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REVIEW: Monsoon FPF-600 Speakers

63.49.130.90


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Model: FPF-600
Category: Speakers
Suggested Retail Price: $699
Description: Dipole Planar/Hybrid
Manufacturer URL: Monsoon
Model Picture: View

Review by raindances on December 15, 2001 at 19:34:51
IP Address: 63.49.130.90
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for the FPF-600


I am a great fan of planar speakers, but have a small house, so I was intrigued by this model due to its small size. I purchased these with no background information at all.

These speakers are 3-way, with planar mid-range & treble elements & a conventional bass unit in a front-ported enclosure. They look quite nice, sort of a "poor man's Martin Logan".

Initially, once I hooked them up, I was shocked at how bright & thin they sounded. Moving them near a wall resulted in bloated bass. Moving them a couple of feet from the wall resulted in them being too close for listening. The trick here, I discovered, is to get further away from the speakers. The drivers do not "mesh" into anything coherent until you get your seating position 8-10 feet back. Anyway, my room was too small to achieve this, so I moved the speakers to a long, narrow room. I set them up rather unconventionally, half way down the room with no rear wall as a boundary. They are about 2' from each side wall and about 6' apart. My listening position is seated about 9' back, and about a foot from the back wall. I "ran them in" with some fairly demanding source material for much of two weekends before sitting down to listen. They were still by no means properly run in; please note this. Also, I am driving them, with a Denon AVR-2801 receiver, due to the fact that they are touted as being "home theater" speakers. Some of the brightness/harshness I describe in this review may be due to the reciever running out of steam.

Tonally, these speakers are forward and quite bright with a surprising amount of bass extension (even with no rear wall assisting them). Some of this brightness is eliminated when the rear wall boundary is taken away.

My opinions are mixed on the sound quality. WIth the placement mentioned above, these speakers are (fairly) dynamic with typical planar airiness and imaging. Snare drum sounds are "dry" and seem less colored than in a box speaker, although they don't hit you in the stomach. Bass is quite extended and individual strings on a double bass can be easily distinguished. Midrange is very open, with a somewhat peaky quality on some recordings. Treble is the weak area. The tweeter is quite "hard" sounding and is very unforgiving of sibilant recordings. It does quite a good job of cymbal sounds, but can sound "sizzly" on some piano recordings and most strings.

So, along came the first tweak. I removed the metal grills from the units and then proceeded to remove the protective grills from the rear of the planar drivers. The plastic moldings on the front of the planar drivers are attached to the rear grills, so these disappear too leaving some holes behind.

What a difference! The sound opened up; the midrange lost its shriekiness and the treble improved quite a lot, although still not smooth sounding. On David Benoit's "Waiting for Spring" there are some double bass sounds that these speakers reproduce with aplomb. The snare drums sound quite real. The piano is OK. The treble is still a little bright. On Diana Krall's "The Best Thing for You Would Be Me" the sibilance wrecks the song, although a lot of this is the recording's fault. Other material by her sounds quite impressive.

I compared these side by side with a pristine set of Magnepan SMGa's. The Maggies have no dynamic capabilities in comparison and are a lot less efficient, although they have smoother high treble, resulting in less sibilance. The Maggies are also exceptionally beamy (horizontally & vertically) and are light on the bass. The Monsoons disperse quite well horizontally, but are severly limited vertically (a planar characteristic). They disperse well enough that the sweet spot is quite wide; more than one person can enjoy the music at once. This makes them good for home theater use.

I suspect that the bright nature of the tweeters could be tamed by inserting a low value resistor, as Magnepan does with the MMG's. I will be trying this. Also, all the capacitors used in the crossover (which is quite complex) are bi-polar electrolytics (what a pity they skimped on these!!!). It will probably be worthwhile trying a couple of Hovlands or such...

At lower volumes, these speakers sound very good. At higher levels (way before clipping), however, they become quite hard on the top end (which may be the amplifier running out of steam...).


Product Weakness: "hard" treble at higher volumes, grills that detract from the sound quality, crappy crossover capacitors.
Product Strengths: a compact planar hybrid with extended bass, an "open" sound and quite nice imaging. Not bad WAF either compared to Maggies. Quite solidly built.


Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Denon AVR-2801
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): None
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Denon DCM-35
Speakers: Monsoon FPF-600
Cables/Interconnects: Monster
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Jazz/rock/classical
Room Size (LxWxH): 24 x 10 x 8
Room Comments/Treatments: None
Time Period/Length of Audition: 2 days
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner




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Topic - REVIEW: Monsoon FPF-600 Speakers - raindances 19:34:51 12/15/01 ( 0)