Cambridge soundworks mc200 specs4/11/2024 ![]() I'm not sure, having only listened in the showroom, where the IV was perfectly placed and sounded excellent, which is why I bought it. the III supposedly fixes the sweet spot issues because of the large drivers and the 2 way design. If you have the opportunity, try bringing home these and a pair of their big brothers, the Ensemble III, or maybe the II. I recognize the potential of these little guys, but honestly have mixed feeling about the sound. There are better values out there if you look around, you will find something that isn't so picky about the placement. I would, however, reccomend the KLH 9912 instead. The value is great, especially during the annual march madness sales at. The satellites are so small, that you can place them in almost any room without changing the character of the room too much, which is cool. Like I said though, these can be GREAT speakers for the money if you work at it. If you think this is bollocks, please don't wait untill you get home and have the speakers screwed onto the walls. ![]() The bass is awful if the woofer is not placed well, and the satellites need to be on stands, because they have somewhat small sweet spots which make listening outside of the "Zone" lackluster. The trial and error placement is what makes this difficult to do. These can be great speakers for home theater on a budget or casual music listening, if you are willing to spend the time to put the passive woofer in the right place. This is a natural strength of single-driver loudspeakers, since there is almost perfect phase coherence from the single voice coil instead of a separate midbass and tweeter. Another thing that the Ensemble IV satellites do very well is creating a broad stereo image - when listening to Ben Folds' "Landed", I was struck by how wide the soundstage seemed to be, and yet how accurately each instrumentalist was placed in space. The Ensemble satellites have a silky-smooth midrange, and a laid-back treble range that makes for easy listening. Proper placement usually isn't the main concern with a background music system, but if you set them up as you would an ordinary pair of speakers, you're in for a treat. ![]() Henry Kloss's later years saw a variety of designs intended to offer greater performance per dollar, so the cube satellite speakers consist of a 3" paper-cone driver (inexpensive, yet excellent for rendering midrange detail) and a four-element passive contouring network which controlled cone breakup and extended the high frequency performance of the drivers. ![]() While the woofer is no slouch, the cube satellite speakers are really the best part of this system. I recommend placing it out of sight somewhere along the front soundstage. The Ensemble IV woofer module has a relatively high crossover frequency to the cube satellites, so it's placement sensitive. I wouldn't rely on the Ensemble's woofer module for home theater use, however, unless I had an extremely small space or an extremely limited budget. However, its small size limits its output and low frequency extension, so the larger Bose Acoustimass 3 bass module produces deeper and louder output, but the Ensemble module seems less muddy than the Acoustimass. It lends presence and punch that the cubes just couldn't muster on their own. The shoebox-sized bandpass woofer module is on the boomy side, though it's not particularly obtrusive. Thankfully, Cambridge Soundworks is remarkably up-front about the Ensemble IV's capabilities when they state that they understand the sub is tiny, but it's "the best way to make bass at this price point." The sound of the Ensemble IV system is great for background music, or for an unobtrusive system for music listening. ![]() With these speakers, it's all about your expectations. ![]()
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