MAG Theatron M12-C Speaker Review

[Svensson]

It would need a full redesign to deal with the long and large scoops above 1000Hz. That represents a huge proportion of the advertised 50 - 20,000 range.
On the plus side, there are worse speakers.

 

[thewas]

According to "1-inch (1,75 inch voice coil)" as mentioned in the data sheet, I can hardly come to any other conclusion than that compression is involved, can I? It would perhaps be something else if we were talking about a 1 inch voice coil.

In addition I would find a "normal" dome tweeter at least unusual for a speaker of this design.

Yes, also visually it looks like such and not like a dome tweeter.

 

[Laniciffo]

As a center speaker, bass extension probably was not a design goal.
Moreover, considering the somewhat uneven bass roll-off, maybe the designer did it on-purpose, to benefit from wall reinforcement, à la Kef ?
They clearly state that it is targeted at small rooms...
Seems that I'm in a good mood today, trying to be positive...
Anyway, I would never buy it !

 

[Azrael]

I think it is unusual to NOT call it a compression driver if it indeed is one.

Yes, they express it a bit strangely that they use such a driver. But with such a structure (VC significantly larger than the radiating surface, i.e. probably the throat diameter) it can hardly be something else than a compression driver.

Perhaps they are a little embarrassed? Although I can't think of any good reason for this: I like using such tweeters myself.

 

[Curvature]

Fully read the name of the speaker as Megatron.

"My power is everything; defeat is absurd!"

Somewhat fitting.

 

[respice finem]

It was mentioned the speaker was drop-shipped

Perhaps too... literally (humor is when we laugh regardless)

 

[jamescarter1982]

is it possible the 800hz problems are cone breakup and not diffraction ? I notice the distortion is high there too

 

[Liberal Democracy]

Another company iv never heard of , this time it seems we've benefitted by now knowing how poor this is for the money .

Thanks Amirm !

Considering the idea this would be hidden behind a projection screen, would such a arrangement mitigate any of the negative results here , suppress reflections from that bonkers looking frontage etc

It would be great to hear from the designer , they must of had some reason for these odd choices . Its not like they were working to strict price discipline, its quite expensive.

 

[Matt_Holland]

As a center speaker, bass extension probably was not a design goal.
Moreover, considering the somewhat uneven bass roll-off, maybe the designer did it on-purpose, to benefit from wall reinforcement, à la Kef ?
They clearly state that it is targeted at small rooms...
Seems that I'm in a good mood today, trying to be positive...
Anyway, I would never buy it !

As a center speaker, bass extension probably was not a design goal.
Moreover, considering the somewhat uneven bass roll-off, maybe the designer did it on-purpose, to benefit from wall reinforcement, à la Kef ?
They clearly state that it is targeted at small rooms...
Seems that I'm in a good mood today, trying to be positive...
Anyway, I would never buy it !

They claim excellent bass extension on their website.
Ideally all channels in a cinema should be able to reproduce good power down to 40Hz and from their specs you’d assume the speaker does.

 

[Itay]

They have their own set of measurements for all the models. they don't state how they measured or if the speakers were flush mounted, but other than the bass extension you can see the similarities with Amir's results.

 

[MZKM]

Preference Rating
SCORE: 4.0
SCORE w/sub: 6.5

Sensitivity: 98dB (300Hz-3kHz ; spec: 97dB)
Frequency response: ±7.5dB 50Hz-20kHz ; ±5.4dB 80Hz-20kHz

​

More graphs/data

 

[Heinrich]

Well, it can be very difficult to marry a horn to a cone driver. However, the time alignment is successful here and the vertical dispersion is quite good, in my opinion. The costs in terms of cabinet size and, above all, directivity in the midrange are considerable.

The distortions consist mainly of H2, which can hardly be a point of criticism. This is typical for horns, and according to my small tests has no measurable effect on the intermodulation - surprisingly enough.

The price is then also hefty, a niche product. This is something done digitally/actively today.

 

[beagleman]

I mean it costs TOO much for sure.

Uhm...maybe being a bit too critical for what it is??(maybe not)
This is a moderate output Sound reinforcement speaker, they all have fairly rough response just like this.

The distortion to some extent is normal also "For what it is"

But again as Amir said, at $800.00 great job. this price.....hmmmmm

Klipsch Heresy anyone??

 

[milosz]

You said it was drop shipped? Well, it looks like it was just DROPPED.....

 

[iamamadman]

This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the MAG Theatron M12-C center speaker. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $2,299.
View attachment 464150
As you probably can tell, this is a very large speaker. I can imagine it has to be mounted behind a projection screen. The woofer is inset, likely as an attempt to "time align" it with the very deep tweeter (or is it to control its directivity?). Oddly the speaker terminals are on top and are the screw kind. Don't usually see that for speakers aimed for home applications.

