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Design & Audio Quality

The MH-500 Complete Package

The infamous volume puck makes its appearance once again with the MH-500. This small controller gives you smooth analog control of volume, and doubles as a quick mute control at the touch of a single button. Bass control is located on the subwoofer, though, as I noted with the DIN cables, I suspect that bass controls also affect the midrange cones built into each satellite. The MM-700s, the second in Monsoon’s history of flatpanel speakers, had a power switch,as a result of comments made by consumers and reviewers like myself in response to the lack of a power control on the MM-1000s. The MH-500s, strangely, lack a power switch, and instead rely on auto-power off.

The nice thing about the combination of cones and flat panel technology is that the best of both worlds are brought together in order to provide an excellent sound experience. The thin membranes in Planar Focus technology allow for some amazingly clear audio, but they also tend to falter when it comes to delivering mid and low range sounds, which is why some reviewers may have described previous Monsoon flat panels as being a little thin sounding. I’ve never had any serious complaints with the sound from either the MM-1000s, or the MM-700s, both of which did nothing short of redefine my views on multimedia speakers, but I too, noticed a slight lack of midrange richness on those two sets. Nonetheless, the MM1000 and MM700 speakers are no less than extraordinary examples of speaker engineering. The MH-500 therefore hails from a family of overachievers, and I was eager to see how well the hybrid satellites would hold up to my tests, because I was worried about whether Monsoon could pull off another winner while keeping the price tag lower. I needn’t have worried, because the MH-500’s are nothing short of extraordinary.

The MH-500 Sitting Pretty

I tested the speakers using a suite of varying material ranging from classical Bach to high energy techno. Slower rhythmic R&B beats, instrumental- and vocal-heavy material rounded out the test. Throughout my tests, I was minded that the speakers had a nice level of detail and high-frequency clarity. Vocals were nicely centered and had nice tonal accuracy, though I felt there was a noticeable lack of upper end detail when the subwoofer was pushed past the halfway mark. The subwoofer was surprisingly capable, and produced a nice bassline to accompany the mid and high end audio. The subwoofer wasn’t capable of fairly representing the lower end frequencies, so subtle bass tones were sometimes lost, but those frequencies it covered, it did so aggressively and without signs of struggling. Bravo, and a nod to the heavy little subwoofer that could.

High impact and high-energy style music came through with alacrity and excitement. I found I could blast the speakers to their very near their limits and not encounter any audio defects, though the speakers could not play as loudly as others that have come across our desks. Quick and blunt bass was amazingly powerfully when the subwoofer was cranked, and I was caught up in rush jams like Alice Deejay’s “Back in My Life”. The soundstage on the MH-500 is impressively represented. Sugar Ray’s “Spinning Away Sinned Ego” threw a soundstage with amazing depth and breadth, almost wrapping around the listening in its intimacy, and though other material had less stellar effects, the soundstage was nonetheless satisfactory to me.

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