ML5 Reference Speakers

[Celts88]

John, you forgot to mention the material on the baffle that absorbs reflections. It's a bit like early Wilson and Duntech speakers used to have (felt around the tweeter) but much more elaborate. Mike seems to have thought of everything.

Gotta get myself to his workshop one day.

@Pim

Mate, if you get a chance to call down to Mike's workshop in Ashmore you'll find he's just a right down to earth guy, and when you get him talking about Hi-Fi, Speakers, etc. you'll be there all day (when he get's started talking technical gobbledygook about the speakers I'm totally lost, but he's a wealth of knowledge). Mike just keeps tweaking and tweaking, which means his speakers are only the exact same for a few here and there, but we (the customer) are the winners. He'll put in whatever Caps you want in the crossovers, I mean quality wise from the lower Jantzen Superior all the way up to Dueland Casts (my ML5's have Jupiter Copper).

I'm not 100% sure of the full technical story behind the acoustic foam front baffle, but from a distance you would never know it was there, and even if you do it just looks like it's meant to be there. I've added a photo of a red pair where it's easy to see the front foam baffles (the top baffle is the where the techno is for the tweeter isolation, bottom foam is just to make it all look in sync). These few photos below might explain part of it, and I'll see if I can find more info on SNA from previous threads by Mike et al

Ok, what I could find was the following; it's 52mm acoustic foam with the tweeter itself also isolated from the enclosure on the ML5 and is actually mounted on a rubberised foam mount - I think the 2rd/3rd photos are it (thats a tweeter with standard front plate where mine has the copper faceplate). Regarding the front baffle foam Mike says "In a conventional loudspeaker the solid baffle simply reflects energy forward with a time delay producing a particular type of distortion". I think he said he tries to partially isolate the tweeter from the large enclosure so it can image and soundstage like a mini monitor, with the bass woofer still powerful and extended to also play loud.

I've also included a photo of an ML2 speaker at the bottom (his mid-size speaker), and how the tweeter attaches normally.

Now I'm really getting myself lost in the technical jingo and I may have went curlywurly ways with the info, but hopefully this explains the concept behind it (talk to Mike on SNA and he'll explain).

PS in case anyone asks all the photos I've added are taken from Stereonet (a public Australian Hi-Fi forum), no private photos included, only those that Mike himself has added to his posts on Stereonet.