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Focal Dome vs. Morel Soundspot vs. Cambridge Audio Minx

43K views 178 replies 20 participants last post by  diablo1 
#1 ·
I've been researching compact sat/sub systems for about a month, and have it narrowed down to 3 that I think would work well given my needs and space: Focal Dome 5.1, Morel Soundspot Music Theater 2, and Cambridge Audio Minx s325. The room is about 17 x 13 ft with 10.5 ft ceilings, and the TV is on the longer wall, near the middle. Because it is a compact space and it's also my living room, I don't want anything larger than the speakers I mentioned above. Usage will be mostly for TV, movies (including 3D Blu-Ray), and video games, with some music, though not any of the fancy sources like SACD or DVD audio. Probably 50/20/20/10 TV/video games/movies/music.


I contacted the local dealers for all 3 of these companies, and unfortunately, no one has any of them set up in the showroom. These vendors tend to focus on higher-end audio and also on 2-channel setups... So unfortunately, I may need to buy without doing a demo.


In terms of aesthetics, I think the round ones (Focal and Morel) would be a bit better in my room, since it is full of straight lines and right angles - the round shapes would add something visually interesting. The Minx system is about half the price of the other two, though...


In terms of sound quality, I have read very positive things about all three systems. I would probably be ok with any one of them. I am trying to figure out if it is worth it to splurge for the pricier setups. I plan to listen to this system for 10+ years, so if it is worth the extra money, I don't mind paying up.


Please let me know if you have any suggestions, or experience with these speakers. Thank you!
 
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#153 ·
I'd like to see that too. Many people looking for a compact speaker are able to accommodate a cabinet size larger than a Coke can... If Cambridge Audio put their innovative driver technology to work in a slightly larger package, it could have wider appeal (larger rooms, lower low-end) and be a really interesting product. Not to say the Minx isn't great already... Obviously it is. But I'd love to see the results if they put it in a MilleniaOne-sized package...
 
#157 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular /forum/post/21503030


They already did and it's called the Min 20 but in a smaller package.

Min 20 is less than 1/3 the physical volume of the MilleniaOne (L x W x D). If they tripled the size of the Min 20, it would still be very compact, but could probably play louder and lower. That would be cool... I'm just agreeing with you guys when you said you'd like to see a similar design with a larger driver...
 
#158 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 /forum/post/21501943


I wish Cambridge Audio had the sense to have places that demo them!


Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular /forum/post/21501959


Well, after talking to me (both Cambridge Audio in England & Audio Plus Services the North American Distributor), several months later and they still can't setup a dealer (in our area) for a demo.




I am British, live in the land where the damn things are made & have a number of stores who sell them exclusively around the entire country & yet, I have to rely on a bunch of AVS Cool Dudes with 3000 miles of Ocean & another 3000 miles of land away from me to get an unbiased idea of what they sound like! More dealers in the USA - right, I can't a demo from shops that sell them in the UK & London so that fact you guys have a dealer there is obviously due to some biblically error by CA & not by design - my advice - keep quiet or you might lose that too!

Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 /forum/post/21502703


I'd like to see that too. Many people looking for a compact speaker are able to accommodate a cabinet size larger than a Coke can... If Cambridge Audio put their innovative driver technology to work in a slightly larger package, it could have wider appeal (larger rooms, lower low-end) and be a really interesting product. Not to say the Minx isn't great already... Obviously it is. But I'd love to see the results if they put it in a MilleniaOne-sized package...


Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 /forum/post/21503323


Min 20 is less than 1/3 the physical volume of the MilleniaOne (L x W x D). If they tripled the size of the Min 20, it would still be very compact, but could probably play louder and lower. That would be cool... I'm just agreeing with you guys when you said you'd like to see a similar design with a larger driver...




Ha!Ha! Don't make me laugh - Experts you guys might be on Speakers but you obviously know nothing about the British (or Cambridge Audio) way of doing business which is basically **** - This is Britain we are talking about - why do it the easy/right way when we can do it the hard/wrong way?!!


Bazzy!
 
#159 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bazzy /forum/post/21503637



I am British, live in the land where the damn things are made & have a number of stores who sell them exclusively around the entire country & yet, I have to rely on a bunch of AVS Cool Dudes with 3000 miles of Ocean & another 3000 miles of land away from me to get an unbiased idea of what they sound like! More dealers in the USA - right, I can't a demo from shops that sell them in the UK & London so that fact you guys have a dealer there is obviously due to some biblically error by CA & not by design - my advice - keep quiet or you might lose that too!


Ha!Ha! Don't make me laugh - Experts you guys might be on Speakers but you obviously know nothing about the British (or Cambridge Audio) way of doing business which is basically **** - This is Britain we are talking about - why do it the easy/right way when we can do it the hard/wrong way?!!


Bazzy!

So...is it that Cambridge Audio has a terrible business model....or do you dislike their speakers?
 
