Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

"First, check that the woofer is securely fastened to the baffle," unaware that I was hearing the same thing from both speakers. "The screws might have come loose in shipping. Second, if the woofer screws are tight, it is possible that either the complete crossover or one of its components, most likely a heavy inductor, has come loose in shipping. If you can't get inside the speaker to check this, I think you should ask for new samples."

Whaaa? New samples? No! I had a deadline!

I pressed. "Could it be because the Model Three is a sealed box? That the lowest note is creating excess air inside the cabinet that's bleeding through the cone?" Oops. "You have that upside down," John said. "Sealed box woofers are naturally controlled below the low-frequency resonance. The woofer in a ported speaker, by contrast, is unloaded below the port resonance frequency, and the cone can undergo alarmingly high excursions with subsonic frequencies on recordings."

Later, cruising down the highway in my peeling 2009 Dodge with the windows down, in deafening noise, brought ported speakers back to mind. And then it hit me. I sped home, practically tumbled down the stairs into my basement listening room, peered down at the speakers like a dad might at his enigmatic child, dropped to my knees, and with a silent prayer, removed those silvery grilles and set them aside. I then fired up that troublesome Molvær track and ... Hallelujah! The rattle from hell was gone!

The relief I felt was exhilarating. It was a d'oh moment, for sure, but one that cleared the clouds inside my listening room and allowed me to continue this review with peace of mind.

The lesson of this story: If you're going to listen to bass-heavy music through the Model Threes, get rid of those pretty grilles.

After grillegate, things were looking up. I needn't have worried about the bass: Bass is one of the M3's strong suits. That deep, disintegrating note at the beginning of Khmer? It was now big and smooth without a hint of disobedience. It was damped just right: juicy but not soppy. It had substance, physicality, integrity. It was timbrally nuanced, etched out in mutating. The soundstage? Wider than I expected. When those channel-alternating bass booms in Khmer showed up, they were farther apart than ever before, which allowed for more bass to fill in the space between the speakers, the musical equivalent of a double-stuff Oreo. The sound of Molvær's trumpet blazed out, slicing the air, launching luminous shards. It was dynamic and alive, with realistic bite and a glowing complexion. It was incisive, fast, articulate.

The sax sounded properly raspy and life-size. Compared to my Focal Aria K2 936s, the M3 showed more of the brass instruments' metal, less of the musicians' throaty fundamentals. The instruments didn't sound bright so much as metallically silhouetted, with contoured profiles. And they didn't mask the human player: I heard the artist behind the instrument.

I always assumed the dulcimer plucks that pan from left to right at the beginning of Khmer were computer generated and so mostly identical. But this time, I heard a real instrument being played in real time. I heard the technique: slight shifts in finger work, subtle changes in tonal intensity, a human playing. This was no studio gimmickry; it was human artistry. How could this be? Could the M3's midband really be this transparent?

I could hardly wait to listen to the next track. As soon as I did, that double-stuff Oreo soundstage appeared again—big and warm, generating sensual, throbbing Middle Eastern dreamscapes until a drumbeat dropped center stage and took off like a bandit with the rest of the music. It felt invigorating. When the track was over, I listened to the next track, and the one after, until a little voice in my head interjected: "Dude, enough with the notes already! How about some crispy calamari?"

I recently reviewed the Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G. Music flowed effortlessly through the Silver 500, like water down a slide. The M3, on the other hand, seemed to eject the music; to push it out. It's still effortless, but you sense a physical force propelling the music. The Silver 500's sound is ethereal; the M3's is grounded and earthy.

Erykah Badu's 1997 debut album, Baduizm (CD, UND-53027), is great music but a missed opportunity. With higher sound quality, this album could have been amazing. True, Baduizm sold a gazillion copies, regardless of what audiophiles thought of its loud, wiry sound. I was curious to hear how the M3 would handle this type of recording.

I was pleasantly surprised. First, the M3 was revealing enough to remind me how compression methods differ: It clearly showed the degree of compression the songs had been subjected to. The less compressed songs were easier and more enjoyable to listen to. They sounded bigger, sweeter, fleshier, airier, and more detailed. Background vocals stretched out from the sides; the soundstage had depth and warmth; bass was vigorous.

More importantly—and this was the acid test—the M3 made this recording listenable to the point that my mind was able to get past the mediocre production and focus on Badu's singing—to the way she sang, not just from a technical perspective. Badu inhabits the characters in her music, living their stories. She wasn't just singing, I realized: She was acting!

