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Follow-Up
Some weeks passed following my review of the TBI Magellan VIP su Subwoofer and Majestic Diamond micro monitors when I received the following email from TBI's Jan Plummer:

Hello John,
Normally I will let an objective review stand but in this case, I'm impelled by the owners of the speakers to speak out concerning the disastrous review of our Majestics. As I stated, the speaker is very simple and consists of three parts and a Zobel. Eliminating any one of these parts will destroy the speaker's total function as it will with any well-balanced high-end speaker. Just like the VIP subwoofer, some things change and for the better. Some people would argue that the bass driver needs to be exposed and this would cause our subwoofer not to function as both sides of the driver are used to process the sound as with the Majestic. This is acoustic impedance matching and is really necessary when attempting to get the full range of sound from such small drivers.


When you eliminated the grille, you created problems that I don't think you've seen in a speaker before that affect the general performance. If you are going to get serious with such a speaker, you need all of the assistance that you can get which is generally external to the driver.


In most reviews that I've seen, the manufacturer is contacted if things are going wrong so an assessment of the setup and operation can be made. Here, many assumptions were made concerning what would normally be a simple computer speaker and no further investigations seemed to be merited. I don't think that a reviewer wants to muddy the reputation of a product intentionally and while I don't think that a re-review is in order, if the product was not used as the manufacturer intended and supplied, then some statement should be made as to the validity of the Diamond review. It may be a natural to remove the grille if possible in high-end reviews but if it was a mistake to do so, then no one should be punished and the product's reputation should not be tarnished.


This request is coming from the owners of my speakers who are really enjoying the product and myself as the review is short-circuiting the inquisitiveness of potential buyers. As a struggling entrepreneur, I would appreciate your informing 6moons readers of this gross error. I will have additional reviews in the future including those of the users themselves and I would really like to have a neutral platform to continue.

Regards,
Jan


My personal feelings with regard to this letter were as follows:
First, no assumptions about a computer speaker were ever made. As I outlined in the review, the speakers were used in three rooms, on three sets of peripheral equipment. The speakers were afforded every consideration (and more) given any other monitor to enter my home. I also found it curious that I had never heard directly from any of TBI's users who, as Jan would have it, were so affronted by my review.


I further feel strongly that if the removal of the Diamond's grill were so detrimental to the performance of the speaker, this should either be strongly noted in the manual or the grills should be very difficult to remove - or both. In any case, as I didn't previously receive a copy of the manual with the speakers, I received no warning with regard to the grills' importance to overall performance and given their relative massive nature (massive relative to the size of the driver), the natural inclination was to remove them.


Still, it's absolutely correct that no reviewer should unfairly muddy the reputation of a manufacturer so I agreed to reopen the case of the TBI Majestic Diamond. Inasmuch as I had already reported on the stellar performance of the accompanying Magellan VIP su active subwoofer as well as my ability to mate it with other monitor speakers; and since most of my reservations with the Diamond had to do with the upper midrange and treble, it was decided that TBI would resubmit a pair of Majestic Diamonds. I would attempt to make them work with one of the subwoofers already under my roof for review. In the end, I'm not sure if this was the best approach as it seems to have left as many questions as it provided answers.


