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Focal Dome vs. Morel Soundspot vs. Cambridge Audio Minx - Page 6

post #151 of 179
1/16/12 at 12:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 View Post

So...are you still in touch with them? Any possibility in the future for broader distribution and demo?

1. No
2. I have no idea and at this point, I don't care.

What I'd be interested in, is a speaker with perhaps a larger BMR driver. Say, 3 1/2 to 4 inches.
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post #152 of 179
1/16/12 at 12:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post


What I'd be interested in, is a speaker with perhaps a larger BMR driver. Say, 3 1/2 to 4 inches.

You know I agree with you on that.
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post #153 of 179
1/16/12 at 2:41pm
Thread Starter 
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...
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post #154 of 179
1/16/12 at 3:30pm
taichi4 needs to bring over a newly purchased pair of MilleniaOne's so we can compare them to the Minx Min 20's.
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post #155 of 179
1/16/12 at 3:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 View Post

But I'd love to see the results if they put it in a MilleniaOne-sized package...

They already did and it's called the Min 20 but in a smaller package.
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post #156 of 179
1/16/12 at 4:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post

taichi4 needs to bring over a newly purchased pair of MilleniaOne's so we can compare them to the Minx Min 20's.

In what alternate Universe will this be occurring?
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post #157 of 179
1/16/12 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post

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...
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post #158 of 179
1/16/12 at 5:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 View Post

I wish Cambridge Audio had the sense to have places that demo them!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post

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 View Post

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 View Post

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!
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post #159 of 179
1/16/12 at 6:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bazzy View Post


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?
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post #160 of 179
1/16/12 at 7:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post

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.
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post #161 of 179
1/17/12 at 7:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 View Post

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!
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post #162 of 179
1/17/12 at 9:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive View Post

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.
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post #163 of 179
1/17/12 at 9:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bazzy View Post

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)
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post #164 of 179
1/17/12 at 9:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 View Post

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.
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post #165 of 179
1/17/12 at 10:17am
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.
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post #166 of 179
1/17/12 at 8:37pm
Thread Starter 
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.
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post #167 of 179
1/18/12 at 11:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive View Post

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.
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post #168 of 179
1/18/12 at 12:05pm
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
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post #169 of 179
1/18/12 at 2:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive View Post

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.
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post #170 of 179
1/19/12 at 7:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by warpdrive View Post

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

There's no winning with you.

If you prefer the sound of your metallic drivers, so be it.
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post #171 of 179
1/19/12 at 8:49am
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.
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post #172 of 179
1/19/12 at 9:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by taichi4 View Post

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 View Post

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.
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post #173 of 179
1/19/12 at 10:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Perpendicular View Post

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.
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post #174 of 179
1/20/12 at 9:55am
Thread Starter 
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.
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post #175 of 179
1/20/12 at 3:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 View Post

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.
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post #176 of 179
2/7/12 at 7:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by diablo1 View Post

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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post #177 of 179
2/8/12 at 6:42pm
Thread Starter 
You guys had probably given up on me... But I'm back! I got everything about a week ago: MilleniaOne 5.0 system, Anthem MRX 300, and Paradigm Stylus 170 speakers for the bedroom. The MilleniaOnes are hooked up and sound awesome. I have not run ARC or done any other optimization yet, because I am getting new furniture in the next couple weeks, and would have to run it all again anyway... But even straight out of the box, it sounds quite nice. Then again, I'd been using my LCD TV's built-in speakers for a couple months, so anything with more than 15 watts would probably sound good at this point... Haha.

The SVS SB12 sounds awesome as well. Integrates well with the speakers - it's not at all easy to tell where the crossover frequency is. I'm very pleased with the system.

Here's the bad news, though. I just don't see how I can fit the sub in my room. I have a fireplace, bookshelves, a heater along the walls, and the other borders of the room are open or full of door openings... There just isn't a good place for it. I'm still within my 45-day return window (thank you SVS!), so I plan to send it back and get the MilleniaSub. It's a lot more money for a sub that won't sound any better, but on the bright side, I will actually have room for it, and I don't think it will sound worse, either. It's space vs. money, and I am going to have to go for space. But I still definitely recommend the MilleniaOne + SVS SB12 combo for anyone who has a good spot for a 14-inch shiny black cube.

I will report back once I have the new sub and have run the optimization stuff. Thanks for all your help with this decision... So far I am very happy.
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post #178 of 179
3/20/12 at 11:23am
Thank you for starting this thread! I've been in the market for a compact satellite system. Narrowed it down to the Minx S525 and the Paradigm MilleniaOne. I think I'm going to go the Minx route though... and (sadly) part of it has to do with the retailing model that Paradigm is using for their MilleniaOne. I can't shop around online for it since they bar internet sales, and when I called up one of their retailers in San Diego I felt like I was talking to a used car salesman. Anyways, will update on how it goes.. I am hopefully moving 'up' from a Bose 5.1 Acoustimass setup that I inherited a while back...
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post #179 of 179
9/2/12 at 11:27am
Thread Starter 
I know this thread has been inactive for a long time... But I wanted to follow up with an update. The Anthem MRX300 receiver, Paradigm MilleniaOne 5.0, and MilleniaSub are all up and working. I returned the SVS sub, even though I really liked it, because I wanted something that would fit under my bookshelf, where there is only ~6 inches of ground clearance. Just this afternoon, I finally got around to running ARC, and I posted the results over in the MRX forum: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1289533/anthem-mrx-receivers-300-500-700-owners-thread-tweaking-guide/12090#post_22365115. Threre is also a photo of my setup. It is still a work in progress, as you can see from the ladder and garbage bags, but it is getting close... Close enough that I thought it would be worth it to give ARC a shot and optimize the frequency response.

Thanks to everyone here for their advice and feedback. I am very happy with the setup so far. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help any of you!
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