PREFACE: Please note the below review of the Merlin Music Systems TSM loudspeaker is prior to the addition of the RC Networks currently supplied with the speaker. Current U.S. retail price of the TSMs (which includes the RC Networks) is $2,100. Please read the Bound For Sound Merlin Revisited article for a look at Martin DeWulf's evaluation on the addition of the RC Networks on the TSM and VSM.

Bound for Sound 4/96

"The Merlin TSM Loudspeaker "

The TSM 2-way loudspeaker by Merlin Music Systems Inc., PO Box 146, Hemlock NY 14466, Ph. (716) 367-2390, $1,900. Sealed pedestal style loudspeaker with Morel MDT-30 1" soft dome tweeter and Morel 6.25" damped pulp cone woofer. Second order crossover both drivers wired in electrical phase, bi-wireable with Edison Price Music Posts. Internal wiring by Cardas. 87 dB efficient at 1W/1m. Stated frequency response, 55-2OkHz +/-2dB. Impedance is 8 Ohms nominal. 16" x 8" x 11.5" (HWD). 26 lb. each.****

Known in the past for huge multiple driver loudspeakers with refrigerator sized cabinets such as the Excalibur, Bobby Palkovic set a new course in loudspeaker development three years ago. First there was the VSM ($4,500), an all out assault on the state-of-the-art in a two way design using the finest drivers and construction materials to be found. And now, in its third generation, the VSM's reputation for quality has spread like hot gossip through a barbershop. Merlin's standing in the audiophile community has been built primarily on craftsmanship and an almost maniacal dedication to the product and the people who purchase it. There are a number of fine companies in this business, yet none support their product any better than does the Bobby - He lives for what he does. And so it seems that some of the finest, most forward looking projects emerge from these entrepreneurial few such as Bobby Palkovic with whom which the bottom line is not a dollar amount, but the musical satisfaction that can be obtained when the building of musical equipment takes on the qualities of an art. To some, success is measured in the nobility of the conquest rather than by the wealth accumulated

The elder statesman of the Merlin line-up, the VSM is a worthy flagship, but I strongly feel that the embodiment of the finest work done to date by Bobby Palkovic is in the TSM (The Small Merlin). I've written about the larger VSM in the past, and will no doubt be writing more about it in the future. But I must be honest with you, our gentle readers, and confess that in a one-on-one comparison with some of the premium speakers around, including the VSM, the Pillars, the Focus and the Echelons, that it was the tiny TSM took my heart. A fact that many will no doubt find strange due to the widely accepted notion that I am not generally a little speaker type of guy. Don't misunderstand me. Over the long haul, and overall, I still prefer the Pillars for their ability to create a presence, the VSMs are still the more refined, the Focus more powerful, and the Echelons do go deeper in the bass. But the TSM does something that I'm not sure any of the others do, in that it conveys intricate midrange information in such a clear, pleasing, and untangled way that you'd swear someone had opened up a window, on the lower treble, the mids, and upper bass just for you to hear.

Some of this was also present in the Platinum Solo loudspeakers reviewed some months back. But not with the precision and rectitude found with the little Merlin. You know what it is? It's the realization that everything just sounds so bloody right coming out of this speaker within its built in frequency parameters as defined by its size and shape. With its sealed enclosure, the bass goes deep enough even in a medium to large-sized room to be satisfying. The highs truly can sparkle, letting through precisely the right amount of bite on brass, and crisp on cymbal. Any more, and it would be too much. Any less, and it would be dull. As it is, the speaker works on the music with the type of precision that I would expect from a happy surgeon. Deft articulation follows complex progressions. It allows the natural energy of a performance to come across with every type and kind of music played through it, and made a part of it.

