This is a review and detailed measurements of the HSU MFL-6 home theater / Dolby Atmos speaker review. It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $279.
HSU is one of the earliest companies focusing on home theater speakers. This sample has a slanted design that is stated to work well for all position in the way it directs the sound to the listener. You can see its shape better from the bottom where the port is located:
I took the grill off for review. Further, I decided to measure the speaker rotated so that the measurement microphone is at 90 degrees to the baffle (front of the speaker). This seems to agree with company recommendation and design intent to have the listener hear the direct sound. Since Klippel NFS measures all axis, we can of course see other angles as well.
HSU MFL-6 Speaker Measurement
As usual, we start with our anechoic series of frequency measurements:
Gosh.... we have a clear issue with that elevated upper treble. I am puzzled by this result. I could see if the intended listening axis was not 0. But as is, you are going to get highly exaggerated high frequency response. Fortunately it doesn't travel too far down. Bass has a gradual extension down which is nice as with room gain it should flatten.
Near-field driver response shows woofer resonances are not well controlled:
That causes the discontinuity we see around 2.5 kHz in anechoic response.
Naturally both early window and predicted in-room response show the same elevated upper treble:
Distortion was well controlled at 86 dBSPL but became a problem at 96 dBSPL:
Fortunately it still performed well at 91 dBSPL which is quite good for such a small speaker:
Directivity angle is fairly high, causing narrowing of the response in all directions:
Impedance and phase measurements show a number of resonances:
Sorry, forgot to run the waterfall test.
I decided to skip listening tests as it is quite obvious what we are dealing with here.
Conclusions
Dr. Hsu's design have been revered among home theater enthusiasts that have been around for a while. Alas, the MFL-6 doesn't deliver on that front. As designed, what it points at you has highly elevated upper treble. This would have been very obvious in any measurement so I am unclear why it was produced this way. Maybe they thought the older buyer who know the company well have lost their higher frequency hearing.
FYI, I did look at the response at ±40 degrees and it flattens fair bit, leaving us with the disturbance around 2 to 3 kHz. So this speaker would have been better if it were a flat/square box.
I can't recommend the Hsu MFL-6 speaker. If you have it, be sure to let your auto-EQ correct all the way up to 20 kHz to curtain its extra treble energy.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
HSU is one of the earliest companies focusing on home theater speakers. This sample has a slanted design that is stated to work well for all position in the way it directs the sound to the listener. You can see its shape better from the bottom where the port is located:
I took the grill off for review. Further, I decided to measure the speaker rotated so that the measurement microphone is at 90 degrees to the baffle (front of the speaker). This seems to agree with company recommendation and design intent to have the listener hear the direct sound. Since Klippel NFS measures all axis, we can of course see other angles as well.
HSU MFL-6 Speaker Measurement
As usual, we start with our anechoic series of frequency measurements:
Gosh.... we have a clear issue with that elevated upper treble. I am puzzled by this result. I could see if the intended listening axis was not 0. But as is, you are going to get highly exaggerated high frequency response. Fortunately it doesn't travel too far down. Bass has a gradual extension down which is nice as with room gain it should flatten.
Near-field driver response shows woofer resonances are not well controlled:
That causes the discontinuity we see around 2.5 kHz in anechoic response.
Naturally both early window and predicted in-room response show the same elevated upper treble:
Distortion was well controlled at 86 dBSPL but became a problem at 96 dBSPL:
Fortunately it still performed well at 91 dBSPL which is quite good for such a small speaker:
Directivity angle is fairly high, causing narrowing of the response in all directions:
Impedance and phase measurements show a number of resonances:
Sorry, forgot to run the waterfall test.
I decided to skip listening tests as it is quite obvious what we are dealing with here.
Conclusions
Dr. Hsu's design have been revered among home theater enthusiasts that have been around for a while. Alas, the MFL-6 doesn't deliver on that front. As designed, what it points at you has highly elevated upper treble. This would have been very obvious in any measurement so I am unclear why it was produced this way. Maybe they thought the older buyer who know the company well have lost their higher frequency hearing.
FYI, I did look at the response at ±40 degrees and it flattens fair bit, leaving us with the disturbance around 2 to 3 kHz. So this speaker would have been better if it were a flat/square box.
I can't recommend the Hsu MFL-6 speaker. If you have it, be sure to let your auto-EQ correct all the way up to 20 kHz to curtain its extra treble energy.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
