Anyone Had Extended Listening Experience With MBL?

Nice gear, but show demos were excessively LOUD.

Anyone have a sense of how MBL speakers would go with VAC electronics (e.g. Phi 200 amplifiers)

peter s,

I'm sure it depends on which MBL speakers you are talking about - though all are very low sensitivity I *think* they tend to not have crazy impedance.  Given my experience using Conrad Johnson amps on my MBLs I'd guess that VAC amps, especially the Phi 200 or similar, would sound great.

I I've only heard the big MBL's at shows. During those less than extended listening experiences, I found them to be perhaps the best speakers I've ever heard. The individual imagining of recorded performers might not have been as dense as on other speakers, but the soundstage was glorious in an oh so organic way. My biggest concern was a detached, lagging bass that could not be ignored. I can't help but wonder if sealed box bass modules wouldn't be better suited? Still from that point up, perhaps the best I've ever heard. Do wish they would lower the volume levels at shows occasionally. Sure, it's nice to know that they're capable of that, but it can be fatigueing over time.

To me MBL is a love/hate thing. I have over the years heard them sound terrific as well as sounding awful.

An omni-directional speaker is not for everyone in terms of how they paint a sound field, as well as how they can work,or not work well in a room.

An omni-directional louspeaker needs a lot of room away from boundary walls and reflective surfaces or the image can sound very disembodied or just too large.

A direct radiating loudspeaker is much less room dependendant because you are dealing with limited amounts of energy bouncing around, and off of areas of the room you don’t want excited there are also computer programs and modeling that can give you predicatable results. 

The sound of MBL can be thrilling, and they do play loud, at shows they are usually played too loud which can make them sound shrill on the top end.

The issue may be that with the low sensitivity 83db or so, many similarily inefficent loudspeakers can sound dynamically restricted at lower volumes, which is the converse of horn systems which sound thrilling at generally all volumes, I am less enamoured with horns due to the copious amounts of horn "throat" colorations that most of the horn system exhibit.

With that being said, MBL is a very fascinating product that if you have your heart set on them, and you can afford good amplification, and you have the right sized room, and or are willing to play around with acoustic treatments, they can be great.

With that being said as a long term dealer and audiophile I feel that those are a lot of ifs that many competitive high performance loudspeakers don’t require.

I have heard a pair of Vivid g1 sound crazy reall and dynamic and that is a speaker that can work in most rooms without having to go crazy.

We sell the Paradigm Persona which can sound crazy realistic and again with room correction it is an easy to use and live with product, same with Legacy.

So the question I would pose is are a set of MBL’s worth what you have to go throught to make them really work vs any of today’s fantastic conventional speakers from Wilson, Rockport, Magico, Paradigm, Legacy, Focal etc?

Too many people are just willing to comment on yes great speakers but do not take into consideration all the points that any omni directional loudspeaker can bring up and another gentleman said you can run MBL with anything, that isn’t really true, MBL makes giant high powered amplifiers for a good reason, MBL loudspeakers do like lots of power in order for them to approach realistic non-dynamically compressed listening levels.

Again, we like MBL it is an ideosyncratic product, just weigh all the pros and cons carefully.

Dave
Audio Doctor NJ