MBL’s Extreme Journey with Concerto Köln

MBL’s Chief Engineer, Jürgen Reis (below), also records Cologne’s famed period-instrument ensemble, Concerto Köln. It was thus only fitting that two musicians from the ensemble, bassist Jean-Michel Forêt and violoncellist Alexander Scherf (who is also music director of Concerto Köln), visited the MBL room at Munich High End to play some music, talk music history, and enable comparison of live vs. reproduced sound.

Given the damped nature of MBL’s large room and the live acoustic favored for the ensemble’s CD, however, comparison wasn’t in the least bit fair. Nonetheless, thanks to Reis’s superlative engineering, it was possible to appreciate how well the system granted huge presence to the ensemble’s gut-stringed violins. Those strings also had a natural liquidity and uncanny breadth of expression. Transparency was supreme.

Doing the honors was MBL’s RX-02 Extreme System (base price $754,400): A 101 X-Treme MkII Radialstrahler system ($389,000/pair in black chrome finish) that consists of a huge pair of speakers and matching sub towers; four 9011 mono power amplifiers ($64,100/each), 1621 A CD transport ($33,400), 1611 F D/A processor ($34,200), and 6010 D preamplifier ($32,400).

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