[ekovalsky]

Got to hear both systems today at L&M Custom Home Theater in Tempe, AZ today.  Other rooms featured the Dali Megalines, Sonus Faber Stradivari Homage, and the Martin Logan Summit.  Each room has its own dedicated system and is setup as a high end home theater worthy of a magazine layout.  Great store to visit if you are in the area!  Even women will appreciate it, I am going to take my wife there later in the week.

The mbl 101e sounded very different from my own system.  To me they didn't sound right.  Imaging seemed diffuse and frequency balance sounded off.  Low bass support was mediocre at best.  Speakers were very inefficient although they would play loud -- the big McIntosh amps were throwing hundreds of watts into them at what felt like moderate listening levels.  The sound did stay remarkably stable everywhere in the room, I guess this is the claim to fame of omnis.  Room was 17' x 24' with ceiling at about 12'.  I have heard the mbl 101e sound better, at CES a few years ago as part of the mbl reference system.  Maybe the speakers didn't play nice with the McIntosh electronics. The mbl speakers are absolutely gorgeous in person, with a very unusual design.  Construction quality and attention to detail was typical of fine German engineering.

Onto the big McIntosh line arrays.  WOW!  The sound was instantly familiar, very much like my home rig even though there was absolutely no room correction.  This system was set up in the store's largest space, about 30'L x 20'W x 14'H so this probably kept room problems to a minimum.  Speakers were driven by the MC2KW amps (three chassis per side, 2000 watts per channel continuous into 8 ohms).  This system has no compromise bass support, effortless dyanamics, superb timbral accuracy, and precise imaging.  The design looks crazy -- an array of six aluminum woofers behind a bizarre array of 64(!) 2" inverted dome titanium mid drivers and 40(!) 3/4" titanium dome tweeters all in a one piece per side system.  Crossovers are 250hz and 1.5khz.  On the rear there are 11 pairs of binding posts accomodating everything from single amping to tri-amping.  Construction quality seemed excellent and the speakers are very attractive with the grills in place.  This loudspeaker system is a true masterpiece.

Will a McIntosh XRT2K system replace the Alons in an expanded listening room ?  Stay tuned....

[zybar]

Here is the link to McIntosh XRT2K page:

http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/mcprod/shopdisplayproducts.asp?hid=1&id=20&cat=Loudspeaker+Systems&prodid=1114&product=XRT2K

Here are a few pictures:






George

[ekovalsky]

A few more pics.  I don't quite know why this type of array design works but it does.  I didn't detect any lobing/combing issues and the sound was superbly coherent despite 104 individual array drivers per side, plus six woofers behind them.  Must be the small size and close spacing of the drivers, low frequency of crossovers (I am uncertain of the slopes).  I'm going back for more listening later in the week and will follow-up with impressions and more pictures.

[dave_c]

I've heard these in SF and was also impressed.  They seemed to work fine in a relatively small room as well.  I'm not sure if it was the limitless power or the design of the line array, but it definitely sounded different from other systems I've heard.  Everything was really big and smooth and the image remained pretty stable around the room.

[HChi]

Hi ekovalsky, what are the major differeces you have heard between XRT2K and Alon?  Do you think if XRT2K are active XO and tri-amp'ed would they bring more to the table?   For the 101E, which Mac amps were used?  I know that they power hungry and need tons of powers to sound good.  Thanks for the review and let us know how much you wife like it too. 

[ekovalsky]

Hi ekovalsky, what are the major differeces you have heard between XRT2K and Alon?  Do you think if XRT2K are active XO and tri-amp'ed would they bring more to the table?   For the 101E, which Mac amps were used?  I know that they power hungry and need tons of powers to sound good.  Thanks for the review and let us know how much you wife like it too. 

The mbl 101e were powered by the MC1201 mono amps with 1200 watts per channel.  Based on what the blue meters were showing, they were sucking a lot of that available power.  Much like my old Apogees, they are very inefficient but will play at very high volumes given sufficient power.  What I heard was very interesting, but not necessarily what I'd call great sound.  But these speakers are a work of art even with no music playing.

I didn't get long to listen to the XRT2K system, but I immediately connected with them because they sounded so much like the Alons.  But the Alons are quad amped with room correction and DSP crossovers, the XRT2K had no room correction and were single amped (with the monster MC2KW).  Later in the week I'm going back to listen more thoroughly to the XRT2K and should be able to form some more opinions then.  The 3/4" done titanium tweeters and 2" inverted titanium dome midranges look to be very cheap drivers -- maybe Aurasound ?  Even if they are cheap, there was obviously strength in numbers because the midrange-tweeter integration was completely seemless and I heard no distortion even at volume levels approaching a jet engine at full throttle.  I think the woofers may be sourced from Aurasound too, if so they have a well deserved reputation.

I'd be interested in what the line array gurus here (Rick, Danny, Al, etc) think about the design.  Based on what I heard, this unusual array configuration has a lot of merit.  According to the manual "locating the column of tweeters between the two columns of midranges generates a symmetrical horizontal polar response for superior imaging.".  In case any of them see this thread and would like to comment, here are the relevant specs of the array:

tweeter CTC spacing 1.75"
midrange CTC spacing 2.19" (vertical) / 3.6" (horizontal)
woofer CTC spacing 12.75"

woofer low pass filter: quasi second order,
"acoustically sums to 4th order Linkwitz-Riley"

midrange low & high pass filters: second order
"high pass acoustically sums acoustically to 4th order Legendre"
"low pass acoustically sums acoustically to 4th order Linkwitz-Riley"

tweeter high pass filter: second order,
"acoustically sums to 4th order Linkwitz-Riley"

There are pics of the crossover circuits in the manual referenced above.  The speaker does thankfully have separate inputs for active multi-amping

All seems reasonable to me, though the vertical CTC spacing of the tweeters seems too high.  Too bad they didn't use ribbon drivers instead of the inverted metal domes.

[brj]

Good to see you posting again, Eric - haven't seen you around in a while!

The design looks crazy -- an array of six aluminum woofers behind a bizarre array of 64(!) 2" inverted dome titanium mid drivers and 40(!) 3/4" titanium dome tweeters all in a one piece per side system.  Crossovers are 250hz and 1.5khz.

I know you gain some efficiencies with an array, but they crossed 3/4" tweeters at 1.5 kHz?  That seems amazingly low...

Likewise, 250 Hz is generally considered directional in nature, which makes me wonder how the mid/tweeter array is not affecting the woofer output?  The structure and damping on the mid/tweeter array must also be impressive considering the energy output possible from that woofer array.

Nonetheless, interesting speakers!