#160 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular /forum/post/21501772


Can of worms or not, if this is a consideration in one's room, there is always room calibration that will handle this problem along with, of course, many others. If someone doesn't use RC, there's always the passive way to do it with sound absorption. Frankly, what speaker doesn't have it's own set of problems in whatever room it's in? [rhetorical]


I will repeat myself here. The Minx speakers are the most revealing of all the sub/sat systems I've heard.

RC filtering can only help the speaker conform to a general target. RC processing can't fix narrowband peaks in FR, even something like XT32 or ARC. Adding drapes or RC filtering to a speaker won't help to tame problems like harshness or sibilance. Using sound treatments also tends to have a blanket effect on a wide range of frequencies, some of which don't need fixing. It's approaching the problem from the wrong end, I always look for a speaker that performs well on its own and then I fix the remaining problems with room treatments. If you start off with a pig, adding lipstick isn't going to make the problem go away.


Personally I'm quite adverse to speakers that are "revealing" but actually are artificially revealing. Usually it amounts some kind of frequency response or resonance anomaly which people mistake as revealing extra detail. The Adam A7 monitors I've used before were extremely revealing due to the ART tweeter but I wouldn't want to listen to music on them everyday.


Looking at either of the graphs of the Min 10 (either the S&V or HTmag) doesn't really inspire any confidence. Either they are 5dB too strong in the treble or have no treble at all. But I suppose I should give these a try. I might be convinced to buy these to add to the bedroom TV I just bought, especially since it's the one place where I need a satellite with no footprint at all, and I can tolerate something that has to be crossed over at 200Hz.
 
#161 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 /forum/post/21503716


So...is it that Cambridge Audio has a terrible business model....or do you dislike their speakers?

Hi,


It is their business model I have issues with - why make your products so difficult to audition/buy whether in your the home country or overseas? I don't see the point in going to ever expanding markets only then to severely limit opportunities for the actual product!


Bazzy!
 
#162 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive /forum/post/21504027


But I suppose I should give these a try. I might be convinced to buy these to add to the bedroom TV I just bought, especially since it's the one place where I need a satellite with no footprint at all, and I can tolerate something that has to be crossed over at 200Hz.

The Min 10 is okay but the 20 really shines. These two speakers have different suggested crossover recommendations. The Min 10 is 140 hz and the Min 20 is 130 hz. I highly recommend the Min 10 at around 150 hz and even though the 20 is rated to 130 hz, I'd recommend 150 hz too (for best sound at higher volume) but no lower than 120 hz. Reason is, I tested the Min 20 with a SLM and measured it down to around 109 hz +/- 3db on-wall. I sure would love to see a professional graph measurement on the Min 20 because it's definitely better sounding than the Min 10 with more midrange presence and smoother highs.
 
#163 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bazzy /forum/post/21505528


Hi,


It is their business model I have issues with - why make your products so difficult to audition/buy whether in your the home country or overseas? I don't see the point in going to ever expanding markets only then to severely limit opportunities for the actual product!


Bazzy!

Aha! Now I understand you. I thought, perhaps, you had gotten Lyles' Golden Syrup on your keyboard.



Well, you should at least feel comforted by the fact that the business model in the US is equally deranged in many instances. It's a world-wide mental and ethical breakdown.


Have you, nonetheless, heard the Minx 325 system?


Glad to have our British cousin on the thread. And I do love British loudspeakers.


Cheers.

(Cool Dude icon)
 
#164 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 /forum/post/21506258


Well, you should at least feel comforted by the fact that the business model in the US is equally deranged in many instances. It's a world-wide mental and ethical breakdown.

I wouldn't blame CA for it's lack of dealers/distributorship in the US. I would blame the North American distributor. They have total control on who sells what, where, when and how.
 
#165 ·
I still feel that the dispersion pattern of the BMR can skew typical frequency response measurement. (Not that the posted graph is anything but good).


In this article frequency response and other speaker parameters are discussed.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/m...t-three-page-3


This quote is interesting, although not as specific as I would like, but I'm time constrained at the moment.


'...Assessing the acoustic performance of big panel speakers is therefore an undertaking fraught with difficulty. Some years ago, for example, I had to measure a loudspeaker that had a small dome tweeter that radiated sound only in the forward direction, a large ribbon midrange unit that behaved as a dipole, and an omnidirectional woofer. Both the measured response and the perceived balance of this speaker varied according to how far away the listener and microphone were, rendering meaningless any discussion of this speaker's "frequency response." '


The point is that measuring the BMR, with its nearly hemispherical dispersion at higher frequencies, may be a subtler affair than with a more conventional speaker. I'm fairly certain that omnidirectional and dipole speakers are more difficult to assess with standard testing setups, and the same may apply to the Minx to some degree.


As to your point, Jeffrey, I'm not attributing blame to any specific party, but to a breakdown somewhere in the business chain. But CA is responsible for its choice of distributor, and needs to assess and exert that responsibility given that they are the "face" of CA here in the US.


Our British friend has his own critique, as you know.


But hey, I want them to succeed, and they need demos.
 
