In a world which has proved that slender and sexy can still mean potent when it comes to loudspeakers, the existence of the good ones is still a bit of a close guarded secret. Many makers state that their skinny tower-based systems - or 'designer' systems if you will - all work very evenly across the audio spectrum. Of course, in my experience some do not; many work so badly that you can even accuse them of being little more than works of twisted art.

DLS is a Swedish firm well known for its high-end car speakers - its brands have been installed in the adjudged 'best-sounding car' in all Europe for the last two years by the European Mobile Media Association (EMMA). DLS makes good, powerful drivers with great accuracy and design know-how.

It also understands enclosures and the different acoustic gain signatures that occur. Most manufacturers are happy to make sealed or ported enclosures only, or, perhaps, to get involved with transmission line boxes if they really know their stuff. This set of home cinema speakers uses every trick in the book to make a few small drivers rock like big ones.

Reviewed here are a set of T3 front towers, a TM3 small monitor or bookshelf speakers for the rears, a TC3 centre enclosure and one of DLS' active Sub3.10 low-end reproducers. The three types of main speaker all use the same drivers but enclose them very differently.

To start with, they all share the same 25mm tweeters. The T3 and TC3 have the same paired 3in drivers either side of the tweeter; vertical on the towers, horizontally in the centre enclosure. In the T3 the towers' length is used to make the enclosure into a transmission line type, so the bass from two midrange drivers reaches all the way down to 48Hz, well below the 80Hz bass takeover point.