The VSM mxe by Merlin Music Systems Inc., $10,500. 4705 Main Street, PO Box 146, Hemlock, NY 14466. ph. (585)367/2390. e-mail info@merlinmusic.com www.merlinmusic.com

We were there in the beginning. It was 1991, when Bobby and I first met at the International CES in Chicago, Illinois. He wasn't making the VSM yet, but instead had speakers with names like Excalibur and EXL 1. His designs were primarily 3-ways and 4-ways in large vented cabinets, though our first review of a Merlin product (1993) was of the EXL l, a floorstanding two-way. It was of great surprise then, when Bobby went in a totally different direction with his new enterprise. Only had he gone to electrostats could he have made any greater changes than the ones he proposed. Instead of the large, multi-driver affairs that he had become famous for, he introduced the VSM (Very Scary Merlin), a slender floor standing, 2-way that emphasized refinement and finesse over size and other brute force qualities. My review of the original VSM was published in 1995; it was a good speaker. But, there was no way of knowing that over the next 12 years, Bobby would refine, build upon and essentially perfect that speaker until it reached a prominence where with some confidence I can call it "the best loudspeaker ever made."

I think it utterly remarkable that 14 years ago when this project first started, his vision was so lucid and precise that all these years later he uses essentially the same drivers, crossover configuration and cabinet dimensions. It says something about the foresight of this man and his dogged belief from the beginning in his unitary vision. Bobby was the first, that I know of, to use the large flange, Esotar tweeter from Dynaudio. Before Bobby, I had never seen the wrinkle coned 6.5" woofer from Scan Speak. And while there may been a person here or there using those drivers before him, I hadn't seen those drivers at a show or in a studio.

So, the groundwork was there. The next decade and a half -would be spent in periodic refinement of the speaker, most of which could be incorporated in earlier models as new ones were introduced. In time there would be a Gen. 2, a Gen. 3; a Revised, a BAM, a Millennium, an MM, a MX, an MMe and MXe, and 1'm sure I've forgotten a designation or two. But each model change introduced not an entirely new model. but a refinement of a basic notion. Improvements in cabling; harness changes, even refinements in how much torque used on the driver screws came under Bobby's scrutiny. No concept went unchal­lenged, no assumption was made without rigorous testing. No improvement was incorporated until its impact was totally assessed. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there has never been a product in the history of this industry so thoroughly examined and refined as is this one. Not every stride forward has been in incrementally equal steps. Some refinements have been aimed at consistency of construction, others at making the speaker more versatile when used with various amplifiers. But as far as I'm concerned, no change or upgrade has had the sonic impact of the latest refinements: combining the "Switching supply" Super BAM with "lead free" construction.

I have a grandfatherly affection for the original VSM. I tested it thoroughly, under all kinds of conditions, and heard it improve with succeeding generations. How­ever, I can assure you that the original speaker and its successors sounded nothing like the "lead free" VSM with Super BAM. This speaker is blatantly superior to every­thing that preceded it. It breaks new ground; not just for Merlin, but for every manufacturer using moving coil drivers in a wood-type cabinet.

Tale of the Tape

6.5" 2-way, floorstander with 1" Esotar D330A soft dome tweeter. 8 Ohm nominal, 6.5 Ohms mini­mum impedance. 89 dB efficiency. 2nd order cross­over @ 2,200 Hz. Both drivers are in positive electrical phase. Electronic circuit damping. Hovland inductors and caps, Caddock Micronox resis­tors. Cardas internal wiring. Removable outboard RC Networks. EMI/RFI network. Point to point Hand wired. Bi-wireable with supplied Cardas jumpers. All crossover parts and wire cryogenically treated. Pan fiber cabi­net material. External BAM, switching suply/battery bass augmentation system through tape loop. 42.875" x 8.625" x 10.5" (HWD). 84.5 lbs. each. 10 years parts and labor war­ranty. On loan from manufacturer.