Upon receipt of the Diamonds this time, I did indeed receive a copy of the appropriate owner's manual and before setting up the speakers, I dutifully gave it a read. Indeed there is the recommendation to leave the grills in place - "generally operation is best with the grill on and port open" is how it reads. There's also a recommendation for the Diamond's use close to walls, which I did previously try (among many orientations) and promised to try again. But the first thing I wanted to do was to make sure that I was comparing apples with apples. As best I could, I repeated my earlier setup with the speakers a couple of feet into the room. I wanted to see if the grills' removal was really responsible for the problems I previously observed. This time the speakers also came with rubber plugs designed for insertion into their ports, in the event that they would not be high-pass filtered by a subwoofer. Initially I didn't use those either. Though I wasn't able to filter bass frequencies as I did before, I wanted to use the Diamonds as close to exactly as I had previously.
To my great surprise, the speakers performed miles ahead of what they had managed earlier. Mated with a Gallo TR-1 powered subwoofer this time [right], I I was able to duplicate the smooth sub/speaker transition without sweat. Where before the problems with the Majestic Diamond made it immediately obvious that something was wrong, this time the sound was much better balanced and much cleaner particularly through the midrange. Previously, the system was pretty much unlistenable off-axis where my computer sits but I was surprised to find that even from that seat, the speakers now sounded much more correct.
Could the removal of the speaker's grill really make that much of a difference? The only way to find out was to remove the grills so I did. The change in the sound was negligible and certainly not what accounted for the speaker's previous poor performance.
I fired off an email to TBI with a report and a couple of questions. Could the Majestic Diamonds I previously reviewed have been out of spec? Normal follow-up protocol would require the exact same pair of speakers be returned but given the length of time elapsed, this wasn't an option. I was told that the review pair had been sold without prior measurement and with no subsequent complaints from the buyer.


As before, I had run the signal through the subwoofer before it was bass-filtered and sent along to the Diamonds. Could something have been awry with the previous subwoofer's filtering system? Could the Magellan have been responsible for mucking up the Majestic's performance? I've run many a signal through such systems with little or no degradation. Might the review subwoofer have been out of spec? Again, no way to know.


What I do know is that as I type this, the Majestic Diamonds are playing and offering a much better account of themselves. As compared to other speakers incorporating a real tweeter, they are still significantly sweet and a touch rolled off, not so much as to call them dull or dark but let's just say that they'll shave off the edge of most inexpensive solid-state amplification. While this is indeed an error of omission, the error is on the side of safety ensuring that the speakers will remain listenable once tethered to just about any class of inexpensive electronics their own price would suggest they'll be mated with. This is the kind of edgeless musicality one can listen to all day without fatigue. Resolution through the treble is slightly curtailed as compared to more expensive conventional speakers but given their class, there's not much to complain about.


Dispersion was much better now than previously observed, which is to say that they sounded much better than the other pair when listened to off-axis. The sweet spot was still where you'd really want to be but from off to the side, the Diamonds remained very listenable and relatively enjoyable. Through the upper midrange, the previous review pair had been truly problematic. It didn't take much listening to know that something was very wrong. For whatever reason, that characteristic was nowhere to be found now. In fact, while still somewhat sweet and perfectly in sync with treble performance, it was surprisingly linear and articulate. I especially replayed the Jennifer Warnes disc that had been so thorny before and heard none of the previously described artifacts.


These speakers completely disappeared into a huge and deep soundstage with very good imaging characteristics, more so than I remembered from before. Whatever was wrong before had, I'm convinced, more than just to do with removing the grills since the "grave compromise" this supposedly caused could not be duplicated with this pair when its grills were removed. While it somewhat bothers me to remain in the dark about what caused my prior experience, I am pleased to report that the second pair of TBI Majestic Diamonds were far better speakers than those reported on a few weeks ago. Eventually I did comply with all of TBI's placement recommendations and can also report that the speakers are unusually flexible when it comes to placement opportunities. Previously recommended primarily for placement where you'd never dare place another speaker, I can now add to that recommendation the more usual placements as well.


To sum up, the TBI Majestic Diamonds are an inexpensive and inconspicuous speaker that should appeal to a lot of people in a lot of situations. When combined with a subwoofer, they result in a smooth, warm and relatively full-range sound without the frequency gap between subwoofer and speaker that one experiences in some systems of this genre. Overall, they offer a big and surprisingly open perspective on the music that is wholly without edge or grain, making them the perfect match for electronics of lesser pedigree though still deserving better. Certainly politely sweet on top, they are not so rolled off that anything of real importance is missing even out of the sweet spot. Put it all together and at their price, these tiny tots are an easy recommendation for your consideration.
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