MAB
Major Contributor
As @thewas pointed out directivity is not ideal, so EQ is not going to be able to address the issues in midrange and treble without other tradeoffs due to the poorly integrated midrange/tweeter.Thanks for pointing it out. It's great that Amir's measurements can bring attention to these things. I'm surprised, however, there was no attempt to apply comprehensive (not just the bass) EQ in Amir's review. It would be interesting to hear how well the speaker responds to EQ. Overall, I think the final rating was a bit harsh - the speaker has a colored sound profile and a distortion peak around 2khz, is it really so bad? I understand we should expect better from these audio companies already, but I commend Monitor Audio for bringing such a unique/innovative product to market in a sea of boxy passive speakers that take up half your desk.
The bass tuning is EQ'able depending on use (desktop, wall-mount, in-room, etc.), but why? The answer is they have caved into the showroom sound in order to sell. This from a company with a reputation that I hoped would allow them to rise above the showroom sound requirement. It's doubly unfortunate since the bass response they did target isn't even deep enough to integrate well with a subwoofer in most situations.
The speaker is moderately broken in enough areas to prevent it from being very useful. It's not intrinsically good against a wall. It's even worse on desktop. Desktop + wall or corner is worse again. A sub won't integrate well for most uses. Plus that bat shaped FR!
Agree that small and good are hard to come by. But an 8010A (as one example) has a smaller footprint, with amps and DSP built in, certainly measures worlds apart, at half the cost. Plus has EQ settings for use on a desktop and/or near walls!