“How do you improve on a truly great loudspeaker, especially a sui generis one like the six-foot-tall, four-tower, two-thousand-pound MBL 101 X-Treme MkII Radialstrahelr system?” asks The Absolute Sound in its annual Golden Ear Awards issue (September 2023). The 101 X-Treme is German brand MBL’s astonishing flagship, in a class of its own. And yet, improve it they did.

The answer, writes reviewer Jonathan Valin, lies in very low bass power, to a degree that one might doubt is even possible in an average listening room. But MBL have pulled it off. What marks the difference between the 101 X-Treme MkI and MkII is an entirely new subwoofer, “resulting in a low-end power extension and clarity that I’ve never before experienced at home, at a show or in anyone else’s listening room,” says Valin.

In fact, Valin’s first ‘ecstatic’ words to MBL’s design Jürgen Reis on hearing the MkIIs were: “This is unbelievable!”.

“Hearing and feeling the synths on Drake’s ‘Hold On We’re Going Home’ literally shake the room and flap my pants legs without any losses of definition or smearing of tone colour was a first in my long experience of hi-fi gear.”

“But it isn’t just the bottom octaves that have been improved… when you change the low end you change everything” which, is this case, results in “far and away the most lifelike (and enjoyable) tone colour, dynamics, soundstaging, imaging and three-dimensionality that I’ve heard from a loudspeaker on any kind.”

“The MBL 101 X-Treme MkII will raise goosebumps on just about every well-recorded track.”

Find out more and locate your nearest specialist dealer at www.mbl.de/en

A longer review of the 101 X-Treme MkII by Jonathan Valin is forthcoming. In the meantime, you can read an interview with MBL designer Jürgen Reis in the October issue.

Discover the full list of Golden Ear Award winners 2023 in the September issue of The Absolute Sound.