Mbl Magic?

Pedrillo,
One of your questions concerns the "why", and that I cannot answer without getting into speculation about the engineering that I am not qualified to discuss.

However, about a year ago I replaced most of my system with MBL 111E, MBL 8011AM mono amps, and MBL 5011 line stage preamp. All at once, I retired Vandersteen 5 speakers powered by Ayre V1 amp and Ayre K1 preamp. I felt it was important to pair the MBL speakers with MBL amplification, since the speakers are power hungry.

I mostly listen to classical orchestral music and some jazz, and I attend live concerts often. The sound of live music is my reference, and attaining realistic reproduction of a full orchestra is quite a bit more difficult than reproducing a small jazz ensemble. In my experience, this MBL based system has made me truly happy. Prior to this, I had spent much time and money attempting to reduce the level of my un-happiness. The improvement is not incremental, it is a qualitative leap. This system now has a sense of life and energy that I experienced only once before, when my speakers were Martin-Logan Quest, but those speakers had a serious lack of coherent bass. I have been told that Martin-Logan's latest models are much improved in bass response, and they certainly are less costly. However, if you like their sound, do not skimp on amplification as electrostatic speakers are power hungry as well. I recommend at least 100 wpc and be certain the amp can deal with the speaker's wide impedance swings.

However, the MBL combination has no significant faults that I have found in a year of listening, and I am likely to gain additional realism by improving the front end (turntable). For the first time ever, I can come home after a live concert, put on an LP, and not hate the comparison. Most highly recommended.

Jtwrace, you know me all too well. Yup I like the SoundLabs a lot. My bipolars actually copy the radiation pattern of the A-1 over much of the spectrum, at least in the horizontal plane: 90 degrees, front and back.

Assuming the upper end of our hypothetical price ballpark is the MBL 116, others contenders include the Wolcott Omnisphere, Duevels, big Shanihians, Genesis 5 series, and in my opinion even big Maggies.

I agree with Shadorne that the MBLS (as well as other omnis, dipoles, and bipoles) should be placed far enough away from walls to give an adequate time delay before the additional reflected energy starts to arrive. If such placement isn't possible, you're probably better served by monopoles. The tiltback of the Shahinian's drivers helps to delay the arrival of the reflected energy by bouncing it off the walls at an upwards angle, so these are probably the most small-room-friendly speakers in this general category.

Duke

Maybe I am on the only one on the planet who is not crazy about MBL?

I took on an assignment in Singapore 2 years ago and have listened to MBL 116 & 101E several times since I was seriously considering 116 back when Euro was weaker. I do like the enveloping soundstage, the "ease" & "relax" presentation with tremendous amount of detail, and ample bass. But it's the "ample" bass when coupled with MBL amps that stopped me from getting a pair. I found the bass not catching up to the rest of the spectrum, was slow and muddy at times. This was true for both 116 and 101E in medium and large room, respectively. Dealer mentioned MBL amps are tuned to sound fuller and warmer unlike American amps which are fast and quick. I could not do any A/B comparison, so I have no way to validate his claim.

Also, the lower efficiency does "restrict" the jump factor that makes horn speakers attractive to many audiophiles. I used to own Dynaudio Confidence 5, a superb sounding speaker with midrange to die for. Though it has very low effciency, it has slightly better micro dynamic than Sonus Faber Extrema which I owned for years. Either one lacks the "jump factor" unless you feed them 300+ watts and 300+ tube watts are hard to come by not to mention the operating cost.

I believe MBL can be made to sound good or excellent but at the cost of very expensive gears behind them and more. To me, that's a very expensive investment just to make 2 speakers sound good while there are other approaches that can equal or surpass the end result at fraction of the cost.

Hi Semi if you refer to my first response to this thread you will see I said "MBL speakers like any other speaker will be a personal flavour, some will appreciate what they do and others will not and prefer other speakers and that's life."

I will say after reading your response you obviously have never heard a proper MBL set-up or possibly you might just fit into this category of not liking them which is okay but the issues that you mentioned defiantly don't exist in my MBL 101E set-up.

I don't use MBL electronics with my set-up, I did try the MBL 9008 mono blocks within my set-up but most definitely prefer the CAT mono blocks.

No doubt, the magic of the MBL omnidirectional models is the dispersion pattern—the linear polar response and power response. Dipole speakers also do this well with the advantage of less room interaction at the sides where the front and back wave cancel. I find either superior to conventional speakers, all other things being equal. Still, all speakers do benefit from breathing room. It's best to keep first reflections delayed by several milliseconds.

Not to surprised about the disappointing bass. I believe they use a bandpass configuration for the bass unit.