Intense listening, and careful scrutiny of what this loudspeaker does that makes it sound so alarmingly natural has revealed a few things. First there is the lack of blurring in the midrange. Even speakers that I had once thought to be fine performers in this regard come off as a little imprecise Blurring can come from a number of things including dynamic smearing and tonal smudging, and a general lack of focus. Yeah, I'm getting a little free with the descriptive text here, but new levels of sonic performance require new methods of thinking, and that requires a fresh look at our terminology. (In this case, and since I have limited space to describe the experience, the terminology lesson will have to wait.) Anyway, what this speaker is doing is coloring within the lines with each note that it sets free. Hence, focus of image is excellent. Complexities, as said before, are unravelled in very finely intense ways. Tones are very dense and solid, with lines of detail and texture running throughout and within. At the same time, the speaker talks with a rich mellifluence that is no doubt the after effect of the tonal richness and elegant detailing. There is substance to the sound.

The second thing that I have heard can be described using the new notion of "suddenness". Like the best electronics, the little Merlin seems able to strike with a clean edge, and stop without overhang. Prof. Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings and Spectral Electronics engineering fame speaks of a component's ability to settle, or be able to stop when it's supposed to. One should think that to be a piece of cake with electronics as they flow with their massless electrons., but with a loudspeaker, we are at once confronted with large motions from, sizable and bulky transducers. How does one make a woofer start and stop when it is supposed to? Worse yet, how does one make a driver lose its memory? Meaning, how can it be taught to completely stop making one type of sound when we want it to make another? Think digitally for a moment and visualize your music in thin slices. In as much as music, other than sine waves (and new wave music), is a constantly changing waveform of considerable complexity, slice that waveform into vertical strips of very narrow widths. See how each slice represents an extremely short moment in time. Then notice how each moment is different from the ones before and after it. With each slice of time along the waveform, the loudspeaker has to forget what it just did, and do something new. That is if we are to minimize tonal and dynamic blurring in the time and amplitude domains. If your speaker were like me, it would become confused and the transitions from one moment to the next might not be so clean cut and there would be some confusion at the changes from one strip to the next, one would sloppily meld into another. The little Merlin seems to lack a memory as to what just went on in its musical life, presenting instead each musical moment with an almost pristine clarity, Time derived blurring is at a minimum. The music seems unleashed.

But alas, no good reviewer worth his salt lets a product escape his grip without a criticism or two. The lower mids can be a mite heavy. Only a little mind you, but vocals, male and female, have slightly more density and "chestiness" than one finds in reality. Something about the speaker is at resonance in this range, whether it be the bass driver or the cabinet, something in the design adds a little warmth, though no one could call it excessive by any means, and my sweep test of the speaker showed it to be of little consequence measurement wise (a couple of dB). I can also on occasion hear where the drivers crossover. Not often, but on some percussion there was the hint of one driver handing the ball off to the other. In all fairness, the TSM is actually better in this regard than almost every other speaker auditioned to date save a very few of the most sophisticated such as the Pillar and the VSM. Lateral imaging is extraordinary, perhaps as good as anything available, certainly the equal of anything reviewed in these pages, and superior to the VSM, and the Pillar, and everything else that I could throw at it. The curtain of music is wide and continuous. In terms of lateral staging, only the Sci-Fi Crown Joule could hold up nearly as well. Depth wise, the TSM was a little less spectacular, the above three loudspeakers pushing images back into the farthest recesses of the listening room more effectively As one would expect from a speaker of such modest dimensions and woofer driver size, it could be overdriven. But one really has to crank-it to make the TSM lose its composure. Otherwise, it had the ability to fill my listening room at all levels short of obscene. Only the Sci-Fi has done as well in this regard.

One very important last comment. This speaker goes well with any power amplifier. Maybe that's an overstatement, since I'm sure that there are some 3 wpc single ended triodes that would complain loudly about this most benign of speaker loads. But in the real world of amplifier design, this baby sang with them all, Fore example: The Plinius SA-10O never sounded better, wonderful in fact (though it sounded bad with the VSM). The Warner Imaging Company's, Vacuum Tube Emulator 600-DM filled the room with some of the most liquid, and at the same time transparent, music ever beheld. Same for the Counterpoint NPS-200 as it displayed some of the most musically exciting, and layered energy in the upper mids that one will bear. And I could go on and on about how this speaker was able to obtain the best in terms of music reproduction from each amp that was used with it. (Hint: This speaker seems to absolutely love Apex bi-wire speaker cable. But I think that Apex is gone, so I will look for others) In this regard alone, we may have at last found the universal amplifier match. If I were an amp maker going to a show and needed a sure bet on short notice, this is the speaker that I would be using.