#166 ·
The way Cambridge Audio handles sales now is kind of the "worst of both worlds". You don't get the benefits of the direct internet sales model: low overhead, no dealer margins, immediate shipping, generous returns; but you also don't get the benefits of a dealer network: ability to demo the product, salespeople who are knowledgeable and committed, etc. I could not find a single dealer in NYC that had the Minx set up for demos. They all said they had CA's amps and receivers in the showroom, but not the little speakers. Too bad... There is obviously a good amount of interest.
 
#167 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive /forum/post/21504027


Personally I'm quite adverse to speakers that are "revealing" but actually are artificially revealing.

Well, as an addition to them being revealing
, I find the Minx lower in coloration than any other satellite speaker I've heard. Voices sound real and float in a 3-Dimensional space along with the instruments. I listen to a lot of music, and the closer I can get to, feel the recording, the better. I find the same thing with movies. Wherever a particular scene is filmed, you hear the sound of that space like you are actually in it too.
 
#168 ·
that's certainly a lot of hype to live up to with claims like that.


Personally, I would demand a realistic soundstage than everything floating in space



Coloration is a loaded term, I always prefer low distortion, linear sounding speakers (before any graphs were ever published of the MilleniaOne, I knew they sounded linear when I heard them). In the past, the studio monitors I've used for recording/mixing were always calibrated to, at worst, +/-1dB within its bandwidth at my listening position. Anything else is massively colored
 
#169 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive /forum/post/21512232


that's certainly a lot of hype to live up to with claims like that.


Personally, I would demand a realistic soundstage than everything floating in space



Coloration is a loaded term, I always prefer low distortion, linear sounding speakers (before any graphs were ever published of the MilleniaOne, I knew they sounded linear when I heard them). In the past, the studio monitors I've used for recording/mixing were always calibrated to, at worst, +/-1dB within its bandwidth at my listening position. Anything else is massively colored

There are some fine reviews at the beginning of this thread, posted by Perpendicular. They support the notion that the Minxes handle the human voice with great naturalness... not easy to achieve, and not typically achieved with speakers that contribute coloration.
 
#171 ·
Forgive me if I'm wrong, Jeffrey, but I took your description to mean that the musicians/performers/instruments seem to occupy a three dimensional space. Floating, the way I take this sort of description, is used because you don't actually have physical bodies occupying that space.


Every review I've read describes the Minx as highly realistic, recreating a huge soundstage when the original source material records a huge soundfield.


Naturalness appears to be the strong suit of the Minx.


But you would know that better than I.
 
#172 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 /forum/post/21513138


There are some fine reviews at the beginning of this thread, posted by Perpendicular.

You may have your Threads mixed up because I have not Posted until the last few pages.

Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 /forum/post/21516498


Forgive me if I'm wrong, Jeffrey, but I took your description to mean that the musicians/performers/instruments seem to occupy a three dimensional space. Floating, the way I take this sort of description, is used because you don't actually have physical bodies occupying that space.


Every review I've read describes the Minx as highly realistic, recreating a huge soundstage when the original source material records a huge soundfield.


Naturalness appears to be the strong suit of the Minx.


But you would know that better than I.

Yes, they create a large soundstage but no one and nothing is floating. If that was the case, you'd have ghosts in your room too.
They seem to be more real in respect to being closer to a live event. I know some of this "Live" feel I'm hearing is partly the result of my ICEamps. Everything just seems more realistic sounding. YMMV with your electronics in the signal path.
 
#173 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular /forum/post/21515954


There's no winning with you.



If you prefer the sound of your metallic drivers, so be it.

How do you know what I prefer? I own or owned speakers with fabric domes, heil type transducers, electrostatic drivers, titanium and aluminum domes. So it's obvious that I don't prefer any one type of driver. There is no "superior" type of driver, they all have their pros/cons depending on the application and the overall design.
 
#174 ·
I just talked to the dealer... They are now saying that they have gotten the receiver, but the MilleniaOne speakers are backordered. It has been THREE weeks since I placed the order, and I am still AT LEAST 10 days from receiving anything (dealer needs to receive the order and then ship it to me).


At this point I am getting worried that I won't even have everything set up before the 45-day return period on my SVS sub runs out. I am losing patience fast here.
 
#175 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 /forum/post/21522209


I just talked to the dealer... They are now saying that they have gotten the receiver, but the MilleniaOne speakers are backordered. It has been THREE weeks since I placed the order, and I am still AT LEAST 10 days from receiving anything (dealer needs to receive the order and then ship it to me).


At this point I am getting worried that I won't even have everything set up before the 45-day return period on my SVS sub runs out. I am losing patience fast here.

I was lucky my local dealer had the Millenia One 5 speaker system in stock. Had mine over a week and i am very happy with them.
 
#176 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 /forum/post/21522209


I just talked to the dealer... They are now saying that they have gotten the receiver, but the MilleniaOne speakers are backordered. It has been THREE weeks since I placed the order, and I am still AT LEAST 10 days from receiving anything (dealer needs to receive the order and then ship it to me).

I guess this is what can happen after a magazine gives a product a 'product of the year' award.


Hang in there, I've had my MilleniaOnes for a year now and the Seismic 110 for over 6 months. I think you will like them...
 
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