Set-up

The most important part of set-up probably involves use of a wooden jig, or the speaker toe-in tool. What it does is allow the user to sight-in the correct amount of toe-in for optimum stereo play­back. It works. Don't be afraid of it, or think that you can do better; the tool works and you won't improve it by doing things the way you've always done them.

I probably gave Bobby a heart attack when I initially told him that I didn't like the Cardas jumpers for the bi-wire terminals. Use of the supplied jumpers is important to the optimum opera­tion of the loudspeaker. Believe it or not, the VSM has bi-wire speaker terminals, but you shouldn't bi­wire the speaker and that's at the suggestion of the manufacturer. The design of the speaker contemplates the use of the Cardas jumpers as an integral part of the sonic balance intended. It has to do with the gauge of the wire used. The affect is to lightly load down the tweeter and better integrate its output with that of the woofer. Right out of the box, even with some hours on the speakers, the tweeter takes some time to catch up to the woofer amplitude wise. It's a form of break-in. Anyway, when I first set the speaker up, l felt the highs to be too soft with the Cardas jumpers. So I put in some of my own jumpers, crimped jumpers free of lead and solder. In as much as they were of a heavy gauge, they presented less resistance to the signal, and the highs came up a bit. The spectral balance then sounded right, or very close to it, and I told Bobby of my jumper substitution. He was skeptical. However, as the audition went on, it was obvious that the highs were starting to take on a prominence that were a bit too hot. Putting the Cardas jumpers back in restored the proper balance and even added a bit of palpability to the presentation. Bobby was right all along. All the speaker needed was a bit of break-in and some patience on my part.

The footers that come with the speakers are a little odd, but they work just fine. Because the VSM sounds much larger than it really is, the tendency may be to put it in rooms larger than it can accommodate. I had no difficulty what  so ever in my standard listening room, which is 8'x 13' x 24' (HWD). However, the VSM still has a 6.5" woofer, and by its nature can only move so much air. Granted, I don't recall another speaker of similar size that was able to energize the Big Rig with more authority and energy. I feel confident then in suggesting that this speaker would be at home in rooms with dimensions larger than mine; just how much larger, I'm not sure.

It hasn't always-been the case, but this speaker worked well with both tube amps and solid state amps. Since Merlin has in the past used tube amps in its voicing of the speaker, it's been no secret that the VSM and the TSM generally prefer tube amplification over solid state to sound their best. In the early years of the VSM, transistor based amps tended to sound tight and some­ times lean. There were solid state exceptions, of course, such as the Symfonia Opus 10 amplifier. It sounded great with the VSM. But this time, I had the opportunity to use the Merlin with the Pass X350.5 and the results were outstanding! As if made for one another, it was this combination of amp and speaker that I used most often and which led me to the conclusion that the VSM, in its present form, was one of the finest loudspeakers ever made. Still, I would be hesitant to use this speaker with a high damping factor (low output impedance) amplifier.

Merlin supplies the VSM with Zobel networks for each speaker. Used alone, they can be effective noise reducers. However, many solid state power amplifiers use a Zobel at their output to increase the stability of the amp. When there is a Zobel in the amp, you do not want one on the speakers. Check with the manufacturer of your power amplifier to see if the additional Zobel network will help. I didn't use them with the Pass amp.

The Super BAM has to be set up carefully. It's not temperamental or even hard to work with, but you will need a preamplifier with a tape loop to get the best out of it. Initially, l used the BAM with the SAS preamp. Mine does not have a tape loop (most do) and I thought that things would work just as well if I inserted the BAM between the preamp and the amp. It didn't work well there; had some ground noise through the speakers. So, I inserted the ModWright preamp in the Big Rig and used the tape loop. Not only was it a snap to A/B the sonics with the BAM in/out using the tape loop (the flip of a switch), but the sonics were much improved using the circuit that way. During my audition, I used Silver Fi interconnects from Turkey from the preamp to the BAM, and from the BAM back to the preamp. The transparency was outstanding.

