HSU MFL-6 Home Theater Speaker Review

[Power Pop 23]

I'm surprised with all the Poor votes on this one. I voted fine, as there's obviously an issue with the design, but it's easily fixable with EQ and the speakers otherwise measure pretty well for the price. Bass extension is good, overall FR is pretty even until you hit that treble bump, distortion is fine for reasonable listening levels and you don't buy a $250 speaker to shake the walls.

Obviously a bit of cabinet and crossover redesign could take this to another level, though.

Yes, it looks very fixable and thanks to ASR for showing that.

It seems to require a lot of fixin' from the EQ suggested by Maiky76.

The $279 MFL-6 appears to have a flat $35 shipping charge for a cost of $314 per speaker.

I would consider other options before the Hsu Research MFL-6.

 

[Mort]

What an odd duck of a speaker. Who wants to add DSP that far up the frequency range? That's not fine to me.

 

[PristineSound]

Thanks Amir for the review.

Not sure if any Hsu subs were reviewed here. There are so much talks in the home theater community of their subs being good performing and super value.

 

[Hart]

I had the Hsu TN 1220 plus the 500 watt amp in the ninties, it was a unique design and considered very competitive at the time. It did have one issue, it was light and prone to walking around during heavy bass. I assumed anything offered by HSU would be well tested and researched. This is disappointing.

​

 

[Power Pop 23]

I recall a glowing review from Julian Hirsch of an early Hsu subwoofer in cylindrical form and I perceived Hsu's direct-to-consumer business model gave me more value for the money when I bought a Hsu STF-2.

I believe Hsu started out by placing small ads in audio magazines and taking orders over the phone and via snail mail.

 

[Dmitri]

Guess if maybe you're an older gentleman who played a lot of Black Sabbath cranked up to full volume on your Koss Pro 4AA's when you were younger, this might just be the musical hearing aid you're looking for.

Thanks for the nice review, Amir.

To my shame.

 

[Guerilla]

As a surround/Atmos type speaker, it might work well in setups where it's impossible to have the speaker pointing at you.

I was also wondering if it's a perfectly fine speaker Atmos. I don't have experience with Atmos and I dumped surround 20 years ago, so not exactly the best judge I love my movies and music in stereo. Huge improvement from mini TVs.

 

[dtaylo1066]

Let's get high! Holy treble, Batman!

At age 69, with my hearing dropping off at 4kHZ I think these would still sound bright.

 

[amirm]

I was also wondering if it's a perfectly fine speaker Atmos. I don't have experience with Atmos and I dumped surround 20 years ago, so not exactly the best judge I love my movies and music in stereo. Huge improvement from mini TVs.

If you mean in the upfiring atmos application, I tested one of those. You hardly hear the ceiling reflection and all the sound essentially comes from the side. That defeats their purpose. I don't know what Dolby was thinking when they came up with this design.

 

[wwenze]

Did the assembly get the L-pad wrong??

 

[bmc0]

Who wants to add DSP that far up the frequency range?

DSP correction is fine at high frequencies as long as it's based on anechoic data.

 

[AndreaT]

Tweeter too hot. Shouldn’t be difficult to fix with a proper crossover design, right? So, poor R&D or just lazy engineering.

 

[KenA]

Could this have been intentional? It’s an HT speaker, said to be able to go in any room positions. It’s been given a horn tweeter. Perhaps it’s attempting to provide a more dynamic stage with more attack, including off axis around the whole room.
(Does seem to have over cooked it a bit though!).

 

[Rusk Reeder]

I'm sad that this didn't perform well. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. hsu, who got his masters at Stanford. I had the good fortune of seeing him demonstrate one of his subwoofers in person at the Chicago show about 30 years ago. He just used a Sony CD or DVD changer with no fancy cables. It was the most impressive demonstration at the show. That's the only show I've ever been to. I still believe his subwoofers are among the best out there, borne out by tests of them I've seen. He just needs to do some work on this.

Not to drag this post out, but second best at the show was in the Creek Audio room with speakers that he used to represent--I can't remember the brand off the top of my head right now--moderately priced. I wanted to demo them with a CD I had, and naturally they wanted to make sure it wasn't something crazy. I pulled out 'Sgt. peppers Lonely Heats Club Band, and being from Britain, they basically said, 'Be our guests.' Showing off a bit here. I played 'She's Leaving Home,' and we might have listened to a few more tracks. Those speakers were favorable reviewed in 'Stereophile' with some what lean mid-bass, but none of the mid-bass bloat that is often common with British speakers, except for KEF. If I can track down what those speakers were, I'll report back.

 

[Randolf]

Strange voicing, to me it looks like the tweeter ("1" aluminum diaphragm tweeter, Done Keele designed constant directivity horn" according to website) has much higher sensitivity than the woofer and they already adjusted it partially with resistors in the tweeter path of the crossover causing the impedance to rise to about 20 Ohm in the treble. However tweeter still plays far to loud. I guess one can improve this quite a bit by changing the crossover. Maybe they don't wanted to accept the rolloff of the tweeter above 14Khz and reach 20Khz with full SPL, probably a very bad idea.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I believe if I remember right, Amir has tested other small inexpensive speakers that performed much better.Thank heavens for the data we have on all of his equipment he has tested. There are better speakers out there that don't require a lot of EQ and still are not expensive. Since it is such a glaring issue I voted poor, with todays technology there really is no excuse for such poor speakers even if they are inexpensive. So, ASR once again shows its worth. It lets us know which products are gems and which are duds. Thanks Amir!

 

[Power Pop 23]

I believe if I remember right, Amir has tested other small inexpensive speakers that performed much better.

Case in point...

Micca MB42X G2 Budget Speaker Review

This is a review, listening tests and detailed measurements of the Micca MB42X G2 low cost 2-way bookshelf speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $100 for a pair, shipping included. I expected thin, cheap plywood construction but instead, found a robust composite enclosure that...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I regard the Micca MB42X G2 loudspeaker to still be inexpensive at the current post-tariff price of $119.99/pair at Amazon USA.

 

[sceptical1]

Can anyone tell me what this means:
"I decided to measure the speaker rotated so that the measurement microphone is at 90 degrees to the baffle"
Or what this means:
"I did look at the response at ±40 degrees and it flattens fair bit"

 

[Sal1950]

I'm quite surprised by the measured results of this speaker. I've had a number of conversations with Dr. Hsu over the years
and owned a couple of his products. Those in the past have always batted way above their price range and have been generally good sounding speakers.
Maybe he'll want to comment on this product, the only thing I can think of was an attempt to make them function in a half-assed manner as a floor
level Atmos speaker trying to bounce it's sound off the ceiling. A really poor idea that came out of Dolby Labs in an effort to make Atmos installs simple for
folks not wanting in install ceiling mounts. Gene Dellasala of Audioholic's named them bouncyhouse.

 

[Power Pop 23]

Let's relegate the convenience of up-firing Dolby Atmos speakers to convenient soundbars.....


I instructed Hsu Research to 'drop-ship' this MFL-6 to Amir for review.

A representative of Hsu Research reached out to me today.

Their measurements of the MFL-6 do not match the measurements obtained by Amir.

They offered to send me a prepaid return shipping label so as to examine the sample.

I told them to contact Amir at ASR to arrange for a return of MFL-6.