MBL or TIDAL? SPEAKERS, ELECTRONICS...

Folsom, I have heard MBL 101E Mk IIs many times and X-Tremes twice (I heard the 101E Mk IIs at great length in a friend's system) and while they do certain things better and more convincingly than any other speaker I have ever heard, ultimately, they are not quite my personal cup of tea.

But I do not agree with your broadside bashing of them, or of Tidal speakers, at all.

thedudeabides said:

Appears Folsom has revised his position on MBL and Tidal speakers.

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Have heard the tidal electronics various times under different conditions. Also do not understand his 'bizarre' remarks regarding the Tidal electronics. Apparently we hear very differently or something was wrong with the set up he heard.

Btw, I refer to the Positive-Feedback website for a recent review by David Robinson of a complete Tidal set up. You can find the link in the Tidal La Assoluta thread. In this review you find some useful info, something I cannot say of Folsom's remarks.

while I've had mixed experiences with MBL speakers, I do enjoy them and they do some very unique positive things. likely my most significant quibble is related to the difficulty in matching them with a sufficiently nuanced amplifier considering their load. and it seems they have trouble being energized at modest SPL's so either they are a bit recessed sounding, or too loud for comfort. but I'm sure long term users have figured this out and it's more a 'show condition' situation. when I've liked them they have really captured me.

I've always enjoyed every Tidal speaker set-up I've ever heard. it's one of my favorite speaker line-ups. what I truly enjoy about them is their cohesiveness for a cone speaker. which is an attribute which I enjoy with my Evolution Acoustics MM7's and I'm very sensitive to. tonally they also seem to be about right. someday I'd love to hear Audiocrack's Tidal LA's.

and typically the Tidal's are amplifier friendly.

YMMV.

The thread is speakers & electronics, a "house sound". I didn't change my position on anything.

I have not heard Tidal, but own MBL speakers and electronics. MBL, when setup well, are the most transparent, dynamic and lifelike Transducers I have ever heard. They simply recreate the original event ! If you listen at levels under 70db or have a small room, they are not for you. If your amplifiers are low powered or sources not top quality, they are not for you. In my opinion MBL speakers sound best with MBL amplifiers, tube lovers have a hard time pleasing these speakers, they are hard to drive. The craftsmanship and finish is second to none, they run cool and rarely break. The amps sound class A without the heat problems and as a result have a very long life. MBL reminds me of Mercedes in so many ways, Germans make stuff that works !

John57 said:

Two renowned brands with their own followers...which is better, which is best? Is it only personal preference, of course history makes a difference, still, is there a winner or are the awards varied in each category?

MBL Akustikgeräte – The Company

Over the last three decades, MBL has played a major part in breathtaking developments in the worldwide audio sector. MBL accompanied and influenced the birth and growth of high-end audio equipment. Throughout the entire process, MBL was driven by its special goal: to be the cutting edge market leader in terms of technology and quality. There was a time when the “Radialstrahler” was only an idea on a sketch-pad. An idea that many people believed would not work, was turned into patent. Thirty years and countless awards later, thousands of audiophiles in the whole world are now closer to their beloved music than they had ever dreamt of.

MBL’s goal remains unchanged: developing the most advanced speakers and audio players worldwide plus the establishment of a standard above all competitors – with the highest possible demand on quality. Every single MBL component is man-made, from development and design to the manufacturing, testing and listening – from the idea to the finished product. It’s up to you, the music lover, to assess the result. Your judgement, your emotion when you listen to your favourite piece of music on one of our players, this is what counts at MBL. Let yourself be enchanted by music and the design of our music equipment – all our efforts are dedicated to music and to you.

TIDAL-WE BUILD EMOTIONS
SOUND, DESIGN & FINISH

TIDAL - ultimate audio systems. Founded in 1999 with one goal: to build the finest audio systems in the world, defined by manufacturing unique masterpieces with jewelry finish, timeless sophisticated design and benchmark performance to reproduce music no less than lifelike.
Every detail, every single part and every step involved in making a TIDAL masterpiece exists in a world that is free from the bounds of cost optimization and budgetary limitations.

