THX has been a fixture of the home cinema scene for over a decade, initially offering performance- enhancing parameters designed to make the most of fledgling technology (the original Pro Logic-centric specification) and more recently as an ill-defined quality control operation.

And while its post-processing modes have remained popular with hardcore fans and receiver manufacturers alike, THX specified speakers have largely fallen by the wayside, a consequence of buyer apathy and manufacturer resistance against some of its basic sonic dispersion tenants. So when a new(ish) brand comes to market with a genuine THX package, it's quite a story; particularly for the enthusiasts who still buy into the concept of visceral cinema sound with non-localisable and diffuse rear surround effects.

Enter Crystal Audio, a Greek-based company of keen R&D folks and committed speaker designers. The brand has been doing a lot of OEM work for other companies, as well as developing its own brand.

Working with the THX people on other products and getting involved with the Audio Engineering Society by publishing white papers of its own research, this is one speaker company that could easily claim to be aristocracy, for all its relative youth.

What it has done here is as clever as Greek designer Alec Issigonis's original Mini. Of course, any damn fool can design a luxury car if cost is no object. The genius of the first Mini lay in the production of a high performing car with brilliant handling that cost little to make or buy. So it is with this Crystal Audio system.

Although you can buy the big THX-T3 towers as a pair, the rest of the THX-approved speaker system under review here is all packaged up for £1,100. That isn't pocket money, but for what THX guarantees, this represents absolutely superb value for money.

The best part of this system has to be the HF drivers. The tweeters spray their high frequencies in exactly the direction you want them thanks to their ability to swivel. But they can only do this in the horizontal plane, though, rather than the eyeball swivel-housing so common in car componentry.

Still, this means you can point the most image-creating part of the soundfield towards the listeners, while keeping the speakers from needing to toe-in too far. It also keeps the vertical dispersion under control, so that ceiling reflections don't muddy the sonic image.