CONCLUSION. This speaker has been in and out of the system as often as any that I have used. I am fully acquainted with it. And yet, when Bobby said that it was time to send it to another reviewer, I almost wished that he had asked for anything else back, even somebody else's speakers! Over the last year or so of small speaker hunting, I've come across some superb pieces which will be hearing about in coming issues (the Speaker Art and the Eton are certainly superb), but the TSMs have become like a well worn set of really fine leather gloves, fitting the Big Rig and my listening room as if they were made for them. It sounds different from the VSMs, and in some ways in my room, it sounds better than the VSMs - even ... gulp - the Pillars, in some ways, anyway. This is a great small speaker, and I sincerely hope that I get to spend some quality time with it again in the near future

Bound For Sound 8/96

Excerpted from "Future Fun"

Next month we have some loudspeakers. Leading the list will be the Speaker Art Clef. This is the newest, most up-to-date, leading edge, timely, fresh, and current Clef that one can buy. Bob tells me that this speaker is superior to the model that we reported on in the Components of Merit Issue. We’ll just have to see about that. The model reviewed by Fi, by the way, was the old version. We’ll also be looking at a cocky little speaker from Joseph Audio. It’s small, it’s affordable, it’s well made, and it’s going against the Clef. Also there will be additional commentary on the Merlin Gen99 (my term, not Merlin’s) crossover as it works on the VSM and TSM. Remember my more than glowing review of the TSM’s a few months back (issue 4/96 to be exact). Most reviewers write flowery, loving reviews of the equipment given to them for observation, and when they are done with the component they send it back never to be mentioned again. Not MGD. I loved that speaker so much, that I bought it with the new crossover. Cognizant of that fact, you may want to go back and reread the review, but this time in the different light of knowing that the writer put his money down.

BOUND FOR SOUND 9/96

"MERLIN REVISITED"

I really don't want to take a lot of time and space doing this, but with the most recent crossover revisions by Merlin Music Systems (phone 716-367-2390) to their VSM and TSM, a second-take was in order.

The changes in both speakers have nothing to do with the physical construction of the cabinet or the drivers; all that remains the same. The change in the design has to do with an RC network that Bobby Palkovic designed for the pair, which is then inserted right before the crossover at the speaker terminals. It works like this. The RC network comes assembled, one for each set of bi-wire terminals on the back of the speakers. The networks have a spade at each end, which the user attaches to the terminals. This is done for each set of terminals. To make things a little easier to AB, I hooked to each RC network two banana plugs, and then inserted the banana plugs into the terminals. I may be losing something in the hook-up, but if so, it isn't much.

What Bobby is doing is actually pretty simple, and he tells me that the idea for such a network in conjunction with a loudspeaker was born at Bell Labs years ago in their work with OTL power amplifiers. So, once again, we're not doing anything really new here, just rediscovering the past and putting the experience to use. What I'm not going to do at this time is give the values of the resistor and capacitor away, or how they are configured. I don't think that we need everyone trying a DIY project at this point in time, particularly since Bobby has designed his crossover to interface with this particular RC network (or is it the other way around?). Anyway, using the network that Bobby designed for his speakers on somebody else's speakers is a sure way to mess things up, even if it does work spectacularly in some isolated cases. (If you want more, talk to Bobby.)