TIDAL's unique technologies and manufacturing processes are seen in all of our products and this website will convey many of these details to you in greater depth. That said, when all is said and done, we would like you to discover TIDAL with your own ears, hands and eyes. Nothing written can really prepare you for the experience of hearing our products in reality. We promise nothing less than the true sound experience from handcrafted masterpieces made in Germany.

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Hi John,

High end audio is an experience. Above, you are quoting marketing materials. I am with Bonzo - if you are serious, travel to hear both. When you spend time with them, one of them will strike you as more subjectively "real" to you. What guys on the internet prefer is irrelevant - their tastes and imagination of "real" will not likely match yours, despite the fact that everone listens to live music.

Everyone will claim that their favorite piece of gear "disappears" and "sounds like real music" while something they don't like sticks out because of its gross coloration and just makes "hifi sounds". On the extremes, just think of a guy listening to a magico q5 with spectral vs. a guy listening to a horn with a set: each guy thinks theirs is "natural"/ "real" and the other's is badly "colored". Obviously, the same applies to any gear combination...the reality is that a magico or a wilson or an avantgarde will disappear to the respective fans and put them in a state of psychological bliss enjoying music, yet the same system will exhibit a gross coloration to those who don't like it.

Personally, I like MBL a lot. I use them with a tube preamp and 4 large class a monoblocks from Symphonic Line Kraft (also German but better sounding to me than MBL's own amps) for a very open (not bright!), very dynamic, and full-bodied (non-fat!) musically transparent sound. If you find that you like MBL, we can share more experiences... Good Luck!

John,

Some additional thoughts I previously wrote, on subjective realities of this hobby, to help you navigate and find the best for you:

...The ideas below expressed are a high level summary based on actual, well-accepted research, so it's not and not just some BS...

It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This is also true when it comes to putting words around subjective experiences of audio... Objective stimuli in the world create subjective stimuli in the mind. We hear a system and we use words to describe them. Using these "audiophile" words, we think that our fellow audiophile is having the same subjective experience inside their skull. But it's not really true, as one can tell from the arguments and virtually different systems and rooms) that everyone has...

A word like “real” "natural", "slam", "presence" are abstract words filled with ambiguity. They really are nothing more or less than words that anyone can use to indicate anything we please. The problem is that people seem pleased to use this or that word to indicate a host of different things, which has created a tremendous terminological mess…

A lot of the mess stems from one's prior experiences with a system/ product – or a lack thereof. As an example, if someone lacks the machinery for a sexual orgasm, then our experience of orgasm is one that this person will never know - no matter how much we talk about it, or dance about it.

Experiences of fine tequilas, string quartets in world class venues, caring deeds, ice cream, and high end audio are rich, complex, multidimensional, and impalpable. Because “Real” or "natural" is also an experience, it can only be approximately defined by its antecedents and by its relation to other experiences. "Spicy" means something different to a person used to eating South Indian cuisine every day than to a mom buying potato chips labeled as "spicy" in the supermarket for the super bowl party. That’s why I can’t stand reviewers like “worthless to the fan” Robert Harley who never compare, but just proclaim something as “BEST!” because some new detail he heard tickled his analytical preference. (Note: I am not attacking him as a person, but criticizing him for the value of his work to the audiophile community. I am not saying he's a worthless human being, just that his work is completely useless to the fan... I'm sure he's a great guy in real life with great family and friends and an upstanding member of his community.)

I'm also sure Harley's manufacturer friends and advertisers love to get a headline that they got the very "BEST" product on the market, but the "BEST" claim is pathetic and useless to the stressed-out audio fan traveling around to hear things on different continents in order to find a great piece of gear.

Without knowledge of the how an experience of piece of gear compares to another one he may be familiar with and narrowing things down, that an audio fan has to travel and spend precious time and hard-earned money to find some piece of gear that he hoped will put him in a state of flow where he connects with the music and all problems melt away.

