The word in the old days was that they needed 200W to sound great and 201W to melt the voice coil!
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Are MBL omnidirectional speakers worth the $$$?
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
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Sorry mhardy, I didn’t see your message before I posted. Your recollection is probably closer to the truthIt's actually worse than that. The lore in their glory days was (this is a rough approximation, so don't hold me to the exact values): they absolutely require 300 watts but will self-destruct when driven by 305 watts.
The best "normal" speaker do not sound like MBL because the sound MBL have is because how they are built and work in the room.
How do you know that they are so fragile that they will self destruct? Personal experience or hearsay?It's actually worse than that. The lore in their glory days was (this is a rough approximation, so don't hold me to the exact values): they absolutely require 300 watts but will self-destruct when driven by 305 watts.
mhardy6647
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Well -- if the experience of a couple of owners that I know constitutes hearsay -- the latter. EDIT: see the PS below.
Why do you ask?
Do you own a pair or are you shopping for a pair? I am not the best resources in the latter case. In the former case, by all means, share your experience!
They're fine loudspeakers but owning a pair is a commitment.
Sort of like Quad ESL-57s. And - before you ask - yes, I own a pair of those.
PS Did you read the post you quoted? The word lore is in the dictionary.
dasdoing
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I always think of a round table, in the middle the omni
mhardy6647
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Great for conference calls!
(remember those?)
EDIT: I just imagined an MBL in the center of a conference table... it would look like some sort of occult ceremony.
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I ask because I just auditioned a pair, and I was quite impressed, and I was considering a pair of the cheaper stand mounts. I have owned Quad 57s decades ago, outstanding speakers, but no SPL and also very fragile; most used 57s are full of holes due to sparking.Well -- if the experience of a couple of owners that I know constitutes hearsay -- the latter. EDIT: see the PS below.
Why do you ask?
Do you own a pair or are you shopping for a pair? I am not the best resources in the latter case. In the former case, by all means, share your experience!
They're fine loudspeakers but owning a pair is a commitment.
Sort of like Quad ESL-57s. And - before you ask - yes, I own a pair of those.
PS Did you read the post you quoted? The word lore is in the dictionary.
The MBL speakers I have heard at audio shows have always sounded superb. I just have a problem with the way they produce music. It sounds like it is coming from everywhere. There is no focused sound stage. I felt the same about Definitive Technology's bipolar towers I heard many years ago when shopping for my first high end speakers. While they do sound fantastic they are not my cup of tea.
Martin
Martin
In a concert situation the sound comes from "every where". 20% direct 80% reflection.
Omni dispersion makes no sense IMO unless you need to spread the sound to a crowd that's standing around the speaker. It's only detrimental in a listening room for listeners in front of the speakers.
Wide dispersion with 160-180° horizontal beamwidth makes sense however, and might be the right choice for some people or some listening environments.
Wide dispersion with 160-180° horizontal beamwidth makes sense however, and might be the right choice for some people or some listening environments.
fpitas
Master Contributor
The brain can discriminate reflections from direct sound by the time delay, up to a point. Enough reflections though, especially with such short delays, and you get the effect he describes.
Depends where you sit but yes perhaps towards the rear of the hall you may well be hearing more reflected than direct sound.
Is not that the flawed premise of omnis that they recreate the concert experience, which they don’t of course.
Multi channel if the recording the natural acoustic of the venue would be the way to go.
Keith
Westsounds
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Have to agree with Keith on this. Omni speakers are nothing more than marketing BS in tempting consumers out of more of their hard-earned cash with another gimmick. You can point your drive units anyway you like and claim they are omnidirectional, but it doesn’t change the fact they are plain old speakers, speakers which just are not aimed at you but more into general room space. 3-dimensional images are made by brains interpreting it. If the effect works for you, then fine, but omni speakers are certainly a niche product and better results are usually had with a regular stereo pair. It is perhaps better however if you can't be tied to one spot to listen and are moving around, like at a party, depending on the room it could be dispersing the sound better and seem not so directional than when the drivers were aiming straight for the listener.
MattHooper
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You can set them up to have good image specificity. Perhaps not as laser tight as the most narrow dispersion speakers depending on what you are going for. But very good. I found them quite comparable to my regular box speakers for imaging. I remember a guest was truly shocked by the impression that a vocalist had simply "appeared" in the room, focused between the MBLs....
MattHooper
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Yeah...no. I've owned 'em. Not a gimmick. They did things that no pure box speaker I've owned (or heard) did in terms of spatial realism. I did live vs reproduced
tests with various speakers in my home, the MBLs came closest to live, to my ears.
(Not to mention they are the only speakers that fooled some guests they were hearing live sound from outside the room - a recording of my son practising saxophone).
Westsounds
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Perhaps they were just the best speakers suited to that room and the equipment, that’s all. I’ve heard it before, Shahinian owners say those speakers are the closest thing to live music ever, yet others listen to them and say they are rubbish. It’s just a different approach to sound reproduction, it’s done in technically the same way, they are not an evolution in the way sound is recreated. They come in a very posh package sure, and I’m sure they are very good speakers, just nothing revolutionary. There are probably speakers at a fraction of the cost that could do similar in a controlled, unbiased experiment.
Are they just high status Bose 901s?
Perhaps we are defining imaging differently. Great imaging is normally described as something you get with a low level of especially early arriving reflections (later ones also matter, but to a less degree). Ths implies an accurate sound stage with great clarity, intelligbility and localization. Or sharp pin pointing is another way to describe it. And with an omni dispersion, that's basically the worse recipe for good imaging due to all the specular energy.
With MBLs or other omnis the sound seems to be becoming from everywhere and nowhere. Which is of course the opposite of great localization and pin pointinng. The center vocal/image is considerable smaller compared to other speakers. I've never understood the facination.