How the new RC network affects the sound. I've already related to you in past issues how the new RC network struck me upon first use in the Big Rig - a memorable listening experience for even the most jaded 'phile! When the rest of the system is in top operating order, the RC network added to the VSM or TSM is like coming home to the music. The back of the stage simply opened up, as clean and pristine as being there. It was like everything came together music-wise by separating out all the individual elements. Then, by dividing up and clarifying all that had been previously mixed together, the entirety of the performance became a singular living event. Yes, we still have the natural limitations presented by software, electronics, driver design, etc. that result in low level distortions - nothing's perfect. But with this change in the crossover we are taken closer to the original event, closer to what is actually on the software being played, be it vinyl or digital. And in some respects, closer to the music than I thought was possible with our present speaker technology. With my old stand-by audition CD's, (CD's that have been in some of the finest systems one can buy) I was clearly hearing things not heard before. Noises that once appeared random in nature all of a sudden sounded like things recognizable. And with those revelations at hand, well, you can imagine my incredible excitement. If the rear of the stage and the little sounds of a performance were all of a sudden in startling focus and standing in broad sonic relief, how much better the rest of the sonic spectrum must have sounded. It took the VSM's and made the bass more full and convincing, while still resolving more bass information than before. At first, the highs seemed softened, but they were not. That became more than obvious when going to recordings with more than the usual cymbal work on them. Take "Eye to Eye" by Pine Top Perkins, Ronnie Earl, Calvin "Fuzz" Jones and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith (AudioQuest 1043). This is a monster blues recording in the best of the Chicago blues tradition, and it has upon it more than its share of cymbal work. With the RC network in place, high frequency hash was substantially reduced without in any way damaging the high frequency fundamentals or harmonics. If anything, the harmonies were improved and washed clean of damaging sideband distortions that otherwise obscure. This is important for the true home aficionado, for it's a true step in the right direction for those looking for that last 10%. The first night with the new network in the system the VSMs sounded better than it seemed a speaker had a right to. The resultant sound talked to me; let me gaze at the performers with the eye in my mind that makes the pictures that I see in my dreams. The threshold separating the illusion from the reality had been breached, if only in little ways with the right music on the player. Since that time I have had to send the Merlin VSM's back to Bobby, but in their place now sits the TSM. It's a smaller version of the VSM, but a speaker that still captures the spirit of the larger VSM, if not the full scope of its dynamic range. It too is capable of transporting its listener, though a little less convincingly.

What the crossover change doesn't do is change the basic character of the speaker. The VSM is still the VSM, but it's a better VSM. Same for the TSM. The change won't turn a 7" woofer into a 12" woofer. It won't enlarge the actual size of the cabinet. But it does seem to at last allow the speaker system to work optimally, or so my auditioning would strongly suggest. I've heard many speakers in my days, and within the physical restraints placed upon the design by the laws of nature, I've not heard a more revealing loudspeaker, a more true loudspeaker, a more musically consonant loudspeaker.

A final comment. For months prior to the RC network, I had looked for a speaker cable that would mesh sonically with the capabilities that were obvious in the speaker, but for one reason or another, were not coming out. Oh, the sound was good by most standards, but a little button was being continually pressed in my musical mind saying that "it could be better still." The JPS bi-wire speaker cables were the answer. In my auditioning of the speaker, I had tried almost every speaker cable one could imagine. At one point in time Bobby from Merlin went so far as to have George Cardas send me an expensive "Golden Cross" system which included interconnects and speaker cable. Nice, but the music would not relax with transistor electronics. It was uptight and retentive, the opposite of what I'm looking for in a loudspeaker. Same for the Tara, the Apex, the Metaxas, for everything. Then I received a ten foot bi-wire pair of speaker cables from JPS and it was as if the speaker took a deep breath, exhaled, and kicked its feet up on the couch for a nice evening of music in the DeWulf household. That was it. And while I cannot say that I have had the same stunning success with the JPS speaker cable in every installation that I have put it in, it would be crazy to own a pair of Merlin VSM's without its soulmate speaker cables from JPS. I'm not saying that you have to have a certain this or that, including sacred beads and an incantation to make this speaker work. It's just that what we are trying to achieve is a higher level of musical realism, something beyond the ordinary, something that transcends, and the Merlins go beyond the ordinary when set up right, and as far as I'm concerned, setting the VSM up right means with the JPS speaker cables.

Oddly enough, the TSM's didn't especially need the JPS speaker cables to sound their best; I don't know why. I'm only reporting the details. This speaker worked with the JPS, obviously, but I also obtained excellent results with cables from Silver Sonic, Apex WireWorld and others. My gut feeling is that the TSM isn't strung so highly as is the VSM, it's not quite the same thoroughbred, and as a result is a little easier to get along with. Then again, it's not quite as ruthlessly honest either. Choose your poison ... I did.