Maybe for games, but not for music.
Written: Sep 24 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: They look cool.
Cons: Un-balanced frequency response, bad spike in the midrange and upper frequencies, while clear - music sounds metalic and thin on them.
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| monsoonblork's Full Review: Level 9 Sound Designs MM-700 2 Speakers |
I have read a number of opinions on the MM-1000 and MM-700 Monsoon speakers. For the most part, the reviews have been positive (ranging from "these speakers are very good" to "these are the best speakers you can buy for your PC". Here is my experience with these speakers.
Firstly, my background. I am a sound engineer, a musician, and have worked with professional audio equipment for the last 25 years. I have also listened and tested many different kinds of speaker technology including electrostatic, cone, dome, horn, ribbon, and magnetic planar. To date, I have yet to hear a speaker technology that beats a good set of cone/dome driven speakers. Ribbon tweeters are nice for extremely clear high-end, but I still find well designed dome tweeters just as good (and in many cases, easier on the ears). So there you have it: my background and my biases!
Now on with the review.
I purchased a set the MH-500s and found them punchy and crystal clear. Although they were a little too directional for my tastes, I thought I could live with this because of their well balanced sound. (For those who are not familiar with the MH-500s: these are Monsoon's bottom of the line speakers. They use a planar driver only for the high end. The bottom and midrange are delivered using a cone sub-woofer and cone midranges that are contained - along with the planar tweeters - in each satellite.)
At the advice of my dealer, I returned the MH-500's and purchased the MM-700's. My mistake, I got caught up in how "cool" the MM-700's look and bought them without listening to them. I am now returning the MM-700's to get the MH-500's back. Here are my reasons:
1.) The MM-700's are extremely bright - they are not balanced at all.
2.) The MM-700's remind my of horn loaded speakers - they shoot sound at you. The result is that after listening for only twenty minutes, I found that they gave me listener's fatigue (in English, this means a headache).
3.) The MM-700's sub-woofer, while larger, is no match for the MH-500's sub-woofer. The MM-700 woofer has no punch and is poorly defined in the lower bottom. The MH-500 woofer, while not having quite a much lower bottom as the MM-700 woofer, has incredible punch.
4.) The MM-700 satellites have a large spike in the midrange and upper frequencies. I found that this made listening to music on them extremely painful (very tinny and thin). My test music included classical, jazz, pop, and funk. The "spike" that I refer to was present in all cases and was not a fault of the source material.
5.) The MM-700s are EXTREMELY directional. You can't even breathe without moving out of their sweet spot. This means that even while using them in front of a computer monitor, if you move so much as an inch, the speakers lose their sound. And forget about sharing that sound with anyone. The MM-700s are for one listener at a time.
6.) This is the big one... The MH-500s simply blow the socks off the MM-700s. They have an even frequency response, punchy bottom end, greater output power (51 watts as opposed to 44), and are far less directional then the MM-700s. Because of the MH-500's use of a cone driver to handle the midrange, the MH-500's are the least directional and best sounding of any of the Monsoon speakers I have heard.
Conclusion:
I am returning my MM-700s to get the MH-500s back. Don't be fooled by the high-tech look of the MM-700s. The MH-500 are simply the best sounding speaker that Monsoon make. The MM-700 are not speakers for listening to music on. They might be great for games, and they have incredible treble and clarity, but this doesn't really mean much when you can't listen to them without buckling yourself into a straight-jacket. Because of their directionality and un-balanced frequency response, I cannot recommend the MM-700s at any price.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
monsoonblork
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 3 members
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