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Meyer MM-4XP Micro Speaker Review
- Thread starter amirm
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I had to replace the amp on my MM-10 subwoofer, and interestingly, the PCB says MM-4XP so I don’t know what sort of shared electronics are used. It has the same 440W peak rating.
You do see PCM1804 ADC
And this processor.
My understanding is that Meyer Sound balances phase linearity, frequency response linearly, and latency (since it’s used for live sound reinforcement). Perfect PEQ for frequency response linearity can introduce phase shifts like a crossover can.
Science suggests that phase isn’t that audible, but it may make a bigger difference when you are using multiple speakers.
But the idea of what you feed is what you get is to ensure that there is no risk of setup error. You plug, and you play. This is also true when mixing the MM-4XP with the MM-10 subwoofer. It’s designed such that the crossover slopes match and you can daisy chain stuff without needing a separate processor.
Just a very small little speaker with the obvious limitations and just a few faults, I suppose someone could find a use for it but maybe not at that price, but it is a very old speaker (2007), so I guess it does quite well from that era.
Thanks for the details, much appreciated! But I think the price is too steep for me.
For sure. It’s a luxury item from the standpoint of paying a lot for made in California, the reputation/brand markup, serviceability, and trading off size for performance. It’s also weather resistant and rated for outdoor use and you can even get full weather protected versions.
But it is neat to see real measurements of a purpose-built exotic speaker like this. It’s literally the limit of what a single 4” full range driver can do. You could more correction of the FR in DSP, but because it’s intended for supporting live music, they are much more sensitive to processing delay compared to home speakers.
One thing is for sure though. None of the Meyer Sound speakers score super high on the standard preference score, and yet in real applications, they sound pretty amazing. I think most audiophiles going to a live Cirque du Soleil or Broadway Musical come away with the impression that things sound great.
It was some of these experiences that got me interested in the company, which led me to the Meyer Sound Amie and then building out a home theater with other Meyer Sound speakers. For these 48V speakers, I get a 1U rack power supply that handles 8 channels, which is nice compared to a 8 channel Buckeye or HypeX amp.
What’s great is that the measurements are the objective truth, and the subjective experience is still just the subjective experience.
Perhaps at some point you get to the performance level where variations in frequency response are no longer that big of a deal since it’s good enough to be masked in stereo? Is it group delay? Phase? IMD?
It also could be as simple as circle of confusion since a lot of my reference “gold standard” experiences are musicals or concerts that use live stage reinforcement, often with Meyer Sound gear.
It is true to some extent that more speakers helps mask each other , I think toole’s research points to that in multichannel directivity problems are somewhat masked by having many channels, they sound from so many speakers seams to dominate over the room reflections ?
But i guess for large venues there’s are other sources of information I don’t know about it seems to be it’s own field of research.
Sounds in large venues is better than ever .
Bob McCarthy has a book on large venues. The question, of course, is if any of this SHOULD be applied to the home environment.
https://bobmccarthy.com/the-emperors-new-stereo/
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Taking a quick look at the PCB, PWM 7 and 8 are not connected, PWM 4 goes to test pads, PWM 1 and 3 go somewhere, and on 2, only the P side goes to a test pad. It's safe to say that not all channels are being usedOk thx to be honest i have no idear what a 8 channel PWM modulater does in a mono speaker but hehe i would also not know in a 8 channel speaker.
It's a curious choice for such a product for sure, but I guess It contains just enough DSP features to make it work, and they may reuse this product in a whole range of other products. The chip can do dynamic range compression, giving it a kind of limiter option, seven bi-quads per channel, additional tone controls, and low/high-pass filters.
dedobot
Senior Member
Taking a quick look at the PCB, PWM 7 and 8 are not connected, PWM 4 goes to test pads, PWM 1 and 3 go somewhere, and on 2, only the P side goes to a test pad. It's safe to say that not all channels are being used
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These are all just headers on the evaluation board. What is the relevance here?
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I think we are in quite a lot of danger on straying off topic for a speaker review thread . Let's not go further into the weeds please .
But this is the DSP in this active speaker, so it seems on-topic?
Yes, but not posting random headers of some eval board of the PWM chip that happens to be used by the speaker
It’s close enough that it makes me have confidence in the GLL based spinorama’s you have extracted for the other Meyer Sound speakers.
Which gets to the challenge. These speakers sound good even though they don’t measure as well as you’d like. The only explanation I have is that it can deliver high SPLs and it’s “flat enough” (Shrug).
You can see that the Acheron cinema line and X40/X20 line aren’t that great.
dedobot
Senior Member
Yes, reading/posting diagrams early morning after hard night is no-no. My bad.Yes, but not posting random headers of some eval board of the PWM chip that happens to be used by the speaker
Coming a bit late to the party... Thanks Amir for this thorough exploration of such an odd duck speaker.
These speakers are not meant to be a general purpose speaker to be used in your typical noncommercial application. What they do offer is reasonably high quality audio performance when used appropriately, and they will do it day in and day our for many, many years, and best of all, if they fail Meyer will repair them at a reasonable cost.
I use four of these in my compact home theater to go along with my Meyer Sound Ultra X-20s. They fit in spots virtually no other speaker will fit in and perform shockingly well. Would I use them as my LCRs? No, not unless space was seriously limited, but for surrounds and Atmos, with the appropriate DSP settings... you'd be amazed.
In my installation they really do disappear.
dasdoing
Major Contributor
He is something similar, though not quite as impressive: https://www.danleysoundlabs.com/products/the-nano/
you can go a little bigger, coaxial and louder though with this one: https://www.danleysoundlabs.com/products/the-cube/
you can go a little bigger, coaxial and louder though with this one: https://www.danleysoundlabs.com/products/the-cube/
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