Of course, the reality is that piece of gear proclaimed as "best" is only in Harley's imagination. Something like magico q7 and Berkeley Reference DAC "disappears" only in his mind and a handful of people who share his preferences. But to many fans, this gear sticks out and disrupts the musical experience as a colonoscopy done by a jittery intern who forgot to call the anesthesia ... of course, that painful experience could have been avoided if Harley did a good job comparing the experiences and let the fans decide if that experience is worth pursuing ...every time he writes about something as "BEST", his work screams "self-serving hyperbole" and "marketese" to fans.

Coming back to some theory, once we have an experience - hear a component that does something very new or very different – like speed and inner detail of a horn, or an electrostatic midrange amplified by tubes, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened. Our experiences instantly become the lens through which we view (or the filter we hear through, if you would) all past, present, and future. And like and lens or filter, they color our perspective as well.

Additionally, we are only human , so distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous -that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. Different moods, auditioning circumstances, people we like or don’t like, preconceived notions, prior good meals , great "intimate relations", or rude taxi drivers,etc… all can play part in impacting what we perceive when we listen.

Furthermore, to complicate things even further, our remembrance of things past is imperfect, thus comparing our new understanding of “real” with our memory of our old "real" is a risky way to determine whether two subjective experiences are really different...

But just because there are challenges posed to us by human nature, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Instead, we should work even harder to overcome them...

If several audiophiles share the same experiences, such as attending shows or presentations, their taste may not always agree 100 percent, but they will be more effective in communicating in what the others mean if they get together, analyze experiences, and specify the language to help extract the most important features of the experiences so we can analyze them and communicate them later... Practically, except for small groups of people, this will never happen. So arguments will go on...


... by respectfully asking questions to probe into others' experience to get a clear understanding of what others want or believe helps increase mutual understanding...

caesar said:

Hi John,

High end audio is an experience. Above, you are quoting marketing materials. I am with Bonzo - if you are serious, travel to hear both. When you spend time with them, one of them will strike you as more subjectively "real" to you. What guys on the internet prefer is irrelevant - their tastes and imagination of "real" will not likely match yours, despite the fact that everone listens to live music.

Everyone will claim that their favorite piece of gear "disappears" and "sounds like real music" while something they don't like sticks out because of its gross coloration and just makes "hifi sounds". On the extremes, just think of a guy listening to a magico q5 with spectral vs. a guy listening to a horn with a set: each guy thinks theirs is "natural"/ "real" and the other's is badly "colored". Obviously, the same applies to any gear combination...the reality is that a magico or a wilson or an avantgarde will disappear to the respective fans and put them in a state of psychological bliss enjoying music, yet the same system will exhibit a gross coloration to those who don't like it.

. . .

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+1
I think this is very well-put.

The Kraft are much better than MBL amps and I have compared Spectral 360 to MBL 9011 on the 101s and the Spectrals were better

Also the Ypsilon integrated was better than the MBL integrated on the 111

I have heard both quite a number of times and my vote goes to Tidal. I remember at one year RMAF I went into a very shrill room with very aggressive treble and not in any natural way. Left that room and went into the Tidal room with the Piano model and it was one of the most natural sounding speakers I heard that year. On that same year though my best of Show was a Hanson speaker with a v8 like tube driving it. The sound was similar but more distorted on the Tidal which might have been due to using their own electronics.

MBL's I have never been a fan of for two distinct reasons. First is the amplification "almost" requires you to exclusively use MBL electronics which never sounded as good when they were paired with high powered tubes. And Second, their extremely low sensitivity rating has always translated into an overly soft treble with a fair amount of compression. This is something I can and have seen a lot of people value as a positive and not a negative.

treitz3 said:

Agreed. Nobody wants to have their baby called "ugly", in a manner of speaking. With that said, I must mostly concur with Folsom, at least when it comes to MBL's. While I have not been privy to Tidal speakers? You could not pay me enough to listen to an MBL on an MBL upstream system hooked up to a killer RTR. Many folks like them, Peter B included (reviewer) but for me, it's not my cup of tea. Yes, they do disperse the sound more so than any other speaker I have heard. That is indisputable to my ears. What killed it for me was impact (none), lack of accurate lower frequencies and realism and I can not fathom why a guitarist who is 8 feet wide would be considered "realistic".

