Alexandria X-2 Series 2 In the Room

Hi

The MBL-101 is one of the most seductive speakers ever. Its presentations is unusual and indeed sound (at times) like music playing in the room but .. this wears thin after a while, in my experience. Everything starts sounding similar, like in the same venue. To me this speaker is like a person you may want to have sex with with, perhaps often but never to be married with. I can enjoy it at times at friends but know I would never own this speaker. OTOH despite not being a Wilson fan, the X-2 (v1, v2 or XLF) I could live happily with and not look for another speaker for a long while. YMMV.

Have MBL with Spectral a while back and frankly that wasn't the best combination. Krell however was a great match. Krell has fallen out of favor here and perhaps elsewhere but they remain one of the few amps amps capable of driving any speakers without breaking a sweat.

Fascinating thread. I have only heard MBLs at shows and haven't always liked them, but I do remember one time hearing them and they totally captivated me. I've always wondered what they would be like in a home setting where you could really get to know them.

still-one said:

(...) To answer your first question the X2's are truer to what a studio recording sounds like while the MBL's sound more like I am listening to the band/group/orchestra actually playing the music. (...)

Click to expand...

Excellent comment. The MBLs created their believability mainly because the performers were in their own space, not locked in place by a sound engineer. However they were extremely critical of room - you needed an overall acoustics, with plenty of global diffusion, that could suit them. Not just a few panels covering small part of the room.

Most of the times I listened to them they were sounding really miserable - the wrong electronics, setup and room. But when they were playing right they could play instrumental music, rock, chamber music or a large symphony with impressive realism.

They sounded great with CAT and the old Mark Levinson line - I used them mainly with the ML23.5. For me their main drawback was that the old MBL 101c needed to be played at a sound level too loud for late night listening in apartment - they sounded really anemic at low levels. We could never know how an amplifier was going to sound with them - in my system Krell's were a disaster, a french inexpensive amplifier I do not remember the brand sounded decent with them. Finding cables for them was not easy - the top XLO and Straightwire Virtuoso were my preferred.

BTW, I have no significant experience with current MBL's.

MadFloyd said:

Fascinating thread. I have only heard MBLs at shows and haven't always liked them, but I do remember one time hearing them and they totally captivated me. I've always wondered what they would be like in a home setting where you could really get to know them.

Click to expand...

Ian, you may be referring here to RMAF 2010 and Steve Dobbins' room where he had his BEAT turntable. I think he owned these MBL speakers and we both loved the sound in this room. I remember you looking up prices over breakfast the next morning and being seriously interested in MBL. His room had a very immediate, direct, and "live" sound. It was remarkable, as I recall.

I have found that the MBLs are speakers about which passions are unusually strong on the side of the people who love them (and this is indeed a testament to their greatness). In my experience (not a statistically valid data set) the people who love them usually cannot understand why everybody doesn't love them.

I was enthralled with, and amazed by, them initially, but then some questions -- which are purely subjective and idiosyncratic to me -- crept into my thinking about them. I have spent a total of about 15 hours listening to four different MBL set-ups, and I understand fully why the people who love them love them, and I completely respect, and I can even explain enthusiastically, the MBLs' virtues. I think they do some things better than any other speaker at any price.

The less well-known German Physiks are a fascinating contrast and an interesting competitor to the MBLs.

PeterA said:

Ian, you may be referring here to RMAF 2010 and Steve Dobbins' room where he had his BEAT turntable. I think he owned these MBL speakers and we both loved the sound in this room. I remember you looking up prices over breakfast the next morning and being seriously interested in MBL. His room had a very immediate, direct, and "live" sound. It was remarkable, as I recall.

Click to expand...

Yup, that's exactly the occasion I was thinking of.

I've had my 116's for some four years or so. Had Martin Logans before that. Four different models over some 20 years. They are the "legacy" model and I bought them used from GTT Audio. So they were probably manufactured some 10 + years or so ago.

Gonna be my last speaker unless I find a deal I can't refuse on some 101's.

And in my limited experience with other brands, they are one of the few speakers that can truly "energize" the room and completely disappear. The opposite of most dynamic speakers that "push" the sound at the listener.

RE the comment about them making all music sound the same, I respectfully disagree and have no idea what that means.