Since coming under the wing of the US Klipsch Group, Jamo appears to have gone from strength to strength. The company's range now dovetails neatly with its American masters, delivering products to regions where Klipsch (and sister stablemate, Mirage) don't go. This has, of course, necessitated a shake up in the product lines and new kit abounds.

This Concert C80 system is a perfect example of said shake-up. It's the company's high point of home cinema speaker systems today (there's just a £7,500 Reference R909 stereo speaker above this), and is designed as a 5.0 system.

Comprising a pair of tall and heavy C809 floorstanders (£800 a piece), a C80 CEN centre speaker (£400) and C80 SUR surrounds (£300 each) - all delicious- looking in their Dark Apple wood veneer (black ash is the other option) - the tall three-way main speakers deliver enough bottom-end grunt to obviate the use of a sub in many rooms.

Those that really need Jamo badges across the board can get a matching C80 SUB subwoofer, but in most cases I suspect this will be unnecessary.

One of the surprises to this system is the C809. Jamo uses the two-and-a-half way speaker design as almost a company motif, but this is a three-way, four-speaker design.

The bass features a pair of the company's 180mm HCC (hard conical cone) drivers, while the midrange features what looks like exactly the same drive unit, and all the speakers share the same 25mm soft dome tweeter, which sits in a horn- loaded waveguide.

Both this waveguide and the back mounting cup of the tweeter are decoupled from the driver itself and effectively isolate it from the rest of the speaker cabinet. The speaker sits on outriggers with decent spikes fore and aft.

The magnetically-shielded C80 CEN and the C80 SUR share a pair of 155mm HCC bass drivers. These mid-bass and bass units have a shiny solid phase plug in place of a dust cap, which allows the driver to better handle power.

The C80 SUR is a handed (you get a distinct, slightly different left and right) dipole speaker... or at least most of it acts as a dipole. Traditional dipole designs generate out-of-phase sounds to the front and rear, thereby creating a diffuse soundfield which can be bass light - this system acts as a dipole above 250Hz, but a more conventional bipole design below this figure, thereby boosting bass.