pubul57

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
What do you get when someone has a good idea and spends the rest of their lives perfecting it? The Merlin VSMs. I think this speaker is the pinnacle of two-way speakers, and in the very top ranks regradless of size or price. Music lovers should just buy it and enjoy the music. Audiophile should try it, they might just find that it is the last speaker they ever own. One has to get over the fact that it "only" has two drivers, is relatively small, and is nevertheless a masterpiece, sorted out through years of improvements and refinement. If you own a pair, you can rest assured you own some of the very best speakers on the planet, and you did not have to mortgage your house, or buy behemoths dominating your room to get some of the very best sound currently available. As Merlin owners know, somehow Bobby is going to figure out yet one more way to make what seems like a perfect speaker in so many ways, better yet. This is not just a product, it is a vision and a passion of one man who had a really good idea of how to make a speaker, and the commitment to improve it over time in any way he could find. Let's just say I really like it and "new" speakers are the last thing I ever think about, till Bobby finds yet another way to improve the VSM. Next stop, the Master BAM.

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
There simply seems no reason to say what has already been said here. I read the reviews and think that everyone has pretty much captured the spirit of what these speakers do. They are simply at the pinnacle of two-way speakers, and among the finest speakers available regardless of size or price. If you are a music lover first, just buy them, sit back, and enjoy. If you are an audiophile, you owe it to yourself to have these speakers at some point in your journey looking for the "holy grail". I suspect that if you do, the Merlins may very well be the last speakers you will own, until Bobby figures out some way to perfect what might in all important musical ways may already seem perfect - yet somehow, over time, he will find a way. He has chosen to make one thing as well as he can possibly make it, and all Merlin owners are the beneficiaries of that passionate pursuit.

mikeyaya

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
decided to recently sell my beautiful pair of refurbished Quad 57 ESL's. I have had a few pairs and have had a love affair with these speakers but the warmth began to grate on me after a few years. I always thought of my room as bright so I gravitated to warm speakers, Quads, Spendor, Harbeth. Once I sold the Quads I was not sure what to do. I did not want the speakers already mentioned and I had tried Martin Logans and Proacs and was not going back there although I really liked the Proacs. I did not know what to do but while cruising the Audiogon I saw a pair of Merlin VSM MMe speakers for sale very close to my house. I had never heard these speakers but I bought them and set them up in my room. What I heard just blew me away. I have always loved monitor speakers and these were the best I ever heard. Come to think of it these are the best speakers the I have ever heard. Anyone who thinks that the Quad 57 is the best ever has never heard Merlins. They far surpass the Quads in all areas. The sound is so clear. No added anything, just music. I now understand neutrality. I have some good equipment and use a Nottingham Dais turntable. I finally am hearing the real beauty of this table. The interesting thing is that I have not got all the cables matched up yet. I am using some old Goertz speaker cables. It sounds so good that I am afraid of messing with the system. I am using VTL TT 25 amps, Rogue 99 Magnum pre, the Nott. and a Cary 303/300 CD player. The Merlins have made this nice system really first class. This is one outstanding product.

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Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
These speakers arrived in February, so I am now about 6 months into them. I am still amazed by how they good they sound. I had on Cowboy Junkies ~ The Trinity Session the other night and was truly impressed. The depth, stage and presence was all there. I can spend a lot of time writing up a long review on how these speakers sound, but it will not say much more than what others have said about these speakers all ready. They are truly fantastic.

I will say that care needs to be taken in their setup. The first pair of Merlin Speakers I heard were the previous revision, a pair of VSM-MX. I'm not sure what it was but it sounded like the high and lows were coming from separate disjoint speakers. There was absolutely no cohesiveness with the sound. I pretty much discounted them until a while later when I heard another pair of VSM-MX. I was taken aback. I could not believe how good they sounded. I had a hard time believing that they were the same speaker. I attribute it to their setup and the room they were in, but it could have also been the equipment/cables driving them. Something was different and the second time around they sounded great.


The customer service from Merlin is top notch. You can call them up and talk with Bobby himself. If he does not answer the phone himself, he will soon be on it. His support does not stop at the speaker terminals. You can talk cables, amps, sources, music and so forth. Bobby wants you to get the best possible experience out of his speakers and your equipment and he will offer suggestions to get you there.


= = = Associated Equipment = = =

Marantz 7
Marantz 8
Joule Electra Ops-2 Mk4
Thorens TD-124

augwest

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
After a year of ownership I am more delighted with my Merlin VSM-MXe loudspeakers than ever. One could easily spend more and be left wanting. These accurate, engaging, and high quality transducers form an excellent basis for a high end system and are enthusiastically recommended!

