What can you expect from our latest brand addition?
Last month, we announced a new and truly exciting partnership with elite German audio designers, MBL. From November, Kantata Audio will become the exclusive retailer of MBL’s transformative listening products across Northern Ireland and Ireland, marking the brand’s first entry into the market.
MBL represents a wholly unique approach to loudspeaker design - marking them out as truly distinctive in a crowded and competitive market. Their products are 100% manufactured in their state of the art factory facility near Berlin - one of Germany’s largest premium audio manufacturing facilities.
To celebrate this new partnership, we’ll be featuring MBL systems at various price points at the Belfast Audio Show on November 2nd-3rd. Tickets for that event are completely free, making it a tantalising opportunity to come and experience the transcendent qualities of MBL for yourself. It’s not one we’d recommend missing!
In this month’s blog, we wanted to take some time to introduce you to MBL in a little more detail. We’ll cover a brief history of the brand, what they’re looking to achieve with their unique products, and who might benefit from introducing them into their setup. We’ll also turn our specific attention to the MBL products Kantata will be stocking - a trio of audio solutions that come together to represent a floor-to-ceiling listening setup of the absolute highest quality.
Introducing MBL
Conceptualised in the 1970s, MBL is the brainchild of pioneering electronics engineer Wolfgang Meletzky. As a young man, Meletzky found himself wanting for a sound system that could replicate the colour, range and emotional flight of the music that he experienced whilst attending his beloved Berlin Philharmonic. Yet every HiFi setup he sampled inevitably came up short in contrast to the live performance.
In Meletzky’s living room the music was unidirectional, pushed outward through cones and domes using air compression, magnetic coils and paper diaphragms. All were mounted in a geometric housing designed to transform an amplified electrical signal into sound pressure waves. The result was a sound experience that never quite matched the emotional thrill of a live orchestra.
Meletzky also found himself struggling with the need for the listener to sit at the apex of a “stereo triangle” to hear the optimum results from two speakers beaming at a single sweet spot. He was convinced there was a better way. And so he set himself the task of finding it.
The design he settled on was wholly unique - a loudspeaker without the hard lines of a rectangle, but rather in the form of an elongated sphere, evenly radiating music outward in all directions, much like a light bulb emits light. He called it the ‘Radialstrahler’.
In 1979, Meletzky partnered with his friends and future partners, Bienecke, and Lehnhardt, and founded the MBL to share their newly invented Radialstrahler with the world.
Fast forward to 2024, and today MBL stands as a global leader in the field of high-end audio. With one of the largest and most modern manufacturing facilities in premium audio, MBL continues to manufacture every one of its components and loudspeakers in-house in a mixture of high-tech and handcraft.
Six speaker models featuring one-of-a-kind Radialstrahler technology are complemented by the Reference, Noble and Cadenza lines of electronics, each offering five components that deliver unparalleled sound quality to satisfy the most discerning audiophiles and music aficionados.
MBL and Kantata
Once we’d had the opportunity to experience the incredible audible power of MBL’s Radialstrahler loudspeakers and accompanying electronics, we knew this was a brand that we had to introduce to the audiophiles of Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Their loudspeaker designs represent a genuinely novel way to experience the music you love. It’s among the most natural sounding audio experiences we have come across - the sound is not radiated on one plane, but over a sphere encompassing 360 degrees, filling the room with a natural balance of direct and reflected sounds. They really do have to be heard to appreciate them in all their incredible fullness.
Again, don’t forget you can do just that at the Belfast Audio Show!
Initially, we’ll be stocking three products from the MBL range, representing a complete listening system between them. Here, we’ll look at each in turn.
Radialstrahler 126 Loudspeakers
Meet MBL’s most compact omnidirectional loudspeaker - a stunning addition to any listening setup and any home.
The diminutive 126 Radialstrahler was specifically developed to create an astonishingly large soundscape in smaller listening rooms. Its pyramid shaped bass cabinet can’t break the laws of physics, but it pushes them to the last hertz with a specially constructed bass-reflex enclosure that reduces cabinet resonance and vibration.
With only 11 litres of volume, two 5.5” woofers configured in a push-push grouping on the sides of the cabinet make optimal use of their space to deliver in-room bass frequencies down to 70 Hz. The two bass drivers punch far above their weight with torsion-resistant aluminium membranes that maximise cone excursion. Held firmly in place by an aerodynamically shaped chassis, each of these powerful drivers enjoys maximum freedom of movement. The heat generated by the cones’ linear travel is efficiently dissipated from the driving voice coil via a directly glued voice coil carrier.
NOBLE N31 CD/DAC
With optional Roon module
MBL’s N31 CD-DAC elevates the soundtracks to your life by seamlessly combining a world-class CD transport with a state-of-the-art digital-to-analogue converter – all in a stylish, sculpted chassis.
Using XLR, RCA, optical, or USB inputs, the N31 CD-DAC processes digital signals with sample rates up to 24-bit/192 KHz, or using NativeDSD. The USB inputs have been skillfully designed to extract digital data stored on an iPhone or iPad – bit perfect, error free, every time – while the N31’s optional Roon Module allows connection to a local network and provides background information on its colour display, such as album art and title tracks.
It’s a distinguished CD player, a superlative DAC and, optionally, a Roon Ready streaming endpoint that embodies the culmination of many hard-earned improvements and innovations.
NOBLE N51 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
Is it possible? A complete amplifier solution in a compact package? Absolutely. The MBL N51 conceals both a preamplifier and a power amplifier in a single, elegant chassis.
A powerful 380 watts per channel (into 4 ohms) lets you take it to the limit – without distortion – thanks to intelligent soft clipping. And that’s only the beginning. Revel in the performance of MBL’s Unity
Gain technology, derived from the N11 Preamplifier for maximum dynamics. Indulge your musical tastes with LASA 2.0 for added control when driving complex loudspeaker loads. Proudly showcase the 5-inch high-resolution colour display, and command the performance with the stylish backlit remote control featuring a rotary volume control.
Should you consider introducing MBL to your system?
You would surely expect us to answer with a resounding, ‘yes!’.
Yet HiFi is such a deeply personal and individualistic pastime, and here at Kantata Audio we’re firm believers that the right system for you is the system that sounds right for you. There are very few absolutely correct or incorrect answers in the pursuit of spine-tingling musical experiences.
What we can say with some confidence is that MBL’s remarkable products are unlike anything else we’ve experienced in HiFi. They have the potential to completely revolutionise the way music lovers interact with their collection. MBL can represent a major step-up in quality for even those with the most discerning systems.
If you’re currently planning to upgrade, or crucially downsize your system, MBL must be on your shortlist to audition. We’re confident that these stunning products compete with the very best on the market and they could be more affordable than you think.
Say goodbye to all those boxes, cables and power supplies!
Interested? Why not come and hear it for yourself? Join us at Belfast Audio Show 2024 on November 2nd and 3rd for more!