What they do, they do extremely well and they do offer a unique presentation.

Bashing is definitely one thing.....not good. Talking in a cordial way about our observations is another animal. We all have a different point of view or performance observation experiences.

Tom

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You can call my baby ugly, just don't call it unmusical !

Lagonda said:

You can call my baby ugly, just don't call it unmusical !

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Hi Lagonda,
Nice system!!!

How do you find the MBL 101s performing with subs vs. no subs? And how were you able to extricate the subs from the Martin Logan speakers and hook them up to the MBLs?

Also, what is the sonic difference on the MBL 101s running the Krells vs. 9011s?

Thank you

caesar said:

Hi John,
Everyone will claim that their favorite piece of gear "disappears" and "sounds like real music" while something they don't like sticks out because of its gross coloration and just makes "hifi sounds". On the extremes, just think of a guy listening to a magico q5 with spectral vs. a guy listening to a horn with a set: each guy thinks theirs is "natural"/ "real" and the other's is badly "colored". Obviously, the same applies to any gear combination...the reality is that a magico or a wilson or an avantgarde will disappear to the respective fans and put them in a state of psychological bliss enjoying music, yet the same system will exhibit a gross coloration to those who don't like it.

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Interesting comments since you have continually bashed Magico, Valin, and any other related gear that you consider a-musical.

As far as Folsom, nobody likes to read bad comments about what they own - but speakers are such personal taste, so people need to chill out.

KeithR said:

Interesting comments since you have continually bashed Magico, Valin, and any other related gear that you consider a-musical.

As far as Folsom, nobody likes to read bad comments about what they own - but speakers are such personal taste, so people need to chill out.

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What he said.

Believe High Fidelity said:

I have heard both quite a number of times and my vote goes to Tidal. I remember at one year RMAF I went into a very shrill room with very aggressive treble and not in any natural way. Left that room and went into the Tidal room with the Piano model and it was one of the most natural sounding speakers I heard that year. On that same year though my best of Show was a Hanson speaker with a v8 like tube driving it. The sound was similar but more distorted on the Tidal which might have been due to using their own electronics.

MBL's I have never been a fan of for two distinct reasons. First is the amplification "almost" requires you to exclusively use MBL electronics which never sounded as good when they were paired with high powered tubes. And Second, their extremely low sensitivity rating has always translated into an overly soft treble with a fair amount of compression. This is something I can and have seen a lot of people value as a positive and not a negative.

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I remember Axpona 2012...my first time being exposed to both Tidal and MBL. For me that was the money floor - Tidal, MBL, Scanea, and Legacy were all on the same halway (I believe Bob Carver was on that hall as well). Up to that point - the best sound I'd heard all day was the Pulsars. Then I go into this room with speakers I've never heard but are drop dead gorgeous. It was the Tidal room. The owner played some beautiful old time quartet/Dr. Watts hymn lining! I was caught up!!! Whatever he played sounded good! I spent a lot of time in that room - and then I got the prices (I could dream...I love to dream, but I had a new reference sound to build on). Then I entered the Legacy room - Whispers....Wonderful!!!! I said it couldn't get better than that..could it? Then the Scanea room - my mind was blown when I realized that I didn't have to sit in the sweet spot in that room to get a good stereo image!!!! I was in love!!!! I saved the MBL room for last - because I'd heard of them - but never had a chance to listen to them. The MBL's were one of the reasons I went to show and paid for my adult son to tag along!!!! The MBL's were stunning ...visually, but audio wise - they were not my cup of tea. Maybe it was the music they were playing? Maybe they thought I didn't belong (asked permission to take pictures - and they said don't get too close - I wasn't close at all and I had a zoom). Maybe it's my listening taste? I don't know - but I left very disappointed and underwhelmed.

