“Everyone I know remembers where they were the first time they heard them,” writes the US audio magazine’s reviewer Neil Gader, of German MBL’s pioneering Radialstrahler loudspeakers.

And the 126 is, he adds, “perhaps the most startling entry in the MBL line.” Why ‘startling’?

Well, you can see at a glance why the brand’s flagship 101 X-treme MkII model turns heads as well as ears. It’s a ‘wow’ of a design that’s sure to always get noticed, visually as well as sonically, and is already a three-times Golden Ear Award winner. The 126, in contrast, is MBL’s entry-level and most petite speaker. “But what it offers is anything but diminutive,” enthuses Gader.

Indeed, the compact 126 has already made its presence felt in the 2022 awards line-ups, having been Highly Commended in the Hi-Fi Plus Product of the Year Awards 2022.

It’s an omni-directional standmount design, ideally crafted for rooms of up to 30 square metres (as well as multichannel applications). And yet, it sports the same Radialstrahler tweeter and midrange drivers as the brand’s mighty £65,000 101E MkII floorstander.

“There’s musicality and transparency in abundance,” writes Gader of the 126. “On top of that is astounding spatiality – sonics that can only be characterized as sweeping in ambience retrieval, with 3D-like immersion and seamless top-to-bottom response. As only an omni can, the MBL 126 approaches the complex relationship between imaging, soundstaging, and envelopment in ways direct-radiating transducers hint at but rarely attain.”

“Though small of footprint the MBL 126 makes a grand statement.”

Read Neil Gader’s review in full online at https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/2022-golden-ear-mbl-126-loudspeaker/

Find out more about MBL’s unique loudspeaker designs, and locate your nearest dealer, at www.mbl.de/en