Originally Posted by
CarloM
I may or may not have been in the room when the B100s were demoed by Dave...
As someone who has listened to the F100 towers in multiple Best Buy/Magnolia listening rooms, A/B'ing it with other towers in their showroom, it literally sounds like the Loudness function was baked into the speakers.
For those who remember the loudness button in older A/V receivers from the 80's and earlier, it was designed to offset the old phenomenon of, as you lower the volume on speakers, the bass and upper treble fall off faster than the mids. So by pressing the loudness button, the older receivers just boosted the bass and treble (kind of like a smile shaped EQ). But you were only supposed to engage the loudness function at low volumes so that at those levels you got the bass and treble back. But if you kept it on at loud volumes, you just got bass and treble boosted inappropriately. That's what the new ML line sounds like to me. It sounds great at low to low-medium volumes, but put it at say 70db average (or higher) and then the bass (for the towers, as the bookshelves don't have the same bass extension) and the trebles are boosted inappropriately.
So I think a lot of the internet reviewers who are more "subjective focused" who love the new ML line may be falling for the old "louder is better" audio phenomenon. The MLs, due to the boosted bass and trebles, sound "better" because they're louder in the bass and treble region. It's interesting that we haven't seen (at least I haven't, as of my writing this) seen Klippel NFS measurements of this line from the likes of Erin's Audio Corner, or Amir from ASR. We can quibble with our own personal audio preferences differing from those (and other) reviewers, but there is definitely a value in seeing the Klippel NFS measurements of speakers.
I bet that once someone puts the F100 on the Klippel NFS, they'll find boosts in both the bass and the treble regions.