Here are the specs:
View attachment 464161

MAG Theatron M12-C Speaker Measurements
Let's start with our anechoic measurements performed using Klippel Near-field Scanner:

View attachment 464151
We see a rather rough response from the woofer and wavy one from tweeter. This is also a large discontinuity in the directivity around 700 Hz. We can get clues as to source of these problems by measuring each driver near-field:
View attachment 464152

Is that edge diffraction starting at 800 Hz and going past 1 kHz? Tweeter response is uneven as we have seen in our anechoic far field measurements. And ends in sharp resonance. Put another way, simple, non-anechoic measurements would have shown the issues here and clearly so in just a couple of minutes.

Back to the anechoic measurements, we see very high sensitivity of 95 dB.

Despite deploying 12 inch woofer in a rather large enclosure, bass extension is rather poor. Response starts to drop off 120 Hz with 50 Hz for F10. This is kind of bookshelf speaker response.

Early window response is some of the worst I have seen:
View attachment 464153
But do note that flush mounting changes this some. Predicted in-room response, non-flush mount naturally doesn't look good:
View attachment 464154

I was surprised at the very narrow directivity for a center speaker:
View attachment 464155

View attachment 464156

You better sit pretty far if you want to have sofa-wide even response. We also see what could be diffraction around 700 Hz yet again.

Vertical dispersion is usually not good in 2-way speakers and here, it is worse due to narrowing directivity:
View attachment 464157


The 12 inch driver allows quite high SPL levels. I only started to detect audible distortion at 106 dBSPL during sweeps (with hearing protection). Linearity is lost though pretty early on:

View attachment 464158
In an ideal speaker, distortion would remain constant and all the lines would be on top of each other. While we could tolerate fair bit of distortion in bass, this speaker brings plenty of it from 700 Hz on.
View attachment 464159
View attachment 464160

MAG Theatron M12-C Listening Tests and Equalization
Initial impression was that of upper bass warmth. But as soon as the first female vocal arrived, the sound was just odd to me. So decided to create some filters and boy was this a long journey:
View attachment 464162
The response is quite rough in bass so I focused only on larger variations in treble. Once there, overall response was more open without being too sharp. But lacked bass. With or without EQ, my deep bass tracks barely produced anything. And what it did produce was distorted to some extent. So I bumped up the response with that 80 Hz filter. That nicely evened out the response with EQ sounding quite a bit better than without.

Speaker was indeed sensitive. It delivered 10 dB better response than equiv. testing on other speakers with my amp. I still cranked it up. And then would be startled with some dynamics in the music. So the benefit of high sensitivity is there.

I tested the directivity at near field. Response does drop off rapidly with horizontal angle.

Conclusions
From my vantage point, this is a PA speaker with its proper application being larger spaces, no home listening spaces. Narrow directivity points to that as does high sensitivity. As with many PA devices, sensitivity is everything. Refinement only has to be adequate. We maybe have that. If this speaker was $800, we could stop here and say job is done but the price is home speaker category. Here, we expect at least some attention paid to obvious sources of distortion and acoustic faults. Thank heavens we have EQ so we can correct for half the problem.

I can't recommend the MAG Theatron M12-C center speaker. It is just too compromised as a design and especially for the price.
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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/

As mentioned, for up to 800 bucks a piece this would be an acceptable PA speaker, but for US $ 2299? How do they come up with this price? It can't be the workmanship, the horn tweeter isn't even embedded in the cabinet, it's not the performance, it's not the look. It's just money simply has to sound good. When one considers what one can get for this price...

 

[Karmacoma]

Even if I was only listening to music, I would put it behind a screen...

 

[xavierjohn]

Was the shipping box damaged? Did they use UPS?

How long does it take for the data to show up at http://spinorama.org/ ?

 

[Laniciffo]

They claim excellent bass extension on their website.
Ideally all channels in a cinema should be able to reproduce good power down to 40Hz and from their specs you’d assume the speaker does.

Their spec is 41 Hz at -10dB, and that's quite close to what Amir measured.
Their efficiency claim is also supported by measurements.
However -3dB @ 50 Hz looks a little optimistic in anechoic terms, but is probably verified in small rooms.
All in all, it seems to me that their spec sheet is not pure marketing BS.

And, regarding the debate of whether it is a PA or a home hifi speaker, I feel that the sustained 121 dB SPL spec clearly answers this question.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

Hmmm..... being ever the cheap old guy AND loving the first time i heard horn speakers...I find the real value of this review is.... now to take some decent PA speakers and see how far they can be taken into the audiophile world...
Perhaps this could add a little fun and challenge to the hobby. I can picture contest like the Low Riders have where our best and brightest compete with our youngest and strongest to help bring more people together and into understanding the Sicence of Sound (or SOS ) as I like to call it.

All my friends know the low rider
The low rider is a little higher
Low rider drives a little slower
Low rider is a real goer
Hey

 

[EJ3]

You said it was drop shipped? Well, it looks like it was just DROPPED.....

Drop Kicked, perhaps?