REVIEW: Big Noise Brand M&K Keeps on Delivering

It’s the brand that’s making waves at the big sound end of town and for all the right reasons.

M&K Sound is one of those brands that has been around for years and with fans who want big sound output, this is the go-to brand especially with musicians and big sound movie content creators.

It’s also a brand that is used in clubs and on stage at big musical gigs.

Jonas Miller Sound in mid-town LA and his partner Ken Kreisel were the founders of M&K Sound.

Today’s Miller & Kreisel Sound Corporation is an entirely new entity after the original factory closed its doors in 2007, after 34 years.

Its assets were purchased by a Danish group led by Per Becher, who remains the principal owner today.

Publications like Absolute Sound in the USA have been writing about M&K Sound for decades and they constantly rave about the brands products.

One of their core models is the S150 and the S300 and X-Series subwoofers.

The S150 is a two-way, five-driver monitor of squarish dimensions, roughly 31 centimetres tall.

It’s an acoustic-suspension design of better than average sensitivity (92dB), with dual

5.25″ mid/bass drivers and a trio of soft-dome tweeters in a short vertical line array. Among the virtues of a line array is controlled vertical dispersion that is meant to reduce reflected sound, for example floor or ceiling bounce. Of course, there is also the advantage that three tweeters don’t need to work as hard as one, and collectively possess greater dynamic headroom. As I soon observed, with five voice coils per speaker, power handling was never an issue. Construction quality is rock solid. Cabinets are heavily braced MDF and tight as a drum. The finish is impeccable. Giving the enclosure a classic knuckle-rap test yielded little to nothing in the way of enclosure resonances. The cabinet is, how shall I put it, quite dead.

The X10 subwoofer is equipped with dual push/pull, long-stroke 10″ drivers (a total surface area equivalent to a single 15″ driver) in a sealed (acoustic-suspension) enclosure. The surround on these woofers is massive, to allow long-stroke cone motion and provide a high degree of damping. The two-inch coil-diameters ensure extended, linear cone movement, extraordinary power handling, and thermal stability. The woofers employ open, rigid, cast baskets for free air circulation, resulting in minimal mechanical distortion and improved heat dissipation from the motor system for reduced power compression. X10 also sports aluminium AC shorting rings in the magnet system and aluminium pole spacers above the pole piece.

The X10 combines a switch-mode power amplifier of 350 watts RMS with M&K’s proprietary analogue “front-end” input stage. Paul Egan of MK Sound America pointed out that “350 watts RMS doesn’t sound like a lot of power given its output, but the dualdriver push/pull configuration gives us an additional 6dB of output versus a single

driver unit. And this driver alignment gives us an additional halving of acoustic distortion compared to conventional subwoofers.”

The back panel houses a bevy of two-channel or LFE (low-frequency effects) cinema settings, which are outlined in the specifications section. This is a THX-certified subwoofer, which means that it can play back at the same reference output levels that were used to mix the soundtrack—the way it was meant to be heard in theatres. Ultimately, after cycling through various room settings, I ran the sub in a way that suited my stereo listening preferences—with the crossover setting fixed at 80Hz and the variable volume control active, rather than set at the fixed THX reference-level.

For clarification, this is a “true” sub/sat system, a system wherein the S150 satellites operate within a bass-restricted range and are designed to partner with a specified subwoofer, the X10. Contrast this with the more general mix ’n’ match approach of adding a subwoofer from one company to a speaker system from another. The fact is that some loudspeakers do not take to sub woofing one bit. They might have a midbass bump already built into their frequency response, or port resonances, or odd crossover-slope mismatches—even attempting high-pass filtering can degrade performance. The results can run the gamut from excellent to disappointing. Like going on a blind date, it becomes more a matter of trial and error. MK alleviates that issue; each speaker and subwoofer are pre-matched and designed for and with the other in mind.

An added advantage is that by isolating the woofer enclosure from the satellite cabinet there is less potential that the sub’s powerful internal vibrations will be transferred to and impact the midrange and tweeter. This gives the cabinet designer a free hand to optimize the satellite enclosure size and maintain a narrower front baffle to reduce diffraction. The satellite has the potential to play cleaner with fewer colorations, as I soon observed. And on the electronics side, since the main stereo amplifier no longer is required to produce deep bass, the amount of power needed to achieve a given output level from the main speakers is greatly reduced.

Separate cabinets also give the owner more control over room setup. Even in the best of rooms, bass response and the rest of the

An excellent voice speaker, the M&K handled male and female vocalists with equal realism. M&K’s uppermid and treble performance was smooth, open, and without peaky misbehaviour.

frequency spectrum are often at odds with each other when it comes to optimization. For example, a listening position that may be ideal for imaging and sound staging may be less than ideal for bass output or linearity. A sub/sat system opens a whole new range of options in terms of placement.

An excellent voice speaker, the M&K handled male and female vocalists with equal realism. M&K’s upper-mid and treble performance was smooth, open, and without peaky misbehaviour. Add to this the naturalistic transient attack and speed, and the tweeter became in some ways evocative of a ribbon transducer.

As for system integration—always the elephant in the room—the critical blend of sub and satellite was as good as I’ve attained in my space, essentially seamless. No subwoofer localization, zero holes in frequency response, and no unfortunate mid- or upper-bass humps that ultimately cloud transparency in the lower octaves. The M&K system cast a continuous, stable soundfield across the width of my room. Of course, the best subwoofers never make themselves the centres of attention. They are the silent participants, lying in wait until called upon.

I have few reservations regarding the performance. Soundstage depth and general dimensionality were about average. The tightly controlled and cooler sonics may not be for everyone to the degree that they were for me. Some audiophiles prefer a warmer, more romantic, cushier signature. Fair enough.

A couple of final comments. Yes, in my experience, two subs are often better than one (I run a pair of REL S/812 in my larger system). But don’t be deterred. In smaller listening spaces and with thoughtful trial-and-error positioning to ameliorate acoustic peaks and nulls, a single sub can perform wonderfully well, as I discovered with the X10. Also, if your home is on a raised foundation with older wooden floors, low-bass energy can create floor resonances that will give the position of the subwoofer away, so you might want to place decouplers beneath the sub to prevent this from happening. Something like the very affordable products from A/V RoomService would be ideal.

Before my time with the M&K system came to an end, I decided to Honor that long-ago moment in Jonas Miller Sound by once again cueing up my copy of “Take the A Train” from For Duke, the LP produced by M&K Realtime Records with Bill Berry and his Ellington AllStars. My memory didn’t fail me, thankfully, for what I heard then I still hear today—the explosion of dynamic energy that seems to launch from the groove and send sparks flying from the stylus, the immediacy of the moment that even now places me inside the studio, an awesome LP that is arguably still the summit of direct-to-disc wizardry.

On one level, the M&K system certainly struck a nostalgic note and brought me back full circle to my earliest encounters with high-end audio. But as a tool for music reproduction, this system wasn’t living in the past. It’s a thoroughly contemporary and thrillingly musical take on a full-range stereo speaker system. It reminded me that the absolute sound has never been defined by the number of amps or speaker boxes or wires strewn around the room. One of the great pleasures of audio reviewing is when you meet a product that puts it all together in ways that allow you to get lost in the music as effortlessly and innocently as you once did—when it was only the music that mattered. M&K has produced such a system and at a price attainable for most of us. My recommendation: Time to think outside of the two-channel stereo box and consider what the power of three can do for you.