Are MBL omnidirectional speakers worth the $$$?

[boxerfan88]

Another cool looking omni speaker
Is there any chance it's better than the MBLs?
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I have heard these twice at HiFi shows late last year. They really do sound very good.

Unfortunately when I see them, it reminds me of ...

 

[Duke]

Interesting. I wouldn't even know what "clarity" means for pink noise. And I never thought my bipolars (back array at 0dB) degraded "clarity" on music.

I see that I communicated poorly, so let me try to clarify.

Music was used when assessing clarity. The listener held a remote that changed the SPL of the rear-firing drivers in 1 dB increments. Without looking at the reading on the remote, the listener would adjust the level of the rear-firing drivers while the level of the front-firing drivers remained unchanged. The idea was to find the level where clarity just began to be degraded.

Pink noise was then used to measure, at the listening position, the SPL of the front-firing drivers alone, and then the SPL of the rear-firing drivers alone. Obviously the rear-firing drivers had a much longer path length, in this instance roughly three time as long as the path length of the direct sound. So that "-12 dB" figure for the rear-firing drivers, measured at the listening position, includes the falloff with distance due to the reflection path length.

My expectation is that the ideal level setting for the rear-firing drivers varies somewhat with the specific room and setup conditions. And I'm not even certain that just below "where clarity just begins to be degraded" is necessarily the ideal setting, but it's probably a good starting point.

 

[GXAlan]

I’ve owned MMG and 3.5R. I have a very hard time describing them but in that listening room which was in a basement, carpeted/untreated, about 35 feet by 16 feet both times Maggies just never sounded “right” and even as dipoles the sound was in more of a flat plane, little image depth like everything was just “there” wall of sound-esque. Symphony music was a very far cry from the real thing. Contrast this against what I had come from, some $600/pair tower JBL speakers I bought when working at Best Buy that sounded rich, enveloping, and had nice depth when toed in about 20 degrees. I kept them at my parents house and after going through a half dozen speakers whenever I went back to listen to them I could never figure out why did they sound so good? Why were they better than all these audiophile speakers that got raves in fashionable waves that I was buying then dumping. Only after reading Toole’s first edition it made sense, they were just sensibly designed speakers, a small tweeter handing off to a small format midrange that went to a larger midrange/midbass followed by three 8” woofers. The directivity matching between the treble and midrange units was probably pretty good. It wasn’t trying to do goofy crap like Audio Note with a large tweeter w/o a waveguide to a massive midwoofer.

For what it's worth, I also have the JBL 708p and the Japanese-only JBL S/2600. I am a big fan of JBL/Revel as well. I currently run the Meyer Sound Amie's.

That said, just as headphones are a pleasant experience even though they don't present the image the same way as Dr. Toole's gold standard, the Magnepans are its own sound.

The Bose 901's wouldn't be for "keeping" but more as a reference to compare against. I honestly bought mine just to gain the experience, and ended up keeping it. Again, I have $12,000 worth of Meyer Sound Amie's yet I still have the Bose 901 as a setup that I genuinely enjoy *specifically* for recreating the experience of at the symphony.

Toole’s book is invaluable and it has taught me so much but the listening tests on directivity is entirely about tonality, which is very easy to agree with Toole's conclusions. With what @Erin's Audio Corner has posted on measurements and how they correlate with listening I have found myself nearly in exact agreement with him about my preference for at least medium (60 degrees) radiation pattern. The MBLs with the minor issue of not having a perfect treble response (should be easy to EQ given the radiation in that region is identical 360 degrees and no crossover/directivity issues that arise when typically EQ'ing in that region) are just another extreme of VERY wide directivity and their measurements along with what a friend who I have never disagreed with on sound quality is why I am interested in the 101. Hope that long ramble made sense!

It definitely makes sense. In no way am I suggesting that the 901's will compete with MBLs, but I do think it's worth listening to other non-traditional dispersion patterns. I just think that if you can find the 901's for a few hundred bucks, it'll really challenge your preconceived notions.