B&W MM-1 Small & Quick Review
I wanted to replace my speakers with something new and much better. Was reading reviews, asking, ... and finally made a decission - B&W MM-1.
Is MM-1 price tag worth? Read ...
Pro
- small, decent speakers with beautiful design, something I do expect from Apple when unpacking new gears,
- music reproduction is really great and these speakers can fill your working space with music equally, really good, everything what I had so far sucks,
- DAC is superb and you can bypass your builtin sound card via USB connection, simply try to connect your headphones to Mac sound output and then compare with headphones output on MM-1, not comparable,
- USB, AC and left speaker connectors are placed at the bottom of the right speaker, pretty nice solution,
- design rocks,
- remote control does work perfectly, well designed and you can control volume, mute, next/previous song, play/pause and you can switch them off too,
Con
- constant hiss, I'm sorry, but this is really annoying, I hear it even when my Mac Pro, UPS, ..., are running (and they're pretty loud) and this is not acceptable, you can hear it when you pause your music, nothing is playing, I have never heard this degree of noise,
- right speaker temperature - top of this speaker is really hot, I read somewhere that they shutdown themselves when temperature is too high, didn't happen yet, but if this happens I'm going to return them, I want to listen to music,
- AUX input and headphones output are at the back of the right speaker, so, you have to touch your polished speaker, turn it around, connect headphones and turn it back, actually it's not a big con, because of design rules, but ...,
... just one more note to already mentioned hiss. If you want to use them for music only and then you are going to switch them off, they're perfect. If you are going to use them as main speakers for everything, an example - AIM notifications without music playback - it's really annoying and I'm sure you'll throw them through window soon.
Verdict
Hard to judge after 24 hours. Okay, reproduction is superb at all volume levels. Yes, they can be pretty loud. But I can't stand the hiss. Sorry B&W, it's really loud. According to all forums, B&W did respond that it's normal. Hmm, when I hear it, something's wrong ...
How do I use them so far? For music only. If I'm not listening they are switched off and all notifications (AIM, Skype, ...) are routed via internal Mac Pro speaker. Awful, but much better than the hiss and it's enough to be notified about whatever.
Would I buy them again? So far yes. We'll see after few weeks. They rocks!
P.S. Also when you switch them off, B&W MM-1 disappears from Mac Sound Output devices, so, playback is automatically routed via previous device. When you do switch them on again, they appear in Sound Output devices and playback is again routed via B&W MM-1. Which is cool.
