Rocky Mt 2007: MBL Speakers May Earn Best of Show
October 18th, 2007 — By The Absolute Sound
By Jonathan Valin
If there are better speakers and electronics for rock ’n’ roll—or for any very dynamic, wide-ranging music—than these genuine classics from MBL, I hadn’t heard them before RMAF—and I still haven’t heard them, after.
It doesn’t take golden ears to take in what these amazing loudspeakers and phenomenal electronics do in the way of pure excitement.
Nothing I’ve auditioned comes as close to reproducing the endorphin-producing rush, the sheer physical joy that overtakes you when you listen to live music.
Among high-end speakers and electronics, MBL simply owns that thing that gets you on your feet and starts you dancing. On top of this, it’s got the best tweeter and woofer I’ve ever heard, one of the best disappearing acts in high-end audio, phenomenal staging, through-the-floor bass, tremendous dynamics, and gorgeous tone color.
This unbeatably exciting system would, yet again, have been the hands-down winner of Best of Show had it not been for the next system I’m going to write up, whose virtues and sound couldn’t be more different. As it stands, Best of Show will be a tie between this all-MBL system and Symposium.
By Jacob Heilbrunn
Two mini-monitors produced fabulous sound–the Usher Be-718 and the new MBL 121 Radial-Strahler.
The Usher’s punched way above their weight, as the boxing term has it. How on earth they could fill up a large room with that much sound remains a mystery to me.
The crescendos reached true fortissimo levels. With the MBLs it less of a surprise–they seem to specialize in a powerful, dynamic sound, and United Home Audio’s demo was nothing less than riveting.
So powerful are the MBLs that they almost pin you to the wall.
