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 The emphasis is on performance, not looks, with the MB Quart Premium PCE 216. |
MB Quart PCE 216
MB Quart's Premium component speakers are deceiving at first look. There's none of the heft associated with many high-end speakers, weighted down by heavy cast-metal baskets and large magnets. Instead, the PCE 216 have baskets made from an innovative polyamide ABS composite material reinforced with short glass fibers. The result is a light, but vibration-resistant platform for the woofer. Mounted in the basket is a rather plain-looking polypropylene cone with a titanium wet-powder coating. Benefit? The woofer has an excellent strength-to-weight ratio. The payoff is a speaker that was markedly more efficient than the other models in the test. A 1" titanium dome tweeter covers the highs. Specs-wise, the PCE216 comes on strong with an RMS power rating of 130 watts, and a frequency response of 38 to 32,000 Hz. The external crosssovers have a 12 dB/octave slope, crossed over at 2500 Hz, with tweeter level settings of -6 dB, -4.5 dB, -3 dB, -1.5 dB, and 0 dB. As with the Kickers, we ran them at 0 dB attenuation.
Of the three speakers we listened to, the PCE 216 brought out the strongest reactions, both pro and con. Our roundtable panel agreed that they had the strongest midbass response, but disagreed on whether or not that was a good thing!
Danae came down firmly on the pro side. On "Step Right Up" she liked the "tight" upright acoustic bass sound, and thought the sound was "full and round" on the first movement of Vaughan Williams' "Sea Symphony." On the con side, Tim bemoaned the lack of separation, fuzzy instrumental characteristics, and compressed sound he heard, particularly on jazz cuts like "Moanin,'" as well as a lack of details in the Lucinda Williams track.
 The MB Quart PCE 216 were clearly the best to Danae. "Their midrange was resoundingly clear and open, while their soaring highs and thudding lows tied the whole package together." |
As a panel, we did agree that the PCE 216 speakers were a good choice for music that benefits from a more "blended" output. Large orchestral works, like the Vaughan Williams' "A Sea Symphony," and the dense garage-band sound of The Mooney Suzuki sounded great on the MB Quart set, while their slightly less clear-cut output was a bit of liability in reproducing the finer details in jazz and acoustic tracks. The tweeter of the PCE 216 got some special notice along the way from several panel members. Dave singled the tweeter out for praise several times, noting that it did a nice job of producing extended highs without being overly bright, an impressive feat, since titanium tweeters are often criticized for being overly harsh or metallic-sounding. The rest of the panel agreed with him on this point.
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