Official MK - Miller & Kreisel Thread?!? - Page 8

That in a nutshell was what I was thinking.... Too bad though....would have snapped it up otherwise.....

By the way, could you please highlight what were the problems of your subs that sent for repair ?

I believe for all passive M&K speakers are robust but for all active one such as powered monitors or subwoofers need to pay some attentions while operating them.

I am now using SvS subs with my MK speakers setup(S5000+SS500+SS150) and 1 MK sub(MX5000) . Good match .

So what brand would you guys say that is most comparable to MK, BW?

If you were to buy a satellite 5.1 , 7.1 setup what would you buy?

You should check out Ascend Acoustics speakers. The owner/engineer use to be the senior engineer for M&K before he started his own company.

2 MK subs went bad. The exact reason? I don't know, I'm not an MK engineer.

However, the result of both were the same,

1) It lost it's "heart" it had no punch
2) Both had no ability to adjust the volume. It was on or off. On the volume knob, the second you moved it slightly from the lowest (off) position, it was at full volume. Mind you it still played but it did not perform like it used to.

I called MK and sent in the crossovers only. They promptly fixed them and shipped them back. I can't tell if it was just a problem with the speaker or (since it happened to 2 seperate subs, not at the same time though) the electrical feed. My problem was that I had some massive protector for my TV, DVD, etc . . . But because of space, I had to put the sub in the back of the room and could not plug into the protector. So I had it just plugged into the wall.

So hence I say, buy a NICE protector if you buy a MK sub because a simple surge may make your 2,000 sub completely useless now. Not good.

I don't have any experience with a powered speaker, but since it speaker level driven (I believe anyhow) and not plugged in, it is safe as long as you have a good receiver. Then again I have no experience, and am just speaking from an engineering standpoint.

Thanks for the information on your past repair experience with M&K subwoofers.

It appeared to be the problem of crossover rather than the woofer units. For these electronics or electric fault may easily be solved by experience repair technicians. If it was the damage to the woofer units then the subwoofer may become useless as no more replacement parts available if M&K closed down.

Touch wood ! I do hope my M&K subwoofers and powered monitor speakers are working well in my home theater for extended enjoyment.

The Ascends are fairly inexpensive, but certainly get rave reviews.

I'll check those out (once my sub goes bad)

I was thinking about the powered speakers. Why does anybody need them? The S-150 series (and most others) take 400 watts. If you hook up a high end receiver, you will never need to also have powered speakers. The more you have, the more there is to go wrong. Now that MK is gone, you are better off keeping things simple and leave the power to the receiver.

Well to each his own.There's more to active speakers than just hooking up an amp.
to the passive ones. You get better speaker control, active crossover, each amp is tuned
if you will for that speaker. Overall it's just a better sounding speaker to some.I happen to
one of those guys who like active speakers. Here is a link to a 150 Active M&K review it's a long article so read it all. If you ever get the chance to listen to the M&K 150P I think you will agree they are awesome.


http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...rs-1-2003.html

All the Best
Dewboy3

I just watched Casino Royale with them. They are definitely awesome. I just hope they don't fail because I'd have no way to fix them.

Well you have implementations like Meridian's DSP speakers which have specific amps for specific drivers. Their implementation is true tri-amping. Add that to having the D/A converters co-located at the speakers and you truely have one outstanding setup. Too bad they ask an arm and a leg for their speakers. Otherwise, I would own a set. But to me for the money they are asking, I don't hear enough advantage to justify spending the extra money to step into these speakers.

As to "why do you need powered speakers?"

400W/channel is a decent amount of power. You're talking about a rather massive receiver if you want 7.1 channels at 400W/ch, or a rather decent sized stack of amps. Both take up a lot of room, and both create massive amounts of heat at medium-loud volumes in a small space. If rack space is at a premium, or if airflow around your rack is a problem, then it's much better to move the amps to the speakers to spread out the heat and shrink the overall volume of space that all of your equipment would take up, as most powered speakers are the same size or only marginally larger than their non-powered counterparts.

Assuming you have a power source near each speaker, of course.

From a "pro audio" standpoint, a lot of mobile DJ's will choose powered speakers for the above reasons. Less overall space taken up in their hatchback, and no need to lug around a 200 lb amp rack, since the weight of the amp is split up amongst the speakers.

Again, assuming that you have a power source near each of the speakers.

As far as repairs, I would assume that a competent electronics tech could still fix an M&K amp if it were to go bad (it's not like you'd be voiding your warranty). Assuming M&K can release schematics for repair techs. But even then, I would think that most of the things that could go wrong with a sub amp are pretty much the same across the board, and troubleshooting wouldn't be as much of a pain as it would seem.

It's not like they use exotic unobtanium parts, it's more a matter of part selection and attention to detail. To wit, the capacitors in my sub (V-2B) are rather generic, but the solder joints, etc, show a pretty decent level of attention that I usually only see in avionics assembly.

Which reminds me... I still need to get the capacitor assembly fixed on that sub...

Active speakers certainly have their place, as well as many advantages. But when it comes to room size, and logistics of placement for your particular room, compromises may have to made, which in itself is nothing new. For all, they are not necessarily cost-effective or 'convenient'.
Given a very large room or small 'theater' it is something I might consider myself.

HOWEVER, when they go bad, you have an expensive pile of garbage. It is pointless to go the powered route at this point in time. Stick with the standard speakers and spend the money on a better more powerful receiver.