Mesmerized, I turned up the volume. The M3 didn't prettify her voice, which could still sound stringent, but it did allow the inherent musicality and humanness of the recording to penetrate my audio self-defense and make me receptive to the art. Music 1, dynamic compression 0.

"Chubb Sub," from Medeski, Martin & Wood's compilation Last Chance to Dance Trance (perhaps): Best of (1991-1996) (CD, Gramavision GCD 79520), is my go-to bass and transparency track. The music is bass heavy and mostly confined to a narrow vertical space. If you haven't heard it, imagine standing on a sidewalk watching a fistfight in an alleyway between fat, bumptious bass tones, and you'll get an idea of the mood of this piece. Too much bass will obscure much of the music, especially Medeski's keyboard. The more transparent and well-balanced the playback gear, the more information emerges through the dark cluster.

The M3s peeled back the gloom to reveal the bloom. They lacked the transient speed and sharp-edged definition of my Focals and the Monitor Audios I reviewed, but they delivered the music with voluptuous, gangbuster's bass that didn't smother higher frequencies. I could distinguish clearly between the various bass lines and drum patterns and Medeski's articulate forays on his keyboard. The M3 possessed a near-ideal balance between dark and light. I was able to appreciate the power of the bass and the artistic expression of each instrumental player.

That clinched it for me: The M3's second strongest suit was transparency. Understated transparency; it didn't call attention to itself. Detail wasn't hyped. The M3 preserved the richness and warmth inherent in the music.

Patricia Barber's Companion (CD, Blue Note 5229632) provided more proof that even though the standmount M3 has a tweeter just 24" off the ground, it can still sound open and generous. The instruments on this recording stood well-proportioned on a spacious bandstand. On the track "The Beat Goes On," Barber's organ took up the whole front wall, every note clear-cut and texturally resplendent. Barber's voice, thick with breath, had a rich, fleshy overtone. This was another recording I was tempted to listen to all the way through. A live recording that the M3s turned into live performance. Of course, they couldn't push out the same volume of air as my twin-woofered Focals, but thanks to their balanced demeanor, the limitation wasn't glaring. It was also the first time I noticed—all good speakers offer first-time musical reveals—how interlinked Barber's singing was to her keyboard, how they played off each other like the two parts of a tango. This relationship came to the fore. I heard similar interplay among members of the rhythm section. Still, some parts stood out: a shaker's angry rattle, the illumined resonance of the tambourine, the handclaps reflecting from every surface.

A moment came when I was listening to everything going on—Barber's luscious vocals and colorful piano, the crisp, potent drum strokes behind her, the meaty bass licks, and the bongo hand taps—when I noticed how convincingly the M3s disappeared. I thought, "I can see a lot of people liking these speakers."

And then came Radiohead's mind-bending album Kid A (CD, EMI 529220) with its plethora of sonic textures. The M3s beamed the synth notes at the beginning of "Everything in Its Right Place" across my room in a kaleidoscope of brimming colors.

The title track is a grand spectacle of glittering, morphing, overlapping studio effects interspersed with Tom Yorke's ghostly, warped vocals. The M3s delivered all of it: texture, scope, intricate arrangements, the music's psychedelic, post-human aura. And when, midtrack, the synth chords rose in a wall of sound, it was almost orchestral in breadth, blanketing my room in a lush weave of musical threads and sparkling spangles. The presentation felt expansive, close, and enveloping.

When the song ended, I sat for a minute, digesting. Then I looked at those squat speakers, their square jaws jutting defiantly, shook my head, and smiled.

End
The Model Three was fun. I hesitated to use that word—fun—because it could be (mis)construed as meaning good but not quite audiophile-good. So let me be clear: The M3 delivered both fun and refined audiophile sound, at a price I consider almost laughably low. It delivers music in a way that made this long-time audiophile shake his head and smile.

I love all gear, even the crazy-expensive, boundary-pushing stuff, but I have a soft spot for earthy, classic, overachieving, approachable components with character, guts, and a human core.

My first impression was that the essence of the M3 was timelessness, but that isn't quite right. After two months of living with them, I found their true spirit, and it's not something you'd expect from an iconic design. The KLH Model Three possesses the spirit of youth—vitality, confidence, hope for the future. It has a young heart, like me.