The BAM has a high speed switching power supply (500 kHz), but it is not digital. And while it plugs into the wall, it has a battery option where in it can be operated off of the batteries for greater AC isolation. In all honesty, on a number of occasions I forgot to switch from wall power to battery at the beginning of a listening session and still enjoyed my hours with it immensely. Batteries switched in, batteries switched out, not a big deal with the BAM, though there is no doubt in my mind that some will hear a mind blowing difference (improve­ment) with the batteries up and running. The equaliza­tion within the BAM is accomplished with Analogue Systems op amps.*  The equalization consists of a narrow band boost of 5.3 dB at 35 hz. Bass response in an enclosure of this size tends to drop pretty dramati­cally in the 30 - 40 Hz range. As it decreases, phase shifts with it as phase follows amplitude. Boosting the bass as it is done here actually restores linearity to frequency as well as phase. But more important to the sonics of the speaker than the bass boost may be the two band pass filters within the BAM. The high frequency filter operates above audibility to remove switching mode power supply noise, RFI and EMI. The low frequency filter kicks in at 28 Hz, its purpose being to rid the woofer of spurious out of band energy that will, and does, cause high levels of distortion in speakers without such a device. With the bass filter in place, subsonic amusical noise is substantially reduced, thereby allowing the woofer to "operate in linear drive" longer. What this simply means is that the voice coil tends to stay within the magnetic field at lower frequencies, i.e., until the filter kicks in.

Using the bass boost and band pass filters within the BAM has a curious impact upon the midrange performance of the speaker. Not only is grunge and bloat significantly removed, but a smaller enclosure can be used without sacrificing bass response while maxi­mizing midrange clarity. For you see, by being able to utilize a smaller enclosure (while still obtaining big enclosure bass response), sufficient back pressure is maintained upon the mid-woofer driver to keep the midrange controlled and sounding clean. Had Bobby used a larger enclosure to obtain the extended bass response, back pressure against the mid-woofer driver would have been significantly reduced and midrange clarity would have suffered.

I understand that much of this information regarding the BAM sounds theoretical, and one has to wonder just how effective it can be in practice. I can assure you that the theory in this instance is reality. It works. As I state below, this speaker has incredible transient clarity and is capable if playing as loudly and as brilliantly unblemished as any I've had in the Big Rig. But that's only part of the story.

The Sonics

The audition didn't start out all that spectacu­larly. My false start with the jumpers had the speaker sounding good, but not world class... something that would come later. Figuring out how to run the BAM so as to obtain optimum performance took a little while. Putting it in the tape loop of the Mod Wright allowed me to instantly assess the sonics with it in or totally out. This was of great concern for me as I was skeptical as to how the speaker would perform with the BAM, the filters and the op amps. After all, everyone knows that simplicity is always the most direct path to sonic nirvana. It only took a couple of back and forths to realize that the speaker was easily superior with the BAM in... and it was better in nearly every way. I simply wasn't expecting that to be the case. I expected the added circuit to insert some bass at the bottom, but to also destroy low level resolution in the mids and highs. When that didn't happen, and instead the music­ blossomed like the opening of a flower, I swallowed hard and accepted the fact that at least this add-on device did everything it was supposed to - and then some. Maybe this shouldn't be all that surprising when one considers the fact that Bobby at Merlin is "type A" kind of guy who only accepts perfection. For him to adopt an equalization and filter circuit as part of his beloved loudspeaker, it would have to bean exceptional one; and this one does indeed sound exceptional.

After all was set-up and optimized, I was forced to realize that the VSM was like no other loudspeaker. Whether it be the total absence of lead in the design, the refinement of the BAM, or some other bit of musical magic performed by Merlin, this was by my estimation, Bobby's finest hour.

