Waveform Mach Solo.(speaker)(Brief Article)(Evaluation)

This will be a brief note, for reasons soon to be obvious. Only a few weeks ago as I write this, John Otvos, owner of Waveform, offered to deliver a pair of their Mach Solo speakers for review. (The Mach Solo is quite similar to the MC/MC.1 combination, but the egg and the woofer box are combined into a single full-range speaker. The list price was about $4,995/pr.) For several reasons, John decided to close Waveform just before the expected delivery date, but he generously brought the speakers anyway, assuming that a brief review might alert customers and help him clear out his inventory. Well, word of Waveform's passing and of the deep discounts on their remaining speakers spread quickly, with the result that all of the stock was gone in about two weeks.

Given this situation, a review may of little use to our readers, but I will venture a few quick notes. The Mach Solos are (were?) an excellent speaker, with extraordinarily flat response. They present the listener with gobs of detail at any listening level, most interestingly even at very low levels. And they place a solid image between the speakers while providing very good presentation of depth. They let the music through big-time.

OK, but given that you may never be able to buy a brand-new pair of Waveform speakers, why would you care? Two reasons:

First, Waveform showed what happens when a speaker designer identifies a few really critical factors and executes a design that optimizes them. Waveform's reading of the research literature argued for flat response and very wide dispersion, and that's exactly what their speakers do. The unique egg-shaped enclosure for the midrange and tweeter seems to reduce diffraction to the vanishing point and at the same time provide extremely wide dispersion in all dimensions.

Folks, this works. Is it the only way to build speakers? Waveform undoubtedly would argue that it is. Obviously other manufacturers would argue that it isn't. (To take just one example, the Legacy Whispers stand as evidence that other approaches can be successful, too.) The point is, though, that attention to research, concentration on the fundamentals, and serious design work can produce great products at prices that, while not rock-bottom, are within the bounds of reason.

Second, and rather sadly, this episode demonstrates that great products may not survive in the marketplace. As a small ...