Thanks to Rick for inviting me to come over to his home last Thursday for a listen to Mejor before it is shipped to its lucky owner.
The Mejor is off the charts. It has RAAL tweeter, Illuminator midbass, I don't know what kind of bass driver in the separate sub unit, except he said it is not made anymore. It was not powered by plate amp, he had a medium power denon stereo amp driving the subs. Marantz 5ch driving the uppers. He just made a "quick" setup for me, which is scary considering how good it was. I didn't see any exotic wires.
Mejor played with DEQX active crossover and Ricks accurate but modest SS amps and wires. No 1000W monsters or exotic weirdos. The clarity and staging was awesome, depth and width. Depth resolution was the first thing I noticed. Instruments of all frequencies were placed in depth with very precise distance. I have never heard depth as good and it was not just the RAAL, because tuba and acoustic bass were equally as precisely placed in depth. L/R imaging was equally good, but not as surprising because I've heard other speakers image well L/R.
Dynamics were great, no pain on the strong peaks, no compression unless it is recorded. Bass control and tone was incredible. Brass instruments sounded like they were in the room. One track had a very well recorded wind ensemble with some tuba gymnastics. The tone, texture, depth placement of the tuba were incredible. It was like hearing the real thing. The bass was virtually invisible. It was so clear that it was easy to hear proximity effect of closed placed mics, and echo thickness coming off the floor on an Mapleshade acoustic bass recording.
Another track had a flugelhorn solo. Rick and I both played trumpet in previous lives, so we both got a kick out of hearing that incredible realism from a recorded brass instrument. All the stuff you only hear when you are playing it right in front of your head. It is so hard to get solo brass instruments really right. Much is lost by using the wrong mic to "tame" trumpets, violins, oboes, and other strong lead instruments, but this recording captured it and the Mejors laid it all out.
Another track had a 6 voice singing ensemble, the singers laid out across the pan. They were perfectly placed, rock solid imagining, but as the song got more and more complex toward the end, the layers and quick movements didn't get confused or congeal together, each voice, percussion, and instrument stayed in its place and the listening was effortless, even when the music got crazy.
Having recording and mastering experience I found it a little distracting at first to be able to hear all those production oriented details like mic selection, especially when it wasn't a good choice by the recordist. That tuba tune had the whole band recorded on a nice coincident pair, crystal clear and perfect space. But it also had a close miked guitar up front, the mic had a lot of proximity effect, and seemed cluttered among the rest. I was worried that I might not be able to disregard that kinda stuff. But when Rick's phone rang I had a few minutes listening alone to relax into the music and I quickly got past the detail and could select my own level of attention and where to concentrate or just zone out. The detail was not distracting, but it could be as intense as my mind wanted at any moment. But it was easy to just relax and let the detail exist without feeling like I had to chase it and hear it all. It is easy to get sucked in and hypnotized. All very much like live sound.
Finally I put on some of my wacky music, Jupiter Quartet playing Britten, Julia Fischer's Glazunov, and Kind of Blue. Aside from the slightly thin lower mids (fatness) of violin compared to my system, all my well known tracks never sounded better.
Overall it was extremely clean, but not sterile or clinical at all. I am used to more distortion from my bigger room and the Usher tweeter seems a little "sweeter" as it would with crossover cap in front of it and a lot more mass. The RAAL tweeter is not sweet, it's just not even there. It's something you have to experience, it is very different than any other tweeter. Rick really has all color removed from the whole speaker. It was like glass window. No veils? haha
The owner can easily add his own colors of preference via DEQX. +/- 1dB in lower midrange is a huge change. I craved a little more body on trumpet and violin, but Rick said that is very easy to tweak tone to taste, and save the presets for various purposes. He builds the speaker system and programs the basics into DEQX to achieve lowest distortion and pure flat response, then teaches the new owner how to alter the tone for his own preferences. But basic settings like crossover freq, driver characteristics are set from birth. Wires and caps and amps and tubes are not as powerful as DEQX for fine tuning the system's sound, or as fast or inexpensive. I can fatten up lower midrange with a wide Q +1dB bump from 250-500Hz, see how that sounds. Slightly muddy? slide it up 50Hz. Try that with tubes.
I also thought that the speaker was bright at first, but that's due to the wide and even horizontal dispersion of the ribbon tweeter, which lights up the room more than other tweeters which roll off faster off-axis so you get less side reflections. A lot more treble was hitting me from the sides that I am used to. I got used to it in just a few minutes and then instruments sounded very real. The DEQX FR graph showed that in room response was actually -5dB through much of the high treble. On my speakers I can hear when high treble is down just a little. It is better to have the abillity to adjust this to the room and hearing ability than to miss out because of typical dome dispersion with no way to boost highs in a passive crossover.
I realized in talking with Rick that this dispersion stuff, lobing, CO slopes etc... and his understanding of these subtle aspects of design make the difference between a wannabe loudspeaker cookbooker like me and a true master like Rick. The clarity and accuracy of Mejor is a great engineering achievement.
Rick was very generous to spend so much time with me - explaining his design philosophy, demonstrating and explaining DEQX system, giving specific advice about my speakers and possible upgrade paths, and of course lots of listening and talking about the Mejors. I really appreciated his design ethos - being a totally independent designer working on a custom basis, he can try out whatever ideas he wants, any drivers he wants, refine the design and offer for sale on spec, or as a custom job working directly to meet the specific desires of the customer. He can solve specific problems and meet specific goals of his customers.
I felt that we really hit it off and I'm looking forward to our next visit. I want Rick to design a custom passive crossover for my Ushers. But the active crossover on Mejor was so impressive I may try that first. I don't know whether my Behringer DCX2496 crossover can approach the DEQX, but worth a try. I asked Rick whether a well designed passive crossover can rival an active. He was confident that given opportunity to do his thing, he can. So that will be fun to explore.
Check out pics on the
Selah Audio Circle.
Thanks for the eye (and ear) opening visit Rick.
Rich
