The Infinity Alpha series features advanced technology found on Infinity's finest speakers.

The Alpha Challenge
Last week, I took home a complete 5.1-channel Infinity Alpha speaker system for a test listen. The Alpha series is not new — it's been around for more than a year. But I had never heard these speakers before, and I wanted to find out if Infinity's heralded C.M.M.D. drivers were all they're cracked up to be. Infinity makes a big deal about the fact that these are the exact same drivers used on their premier speakers, the Prelude™ series. It's part of their "trickle-down theory" of speaker manufacturing — that is, trickling down premium technologies from their highest-end speakers to their more affordable models.

C.M.M.D. stands for Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm. According to Infinity, it's a driver material that sandwiches a layer of aluminum between two layers of ceramic, providing both stiffness to avoid resonance and flexibility for optimum responsiveness. It sounds great in theory, but hearing is believing.

I brought home a pair of Alpha 50 towers for the front left and right channels, the Alpha 37C for the center channel, and a pair of Alpha 20 bookshelf speakers for the surrounds. I considered bringing home the 500-watt Alpha 1200s sub, too, but my listening room is relatively small (and neighbors live close by), so I figured an older model 100-watt Infinity sub would be plenty of bass for my needs. Cost-wise, the Alphas fall in the upper end of the typical consumer speaker market, but they're much cheaper than Infinity's premium Prelude series speakers, which use the same C.M.M.D. drivers. A pair of Prelude MTS towers costs around $8,000 per pair, while you can get a pair of Alpha 50 towers for around $700. To drive the system, I used the 100-watts-per-channel Sony ES STR-1000ES home theater receiver.

Cross-section of Infinity's C.M.M.D. driver — a layer of aluminum sandwiched between two layers of ceramic.

The triple feature
I brought home three DVDs to test out the system. For a hot, high-impact soundtrack with a lot of "wow-factor" special effects, I went with Gladiator. This came on a recommendation from my friend Leigh, who said the audio special effects were pretty spectacular, and went on and on about how Russell Crowe looked incredible in a baby blue tunic. Anyway, she was right about the sound, and I guess Russell looked just fine.

To test how the Alpha system would handle a subtler soundtrack, I picked up Lost in Translation. Although the movie is mostly dialogue, director Sofia Coppola pulls off some very interesting and unique sonic effects, especially during the montage scenes where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson wander around Tokyo to the musical strains of sometime My Bloody Valentine front man Kevin Shields.

And finally, I tested out Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film by the Talking Heads. Newly re-mastered, the concert contains some dense, challenging arrangements (as well as David Byrne's neurotic yelping), and I was wondering how the Alpha speakers would hold up under the pressure.