Of all that has been done in this design, I believe that I was most surprised by its dynamic range coupled with the utmost in transparency. With the BAM in the tape loop, low level resolution was outstanding. But this 6.5", 2-way speaker did something totally unexpected - it played loud. Not JBL, not Cerwin Vega, not Altec loud, but musically loud without compression. Horn based loudspeakers are efficient and generally have the ability to generate excessive sound pressure levels over a limited set of frequencies, but, to my ears, they compress. As volume goes up, everything tends to get louder and louder within a narrowed dynamic range - contrasts suffer. Considering its size, the Merlin can go to peak sound pressure levels without compressing the extremes into a smaller and smaller package. With the 350 wpc Pass amp on hand, I had available more potentially clean power than most audiophiles can dream of. The VSM put all of that power to very good use. Listening to low level sections of a passage at a satisfying volume without worrying that the speaker might self destruct during double fortissimo was a given with the VSM. And while I've had any number of large, multi-driver speakers in the Big Rig, I can honestly say that none (not one) was able to scale the vast expanse between softest to loudest with any more ease than the VSM... most don't come close.

The speaker's ability to play dynamic sections with such total ease comes upon the listener quickly, and it's mistaken for nothing else. This quality alone, determined very early on in the auditioning process, told me that something fundamentally right had been done with this speaker, something that other designers were yet to discover, or at least, realize the importance of. The BAM was definitely a factor in this aspect of its performance, but, and I could be wrong, I tend to think that this outstanding quality of the VSM was at least partially derived from its total lack of lead (the icing on the cake).** Listening to the VSM instinctively drives one to the conclusion that some sonic inhibitor (existing within other speakers) has been removed. A barrier to the flow of music within the speaker has been elimi­nated to the point where the sonic impact is as if another veil has been eradicated completely. I believe that other veil to be lead related.

Initially, when the European Union announced its upcoming prohibition of lead content in many prod­ucts, the fear was that it would set back the sonics of high-end audio componentry by a decade. I think it just the opposite. Lead is not a good conductor of electricity nor of an electrical signal. On a par with gold and aluminum, lead is substantially more resistive than silver or even copper. Nor, is it known for its purity. What it does do is melt at a relatively low temperature, making its use in solder more of a convenience than a necessity. Lead-free solder also has the advantage of lacking the lead fumes that result when touching it to a hot soldering iron. Which leads one to contemplate... What if all solder, including that used in amps, preamps and sources were free of lead? Would a color television take on unheard of brilliance? Would amps and preamps have significant lower noise levels? You'd probably only want to do it in high-end componentry where higher prices are the norm, but if lead free solder were used in components other than speakers, would similar im­provements be heard? After what I've objectively observed with this speaker, the idea is more than intriguing.

A unique sense of clarity is possessed by this speaker. A sense of clarity not so much as hinted at in prior Merlin loudspeakers, or any other speakers for that matter. Clarity of this type translates into transpar­ency throughout the stage. Reflections off of side walls in the studio, or live venue, give character to the sound and cure it of the antiseptic qualities so often heard with digital. The moment of difference between direct and reflected sound is clear and easily determined with the VSM. As a direct result of this clarity, otherwise hidden detail is naturally revealed within the context of the music played. Knowing exactly what is going on, and being relieved of guessing, the ear is able to relax with this speaker in place. Fatigue is reduced as clarity is increased; so much so in this design, that listening sessions tend to go on, and on, for ever increasing amounts of time.

Like everything else about the mxe, imaging was spot on and realistic. Image height is one of the most difficult things for a 2-way to convey. Harry Connick Jr's., Red Light, Blue Light, has one of the more convincing displays of image height around. The VSM excelled at pulling images up to their recorded heights, especially brass. Generally, I don't enjoy listening to brass; not because I don't like the sound of a live sax or trombone, but because most systems butcher it. Pinching off the energy, while adding a shrillness to an instrument that can make the skin crawl when not recorded exactly right. With high energy brass, most speakers start to scream as tweeters are tested beyond their limits and midrange drivers start to belch and gasp... then they splash the image all over the place. The VSM controls brass instruments while not diminishing them. Piano is the same. This speaker seems not to have the power limitations that other speakers have reproducing high energy instruments such as brass, piano, whatever...

