crisp and punchy, offering a good sense of immersion in the scene. The dialogue takes a slight back seat to the lows and highs in the TV 5’s Film mode, but lines could still be clearly heard. A button press switched to Voice mode, which dialed back the extremes and brought out the dialogue significantly. I didn’t find it necessary, however, and it took too much away from the overall experience. 

Video games can have even more over-the-top soundtracks, and DmC: Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition sounded powerful on the TV 5. The loud gunshots of Ebony and Ivory were punchy and forceful, and both dialogue and the aggrotech Combichrist soundtrack sounded crisp and textured.

The Cambridge Audio TV 5 is a powerful one-piece sound system and a solid candidate for anyone looking for a sound slab. It produces some slight chassis buzz with deep bass at high volumes, but it doesn’t distort, and offers a full, room-filling sound. The Zvox SoundBase 570 produces sound that’s a bit cleaner and fuller, however, and can now had for less money than the TV 5, so it remains our Editors’ Choice.