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 July 1, 2008 Mark & Daniel Audio Labs Maximus Monitor Loudspeakers
The loudspeaker business is not for the faint of heart. Indeed, the road to commercial success is paved with the remains of many a startup speaker company. And yet some firms do succeed by offering the right combination of innovation, style, performance, and price. Based on the three years it’s been selling speakers in North America, Mark & Daniel Audio Labs seems to be such a firm. There’s not a lot about Mark & Daniel speakers that can be considered conventional. The company, which has design facilities in the US and a factory in China, molds its single-piece cabinets from an artificial marble-like compound. Its proprietary drivers include an ultra-long-throw woofer and an update of the Heil Air Motion Transformer concept. Of course, all the technological innovation in the world is meaningless if it doesn’t come together in a musically compelling package. We endeavored to find out if it does by spending time with the company’s Maximus Monitor. At $2980 USD per pair, it has a lot of competition in the category of higher-end monitor. Description The Maximus Monitor is a two-way, stand-mounted minimonitor with a 6.5" SX woofer and Mark & Daniel’s DM-1 wide-range driver. The Directly Responding Emitter by Air Motion Structure (DREAMS) DM-1 has a claimed frequency range of 800Hz-22kHz. It goes far lower than a typical tweeter in order to keep the speaker’s crossover point (in this case, 800Hz) out of what M&D calls the "sensitive mid-frequency band from 2 to 3.5kHz." According to Mark & Daniel, crossover points that fall within that range are "compromised." The four members of the DREAMS family owe their existence to the pioneering work of Dr. Oskar Heil in the early 1970s. A Heil Air Motion Transformer does not transfer its mechanical energy to the air in the same direct vibration mode as does a dome or ribbon tweeter. Instead, an AMT squeezes air out of a series of ribbon folds held within a strong magnetic field. The folded ribbon permits a much larger radiating surface than is typical in a higher-frequency driver -- 60 times larger than a 1" dome tweeter, according to M&D. This large surface area also makes the DM-1-equipped Maximus Monitor suitable for home-theater use, says M&D, and so they also offer the Maximus Monitor center-channel speaker, in which the DM-1 is repositioned on the horizontal axis. The woofer’s design is similar in concept to that of the EX-6.5 bass driver used in the Exodus Audio Kepler speaker, which I wrote about in SoundStage! last April. Both designs use long-excursion, low-distortion cones to produce bass output beyond that achievable by comparably sized conventional drivers. The Maximus Monitor’s Super X-Max (SX) 6.5" woofer uses a rare-earth magnet of neodymium to help achieve its maximum linear excursion (X-Max) of 10mm. This, says M&D, is twice the average of conventional woofers. The driver’s mottled-gray "compound paper cone" looks like those of the woofers used in Focal’s Electra series. There can be no doubt that the Maximus Monitor’s 13.5-liter, 32-pound "compound-marble" enclosure is stiff and heavy. It features front edges with bevels that taper from top to bottom, and, around back, three 1.5" ports directly molded into the cabinet. The review samples’ basic white finish is not a look I’m particularly fond of, and if it’s not to your liking either, M&D also offers red, black, starry black, orange, yellow, and bamboo -- though choosing one of these adds 10% to the price (in this case, $298). M&D also accepts requests for custom colors and patterns. The faux-marble enclosures can be repolished, so a like-new finish is never far away. You can’t say that about most other speakers. The Maximus Monitor is chock-full of technical wizardry, but none of that matters if it isn’t well integrated. Clever cabinet materials can sound dead, or resonate like an old washing machine on the spin cycle. Improperly executed long-excursion drivers can produce distortion akin to a wall of Marshall guitar amps. And do I have to come up with an analogy for running 800Hz through a tweeter? Setup Setting up the Maximus Monitors seemed straightforward enough. According to tips offered on the company’s website, all Mark & Daniel speakers are suitable for nearfield listening, and their SX woofers mean they don’t have to be placed close to the front wall to produce sufficient bass. M&D recommends setting up the Maximuses to describe an equilateral triangle with the listening position, then fine-tuning from there. I was at first impressed by the amount of bass produced by the MMs, but control over those lowest frequencies was lacking. Where I’d hoped for tight and tuneful, I heard loose and bloated. Based on the reputation that had preceded these speakers, I got to thinking that there