Bass, deep bass reproduction is superb for a speaker utilizing a 6.5" driver. To obtain even deeper response, the VSM uses the BAM. As stated above, low frequency performance of this speaker extends to 35 Hz. Although this is by no means a wimpy 35 Hz, it would be incorrect to suggest that 35 Hz from the VSM sounds as powerful as 35 Hz from a 15" subwoofer. Marc Yun noted the little driver/big bass effect in his review of the Silverline Prelude. The Silverline comes in a remarkably compact and narrow package. Bass response is provided by two 3.5" woofers on each side. In reporting on the surprising bass response of the Prelude, Marc remarked, "(the) Prelude has the bass extension of a larger speaker, it doesn't have the air­moving capability... So it goes deep, but still basically sounds like a small speaker, and never rattles the walls; which actually makes it the perfect apartment speaker. Bass, without the shakes." The 6.5" bass driver of the VSM has considerably more air moving power than the two 3.5" drivers in the Prelude. It has a more powerful motor and is simply a more sophisticated driver. The VSM goes deep, and yet at its lowest equalized fre­quencies it does not possess the earth moving qualities of the VMPS RM40, or a good 15" sub. It will not give you a colonic while listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. In all honesty, however, the VSM went low enough for me on 99.99% of everything that I played. But, if that's not enough, the BAM, with its bass equalization and sub frequency roll off make the VSM a great speaker without a subwoofer, but an even better loudspeaker with one.

A comparison to the VMPS RM40 is in order. In spite of all the wonderful things that I have said regarding the VSM, the RM40 is still a superb loudspeaker... I am not abandoning it. Still, these are two very different loudspeakers. The one is a 6.5" 2-way, the other a seven driver 3-way. The RM40 has more authority in the very bottom octaves - multiple 10" woofers will do that for you. On the other hand, the VSM is everything the larger RM40 is in terms of dynamic range and ease under large scale symphonic assault-maybe more. In terms of tone and timbre, both speakers are superb. Where the VSM comes into its own in this comparison, and in every comparison that one would want to place it, is in terms of its coherence and "on a clear day," transparency. The VSM simply represents a new vista in terms of putting less between the listener and the music listened to. In this respect, to these ears, it is the state-of-the-art.

Conclusion

Lest you think my endorsement of the VSM as a very special product has been made against a back­drop of soft contenders, I am fully versed in the sound of the latest Magico, Wilson and Kharma loudspeakers. l have heard nothing as exciting or as uniquely absent of coloration as is the VSM mxe. Were I to guess at two speakers capable of giving the VSM a run for its overall title as the "best", they would have to be the Sonus Faber Elipsa and VMPS RM V60 with VMPS sub. I had the pleasure of hearing both of those two loud­speakers in Las Vegas in January (amongst several hundred other contenders) and they are the creme of the "money no object" crop.

Still, the no holds barred, ultra transparency of the VSM MXe will be hard to beat.

* If you have been reading this publication for any amount of time, you know that I don't care of IC op amps in an audio circuit. I have taken a certain amount of pride in thinking that I could hear the negative presence of such devices (the negative feedback you know). With a an amount of trepidation I am therefore announcing, that I can't hear the op amps in the Super BAM. In fact. I am here to proclaim that the sound of the VSM is significantly better with the BAM in than when it is out. Who says reviewers hear what they think they are going to hear, or at least want to hear?

* * In an earlier comment regarding the VSM, I said that the solder used by Merlin was low lead content - it is not. It is no lead content solder. Prior to speaking to Bobby on the subject, I didn't know such a thing even existed, assuming that all solder had some lead in it to assure a smooth solder flow. I was wrong.

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