COMPLETE REVIEW
I’ve just finished a three year project to put together a two channel (stereo) sound system that could satisfy me for years or perhaps even decades to come. I must confess to no small relief at having achieved this goal. Only a maniacally obsessive music lover who can relate to optimizing each piece of audio hardware to the point of having every note of several different reference recordings etched into one’s brain from relentless and repetitious comparisons can appreciate the feeling of freedom that comes with disembarking from the merry-go-round. I believe that no system is identical to a live performance (I have attended hundreds and play a couple of instruments myself) any more than a television can fool a person into thinking that they are in the scene but the system I have now creates a very convincing illusion rich with satisfyingly accurate detail, texture, and dynamics that provide a sense of realism palpable enough to be eerie at times.

While every component influences audio character and quality it is perhaps the speakers that, more than any other single component, define how a system sounds. Conventional wisdom is to put your money into the speakers and amplification. Regarding amplification I’ve had the BEL 1001 MkV for three years now. I had owned about eight others previously and have never been tempted upgrade from BEL (though I did get a second one so I could run monoblocks which brought me from merely excellent to truly world class in that department). My three year quest spanned countless changes but began and ended with a speaker upgrade as the intervening upgrades had rendered my Vandersteen 2Ce Signatures (a great value in their price range) the weak link in the system.

I ordered a pair of Merlin VSM MXe’s after exhaustive research and a long conversation with designer Bobby Palkovic. I had just auditioned another pair of speakers in the same price range and found that they fell a little short of my expectations. Like many high quality durable goods the VSM’s were made to order and it took a couple of months for them to arrive. Though they sounded fine and detailed straight out of the box, thorough break-in required a good 200 hours. After that the bass in particular was fleshed out and tonal balance more satisfying.

Bass took on even greater weight and realism after upgrading from a very good FET/tube hybrid preamp to the excellent Joule Electra LA-150 MkII preamp. The bass output (quantity and quality) this speaker design achieves with a 6.5” driver and SBAM bass EQ module is astounding and will cause educated listeners to look for side-mounted drivers or even a subwoofer, but it will not rattle your teeth like a 12” or 15” woofer. What you get instead is refinement, elegance, delineation between instruments and voices, imaging, and sound stage that add up to an intriguing sense of sheer credibility that is, for lack of a better term, fascinating. It’s detailed yet smooth, intriguing but not fatiguing, entertaining and toe-tapping. Female vocals are silky and seductive, and various instruments including drums, piano, upright bass, acoustic guitar, brass and strings all seem to sound just right. Jazz, classical, acoustic, and female vocal music all sound very realistic, drawing the listener in to *feel* the emotion behind the performance. Of course with electronic/highly processed music or distorted rock and roll accuracy can be difficult to judge but even there the speaker's resolution and imaging are spellbinding. Vocal harmonies are not all melded together but actually sound like distinct voices (another nod to the fantastic BEL 1001 MkV monoblocks is due here). Listening to these speakers in my system is truly a remarkable experience. They are not inexpensive given the componentry but in my mind the physical implementation is only a means to an end; a five-way speaker system for the same price that has more bass but sounds less convincing is NOT a better deal than this outstanding two-way in my humble opinion and by my yardstick these are a great value.

Finally this review would not be complete without giving due credit to Bobby at Merlin for his relentless and tenacious efforts in optimizing the VSM design over the past 15 or so years, his contagious passion and enthusiasm for music and its proper rendering in reproduction, and last but not least the patient, generous, and responsive coaching and sharing of wisdom that I sought out and which was invaluable in choosing an efficient path in optimizing the system upstream of the speakers. We agree on at least 90 percent of what we have both auditioned and I am forever in his debt for his having spent long, tedious hours auditioning all sorts of components, tweaks, and ideas so that I will never have to and can enjoy listening to music instead!

= = = Associated Equipment = = =
Transport: Music Hall CD25.2 w/Underwood HiFi T-mod
Digital Cable: Cardas Lightning 15
DAC: Audio Aero Capitole SE (tube output)
Preamplifier: Joule Electra LA-150 MkII (tube)
Interconnect Cables: Brown Electronic Laboratories (BEL) The Wire P1
Amplifiers: BEL 1001 MkV (solid state)*
* I believe these to be among the best sounding amps ever made, period.
Speaker Cables: Audience Au24e
AC Cords: Audience PowerChord & PowerChord “e”
AC Power: Dedicated 20 amp circuit w/hospital grade receptacles
Vibration Control (internal): Herbie’s UltraSonic tube dampers on all tubes
Vibration Control (external): Symposium Ultra Platforms, Svelte Shelves, Rollerblock 2+ & Rollerblock Jr.

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