MK SOUND M-7/M-5/M-4T/SB-1250THX speaker test

They returned to! Following in the tradition of M&K, MK SOUND brand continues to develop compact monitors and active subwoofers which set the quality standard in their price group.

Speakers

TEST RESULTS

CONSTRUCTION: the old-timers might think that the author made a mistake in the company name, but that’s not true. Formed in 1974 in Beverly Hills by Jonas Miller and Ken Kreisel, the famous American company M&K SOUND is known for its studio monitors, which mixed many Oscar winning movies, the world’s first active subwoofer and the first satellite speakers. However, in the new century things did not go too well for the company, in 2007 the. It was close to bankruptcy, but, fortunately, was saved by a Danish investor who bought the intellectual property of M&K and finally moved the production to China the move was started by Ken Kreisel in his unsuccessful attempt to save the situation . The new owners did not start a revolution: rebranding was reduced to the disappearance of ampersand between the letters “M” and “K”, the original concept of creating sets of speakers with satellites and active subwoofer remained unchanged. The range of the company didn’t get any shorter, on the contrary, new ranges appeared and we will tell you about one of them in this article.

When creating the M-series speakers the developers decided not to deviate from the established over the decades M&K canons. All satellite speakers are made in compact, closed cabinets with metal grill guards. Not too noticeable, but very convenient – mounting of the grill with magnetic suction cups. Speakers have a pair of gold-plated terminals on the back of the satellites.

The front speakers in our M-7 set have a 2.5-way speaker configuration. Models are equipped with ferrofluid cooled tweeter, 25mm silk dome and neodymium magnet. The two mid-bass drivers are equipped with 100mm diameter paper diaphragms and shielded magnet systems.

The M-5 two-way speaker, which we used in the center channel of the AC, is equipped with the same drivers, only it has one mid-bass. Readers used to the special loudspeakers in the “center” of the AC might be outraged at this arbitrariness, and they would be wrong. M&K has never produced a specially designed center speaker, considering it less a technical necessity than a design consideration: a speaker tilted to the side looks better next to a TV screen than an upright one. Instead of developing “lying” and “standing” speaker options, Ken Kreisel in his time invented the Phase Focused crossover, thanks to which the modern MK SOUND speakers give an even phase and frequency response in a wide range of horizontal and vertical directions. So the M-5 or M-7, if used in the “center,” can safely be put on its side.

The rear channels of our speakers are voiced by M-4T models. The speakers have a traditional for this type of M&K speakers design – tri-pole radiator. On the front end of M-4T there is the same pair of tweeters/midwoofer, only in the inverted order, on the flanks of trapezoidal body section there are 75-millimeter wide range speakers turned on in antiphase.

In the speaker colors MK SOUND keeps full continuity with M&K: choice is limited to black finish, only rear speakers can boast with additional white cabinet and grill decoration.

For M-series MK SOUND developed two new active subwoofers SB-8 and SB-12 at once, but the price range of the test allowed us to use more expensive and advanced version SB-1250, which earned THX certificate in this set. According to technical data SB-1250 is nothing else but revised rather cosmetically M&K VX-1250SFX subwoofer, where the suffix in model name means the application of Super Fast Deep Bass technology. This technology is also present in its SB-1250 clone. Like its predecessor SB-1250 has a closed acoustic cabinet. The unit is equipped with a 250 watt amplifier with an advanced overload protection system Dynamic Headroom Maximizer. Built-in 305mm paper woofer in the front panel. The rear control panel contains a cutoff frequency control 40-200 Hz with an extreme position that disables the built-in crossover Bypass mode , volume and phase knobs 0-180 yd , a power program switch. The unit is equipped with a full set of inputs and outputs for different level signals. Subwoofer is produced in one color, black.

SOUND

In a home theater set MK SOUND does not show its diminutiveness, closing your eyes it is difficult to imagine that we have a compact bookshelf speakers. Surround sound panorama is evenly circular, front and rear panorama are well matched, and the voices of the satellites and subwoofer are tonally “stitched. At high level the localization of images is shown which at times “frolic” right in front of the nose of the viewer, the distant plans are drawn well, though there the brightness of the picture starts to fade little by little, the details get blurred. The medium frequencies and treble, the dialogues and music are reproduced clearly in place, with natural timbres, the special effects sound with a decent articulation. According to the old tradition M&K monitors demonstrate fast and dense bass, and further the sound is picked up by an excellent subwoofer that inherited powerful and authoritative lower register from its distinguished ancestor VX-1250SFX THX.

In music, the kit also proved itself to be a good fit. Exactly triphonic mode shows most accurately, if a system has problems with satellites and subwoofer playability – MK SOUND speaker systems have no problems. M-series satellites showed themselves as genre independent, natural sounding performers, the only thing we could pay attention to was the forgivable limitation of musical scene scale and a little bit excessive energy of satellites in the upper middle, which leads to accentuation of sibilants and slight harshness of sound of brass and strings.

93 868 Dollars.