The Mbl is no doubt a good speaker - but that day....I left wanting the Tidal, Pulsars, Legacy Whisper XD's, and the Scaneas. I fell in love with the Tidals...but my pockets are not that deep. Still doesn't mean I can't like and appreciate whats best (pun intended)

caesar said:

Hi Lagonda,
Nice system!!!

How do you find the MBL 101s performing with subs vs. no subs? And how were you able to extricate the subs from the Martin Logan speakers and hook them up to the MBLs?

Also, what is the sonic difference on the MBL 101s running the Krells vs. 9011s?

Thank you

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Hi Caesar, like you told me a couple of years ago, the treble of the Krell's leave something to be desired. The biggest difference with MBL 9011 amplification was surprisingly in the bass. With MBL the the mid bass speed and articulation improved drastically, Sound staging also improved. Initially after getting MBL amplification i left my Statement subwoofers disconnected,enjoying the newfound fidelity, and finding the integration of the subs difficult.
After a couple of month the old itch returned, and I tried again. The best integration was achieved with the 101's running without active crossover, but with the internal 12 inch driver disconnected, the passive crossover in the 101's is still great for integration with the "smooth" settings perfect in my setup. The subwoofer towers are actively crost over at 100hz 24 dB with a very specific delay time/ fase setting, it took a long time to get right !
The improvements are better bass integration, compared to the original two 12 inch drivers. 16 12 inch drivers go deeper and faster when driven correctly , and they load the room better than the original down firing subs.
The imaging and sound staging also improved drastically, if it is because the main amplification has a lighter load with separate amplification on the sub's, or because of less movement In the main speakers is unclear.
There is a lot of room information in those deepest bass tones, that you don't hear with a regular setup.

In addition to the review of David Robinson hereby a very recent link to the Stereophile magazine in which the Akira and other Tidal loudspeakers are discussed: No strange comments of the two Stereophile reviewers although they listened to a (nearly) complete Tidal set up.

https://youtu.be/01PsVZ4dPxk

Mike Lavigne said:

while I've had mixed experiences with MBL speakers, I do enjoy them and they do some very unique positive things. likely my most significant quibble is related to the difficulty in matching them with a sufficiently nuanced amplifier considering their load. and it seems they have trouble being energized at modest SPL's so either they are a bit recessed sounding, or too loud for comfort. but I'm sure long term users have figured this out and it's more a 'show condition' situation. when I've liked them they have really captured me.

I've always enjoyed every Tidal speaker set-up I've ever heard. it's one of my favorite speaker line-ups. what I truly enjoy about them is their cohesiveness for a cone speaker. which is an attribute which I enjoy with my Evolution Acoustics MM7's and I'm very sensitive to. tonally they also seem to be about right. someday I'd love to hear Audiocrack's Tidal LA's.

and typically the Tidal's are amplifier friendly.

YMMV.

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Let's see Mike if we can arrange someday to listen to the systems we have put together!

KeithR said:

Interesting comments since you have continually bashed Magico, Valin, and any other related gear that you consider a-musical.

As far as Folsom, nobody likes to read bad comments about what they own - but speakers are such personal taste, so people need to chill out.

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Keith, I have always maintained that I could care less what people like or don't like and have always said that audio choices are all about preference and taste. Personally, it makes no difference to me what gear people like, what they like to eat, what colors they prefer, or what positions they prefer during "intimate relations". But, of course, it's hard to get full context of someone's thoughts on a forum...

All I have been doing is just applying their own logic, Keith. "Sterile" Jon Valin called Magico Q5 the BEST, while labeling everyone else as preferring "euphonic colorations" and saying that every one else listens to badly colored DREK. In reality, he was just expressing a preference for sonic signatures that earned him his nickname . (Valin even bashed brands like Nola and Scaena as "colored", while HP called "real".)