Thread for the iLoud Micro Monitor and MTM speakers.
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ILOUD GANG
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The Micro Monitor are a nice entry level powered speakers for desktop use. I don’t have a lot of experience outside of these to give a comparison to. But the size and rugged construction make them easy to use just about anywhere.
Depth and imaging are eye opening to a guy who’s not played in the 2 channel space yet. This isn’t saying much, given my experience, but these are easily the best sounding desktop speakers I’ve heard.
They are very nearfield - much more than 5 or 6 feet away and the sound quality is diminished. Not a speaker intended to fill a room - although the bass reflections will certainly fill a room!. Maintaining a nice symmetric triangle between you and the two speakers makes them sound their best. Maybe this is obvious, but if you move much outside of that zone all of the imaging and spatial presence vanishes and it’s just a wall of sound. There are moments when I close my eyes and I can’t tell where the speakers are. I would ssare there’s a little band sitting on my desk between the speakers (and even outside the speakers to the right and left).
So much DSP and porting is used to get bass out of a 2.5" driver that on some tracks the lower mids / upper bass can bleed and become boomy. Mids and Treble are clear and sparkly, giving good definition and positioning for instruments in that range. Bright tracks or a bright source chain can become fatiguing.
Speaking of signal chain, these definitely scale with source. They sound very good from a Modi3+ / Magni3+ DAC. This has been a nice pairing for me and matches the price point pretty well. But when I upgraded to a BF2 / Jot2 the bass became tighter/punchier (less boomy in lower mids) and the treble is less fatiguing. Still not great for bass heavy music, but a much wider range of music sounded correct.
These are exceptionally good on a desktop at low listening volume. Really a nice clean background music source. I regularly find myself getting pulled into the music and turning them up.
It turns out that I’m saying good bye to these speakers this week, as I just ordered an upgrade to their big brother, the MTM. I’m looking forward to logging some listening hours on them and providing my impressions. I expect similar enjoyment from them, but with the benefit of a little DSP room correction and larger drivers to give better bass control… we’ll see…
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