I believe you may be giving people the wrong impression, with regard to fully active speakers like M&K's S-150P etc (active x-over, bi-amplified etc). There are many very good reasons why most professional recording studios have switched to fully active nearfield and mid-field monitoring systems, and reliability and performance are at the top of the list.

There are numerous companies producing high quality fully active speakers, but at this time most of them are being aimed at the professional recording studio market (music, post, broadcast etc.). I am sure over time this will change, and fully active speakers will become more commonplace in consumer applications...

...I don't want to hijack this thread, but you may want to do some more research on fully active speakers, in particular studio monitors.

Cheers!

The idea of active speakers is hardly new, and a good design could ensure reliability. I don't see anything in the concept that would pose a serious challenge to a knowledgeable designer.
Marketing it beyond the enthusiast could certainly be a bigger obstacle.

Yes, I have begun a search to find out the compnents that went into M&Ks. I sent an e-mail to ken as stated on the homepage, but didn't get a reply.

I'm the worlds biggest procrastinator, and didn't send in my tri-poles that I cooked for repair like they told me to about 4 or 5 years ago. Too late now, huh? I'm hoping to discover which tweeter and drivers they use somehow tho. And I'm pretty sure I burnt some inductors in the crossovers. I doubt they're labelled to replace them with the right size inductor, so I really screwed up not sending them in.

On a different note, given the announcement on their website I'm left wondering if Ken Kreisel didn't let the company fold on purpose due to the Chinese piracy that was making its way around the globe.

Top 10 reasons why I procrastinate:
1.

.....lol.....

This is strange...

I'm not sure M&K are out of business.

The things I've heard is that they are going to go on, but without Ken Kreisel. possibly with another brand name. According to what I have heard Ken has not been very easy to work with the last couple of years, and is now forced out of the company. By who I don't know. Hard to beleve that the European distrubitor in Denmark would just buy counterfit stuff of the Chinese factory like nothinh has happend?

Here in Sweden it's seens there is no problems what so ever with delivery problems, or things out of stock, even with the S-150 system. Seems like the dealers have a steady supply and they say M&K is not stopping with the production, or rather, the chinese factory is producing speakers as never before.....But according to my "source", Ken has control over the website at this time.

The question I have is, who is runnging the business? cant be Ken Kreisel from what i know. Is it the chinese guys, or is it some american M&K guys?

Well, I hope all speculations as my own above can be put to an end and we all can get to know what really happend.

Regards

/Chuck

They filed chapter 7. It's over, done, finished. Get over it.

Don't be "that guy" You know the guy who still waits for his ex-wife 10 years down the road to "come back"

No more MK in the U.S. Give it up.

It is interesting that the website is still up though.

And as for the powered speakers, do you people read me post?

When did I say that the standard is better? READ my post. Standard is NOT better. EXCEPT for when the company that makes them is no longer. And spending THOUSANDS of dollars on a speaker, with NO warrant and NO way to fix them is a STUPID STUPID purchase. If you want powered speakers (and don't have them already) then go buy them from a company that can repair them.

Maybe I'll do some reverse engineering and figure it out. I'll open a MK repair show and make everyone happy!

Amen.

Sounds like me! I bought a pair of MPS 1525mk2 surrounds a couple of years ago. This is exactly the same speaker as the SS150 surrounds but has the pro-audio model number. I noticed a slightly different timber or tonal quality to one of the speakers but was too lazy at the time to send them in for repair. Well, last week I got off my duff and went to their site to get a return authorization but the were bankrupt, so I set off to fix them myself.

I took the speakers apart and swapped tweeters and the problem followed the tweeter, so that was the culprit. By the way, the cross-overs in these speakers are nicely built! Anyways, Madisound speakers is about 2 miles from where I live so I took in a tweeter and they identified it as a Peerless. It appears that M&K might have added their own voice coil to the tweeter because the 8 ohms stamped on the speaker was crossed off and 4 ohms written over it. The rubber damping material surrounding one of my tweeters was a bit frayed -- I think it was a manufacturing flaw. So, it seemed that Madisound couldn't get the tweeter but they had what appeared to be an identical voice coil. Sweet! I bought 10 voice coils in case my S1-C's ever need them. The speakers now sound great and I changed voice coils in both of them. It's really easy to take the tweeter apart, no soldering or ferro-fluid to mess with. The voice coil is a Peerless "Butterfly" Cat. no. 794648. Made in Denmark.

So much for each speaker is individually checked, huh?

Let me ask what some of you might choose as an alternate speaker of choice.. if you wanted to upgrade and the M&K offerings are slim or none?
Or what was your back up choice when you chose M&K?

My first choice were Paradigm Reference Studio 20's. I was convinced to purchase a pair of MK B1600's around cost from a retailer going out of business once I heard them. Since the other retailer didn't have the 20's to demo, I bought the B1600's instead as I have to trust my ears.

Sure would have liked to listen to the 20's though for a fair comparison. Anyone out there own both and can give me a comparison?

Let me ask what some of you might choose as an alternate speaker of choice.. if you wanted to upgrade and the M&K offerings are slim or none?
Or what was your back up choice when you chose M&K?

I'm looking at Triad as we speak. I like Paradigm Reference Signature (S4)
with a Sub of course. Thiel's, Genelec. I have alway liked Magnepan for 2 channel
but they are large my favorite is 3.6's

Dewboy3

Also, take a look at the Dynaudio BM5A: very smooth, accurate sound with amps included and loads of adjustability for $500 a side.