might be something wrong with the review samples. Sitting myself down in front of the right speaker, I heard something odd -- a distinct rattle coming from one of the four screws securing the woofer to the cabinet. The Maximus Monitor had a screw loose. Make that three screws loose. And on the other speaker, a perfect four out of four screws were shirking their responsibilities. I tightened them forthwith, which did great things for the bass, though it didn’t completely resolve some issues. In fairness to M&D, the shipping box for this particular pair of speakers showed that they’d endured just about everything a package-delivery company could throw at them. Exactly how the screws got so loose is anyone’s guess, but keep in mind that loose screws are not unheard of in the world of audio reviewers, either. All of the following observations were made post-tightening. So were the accompanying measurements. The day after I discovered the loose screws, the speakers went back to the National Research Council’s anechoic chamber for a new set of measurements. Their screws tightened, the Maximus Monitors were less fussy about room placement. At first I couldn’t put them nearer the front wall than 4’ without inducing bass boom. With the woofers now tightly coupled to their enclosures, the MMs were quite happy to sit 3’ from the front wall and a similar distance from the sidewalls. At a rated sensitivity of 85dB/W/m, the Maximus Monitor is a relatively tough speaker to drive. M&D recommends a minimum 100Wpc into the speaker’s nominal 4-ohm impedance. They also recommend a "high-current" amplifier, though they don’t specify what they mean by the phrase. The MM’s power handling is rated as greater than 100W. I can report that, coupled to a less powerful amplifier, the speakers just puttered along, half asleep. Even when powered by meatier gear, the Maximus Monitor was not the kind of speaker that lent itself to low-level listening of the kind often done late at night. System I placed the Maximus Monitors atop heavy, 26"-tall stands and drove them with my reference Simaudio Moon i5.3 integrated amplifier (130W into 4 ohms), as well as Audio Zone AMP-D2 monoblocks (400W into 4 ohms). When engaged, the AMP-D2s were controlled by either the preamp-out section of the i5.3 or an Audio Zone PRE-A1 preamplifier. The digital source throughout the review was a laptop computer feeding losslessly compressed audio files to a Blue Circle USB Thingee, connected in turn to an Audio Note Kits DAC 2.1 D/A converter. Speaker cables were a shotgun biwire pair of Supra Ply 3.4/S and a single-run pair of Furutech u-2Ts. When the Furutechs were in use, supplied solid-copper jumpers were used to connect the M&Ds’ high-quality five-way binding posts. My room is a tough one for any speaker to deal with, which makes it a pretty solid test facility. It comprises two rectangles, the larger of which is 12’ by 16’; the smaller, 8’ by 6’ section opens onto an ascending staircase. The Maximus Monitors were placed along the longest wall. Sound This small speaker produced prodigious bass. It went deep -- way deep -- with all the abandon of the most adventurous scuba diver. The acoustic double bass, which goes down to the low 40Hz region, was reproduced with appropriate heft and good tonality. Drums were a literal blast: the SX woofers had the punch of a heavyweight boxer. In most setups, the Maximus Monitor won’t require a subwoofer. But the Maximus wasn’t only a low-frequency hound. I was impressed by its ability to simultaneously relay prodigious amounts of bass and delicate treble. An example of this can be heard on The Giants, a sublime 1974 recording by Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Joe Pass [CD, Pablo OJCCD-858-2]. Throughout this disc, Brown’s voluminous bass is beautifully contrasted with Peterson’s soft piano (and organ) and Pass’s subtle guitar playing. The delicate balance of power between the bass and its accompanying instruments was kept intact by the MMs, the bass seeming to envelop the guitar and piano notes like a warm blanket without ever smothering their clarity or vibrancy. In the title track of her Not Too Late [CD, Blue Note 7 74516 2], Norah Jones’s voice leaps out of a black background in a way that always startles me. Her honeyed vocals were handled well by the Maximus Monitors, which reproduced the midrange in a slightly soft, sweet manner that was never forward. M&D seem to have a point with their assertion that the crossover must not take place in the midrange. When intensity increased, though, the DREAMS driver tended to add a fine layer of distortion to dynamic peaks. This wasn’t true in every case, and seemed recording-dependent -- but not necessarily in the qualitative sense. Whether the recording was terrific or average, the DREAMS driver tended to sound overworked when reproducing dynamic music. One anomaly -- it seemed to be a sympathetic cabinet resonance -- was very recording-dependent: I heard it only on Joćo Gilberto’s voice, on his and Stan Getz’s seminal Getz/Gilberto [CD, Verve 73145214142 2]. The resonance had the effect of doubling up Gilberto’s voice, which lead to a cancellation of the nuances that make his performance so memorable. When it came to replicating the ambience of a live performance, the DM-1 wideband driver left me wanting more. The Ray Brown Trio’s Live at the Loa [CD, Concord Jazz CCD-4426], for example, normally sounds huge, spacious, and airy. Through the Maximus Monitors, however, the recording sounded a little claustrophobic, as though the players were confined to a small stage in a small room. Detail, too, was off, seeming hidden behind a thin veil of distortion whenever the music began to cook. Seeming to recognize the limits of what the DM-1 can accomplish, Mark & Daniel also offer their Omni-Harmonizer ($950), an external add-on DREAMS module that will, they claim, "open and expand the depth and dimension of your audio experience." I didn’t have an opportunity to experience the Omni-Harmonizer, but if it lives up to its billing, it will provide what I felt the Maximus Monitor lacked on its own. Of course, adding the Omni-Harmonizer makes the Maximus Monitor considerably more expensive. Comparisons I compared the M&D Maximus Monitor with the Guru QM-10 ($2695/pair), another small speaker designed to produce huge amounts of bass (review coming in August). In many ways, this Swedish speaker is the opposite of the Maximus Monitor. It’s light and short, and its (seemingly) conventional cone drivers are mounted close together on the widest face of its enclosure. The QM-10’s cabinet, which is covered in an anti-diffraction rubber-like compound, is not a conventional ported enclosure, but rather a Helmholtz Resonator: a tube open at one end and attached to a chamber at the other. The open end of the QM-10’s resonator is a slot nearly as wide as the cabinet. The Guru’s claimed in-room bass response is 30Hz. Unlike the M&D speaker, the Guru depends on the room boundaries to help it produce low bass. I haven’t yet finished my experiments with the QM-10 (see next month’s review), but so far it seems that its bass lacks the gravity and authority of the M&D’s. Where the Maximus Monitor went into the depths of the bass region, the Guru seemed limited to the high 40Hz range. The Gurus’ dome tweeters did offer a more inviting and spacious sound, though, and created a soundstage of reasonable and realistic proportions. The Guru also seemed better able to deal with the wide dynamic range of Norah Jones’s voice, and where the DM-1 driver seemed overworked, the Guru’s driver combo had no trouble dealing with dynamic peaks.
Despite costing but a third the price of the M&D speaker -- and ignoring the fact that it simply does not do low bass -- the B&W CM-1 ($900/pair) is a formidable challenger in terms of midrange and treble performance. The CM-1’s Nautilus-tube-loaded tweeter and Kevlar mid/woofer are delights, re-creating lifelike vocals, detail, and special cues better than do many speakers costing far more. True to B&W’s long-established form, the CM-1 edged out the Maximus Monitor from the midrange up. Gilberto’s soft voice on "The Girl from Ipanema" was almost trance-inducing through the B&Ws -- I could almost swear I heard a gentle fog as he exhaled. But when it came to bass, the small British speaker wasn’t in the same league. Ray Brown’s aforementioned double bass, while tuneful and punchy, was nowhere near as substantive as through the Maximus Monitors. But many might be willing to sacrifice low bass to achieve a midrange and treble of the purity reproduced by the CM-1. It’s interesting to note that B&W, too, keeps the crossover frequency out of the midband, though in the case of the CM-1 they went high: 4kHz. Conclusion The Mark & Daniel Maximus Monitor is a solid speaker. It’s also a diamond in the rough. While it’s apparent that there is great beauty in its design, perhaps some further polishing is required before the MM can realize its full potential. Mark & Daniel seem to be on to something with their wideband DREAMS drivers -- it’s exciting to contemplate where the technology can be taken. With a little massaging to reduce distortion, the DREAMS DM-1 could well prove to be the driver that sets the bar for midrange performance among its peers. And if the M&D engineers can find a way to integrate Omni-Harmonizer-like dispersion into the Maximus Monitor without raising its price, and can tighten up the speaker’s spectacular bass response, they might well have a giant killer. . . . Colin Smith Mark & Daniel Maximus Monitor Loudspeakers US distributor: Website: www.markdanielofamerica.com Canadian distributor: Website: www.audiooasis.com
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