TNT delivery was by three not two boxes, the smaller one containing the top dispersion-lens hats and grills. The safety-strapped cardboard packaging surrounded one single-ply inner box padded with top/bottom foam retainers to protect the speakers with a far thicker outer box taped up of cut panels. Anyone who for $4'500 expects Western-style branded boxing all around will be disappointed*. Still, this home-brew Shanghai solution certainly delivered the goods in perfect shape. Because the upfiring AMT's gills are exposed to dust, it's good sense to mount the included cover and avoid getting dirt into the driver's folds. Even though its posts end in threads, the lens doesn't bolt to the cab but simply sits in retainers. The metal woofer grill sports four small bent lips that coincide with the quad pairs of embedded small magnets. Once mounted, the perforated cover stays nicely put whilst obscuring visual feedback on woofer excursions. Biwire jumpers were not included. Either roll your own; or be a good sport and biwire properly seemed to be the implied message.
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* "For speakers shipping door-to-door by express delivery, our factory follows my special instructions on packing requirements: 1/ for the inside packing, we must have heavy protection to prevent damage to the synthetic stone from rough treatment during transit; 2/ for the outside, it should appear cheap or even ugly so it won't risk being opened or stolen by suggesting valuable commodities inside."

Rolling out my trusty Track Audio stands with six stacked elements on the uprights, the bigger top plates were the perfect depth whilst width was just slightly broader than required. The smaller top plates would have completely hidden away from view but also hit the speaker bottoms between their four rubber bumpers. Rather than hard synth stone on metal, I preferred having those little decouplers in place. Also, the bigger plates felt safer in case of a walk-by incident.

The above photo drills home the perceptional disconnect about this small box promising equal or more bandwidth than the 10.3" driver of the far taller and wider (though shallower!) Zu Druid V. Also, the 10wpc FirstWatt SIT1 as our stable's top amplifier mates for the Druids would be completely underpowered for the Maximus. Two different concepts, two different supporting casts.


With twenty output transistors per side and a beastly power transformer, the pure class A push/pull Pass Labs XA30.8 is conservatively rated at 30/60wpc into 8/4Ω. If allowed to hit 1% THD, it actually puts out thrice that into 8Ω and still manages 150 watts into 4Ω. Even with the Esoteric C-03 preamp set to 0dB voltage gain, I was at standard room levels with just 50% on the dial. It meant that even the low-gain Vinnie Rossi LIO DHT preamp was fair game.

Having just come off the Druid V augmented by the Zu Submission subwoofer, a first tour suggested that I lost surprisingly little raw reach with the Mark & Daniel. On pressurized in-room shove, it was clearly small-woofer bass however: articulate and snappy but with reduced cone surface also less physical and massive. Still, Mercan Dede-style LF depth mining played up the brain-freeze aspect of how it all could originate from just two compact monitors. Checking on port-induced hot spots in my work-desk seat on the right sidewall and Blondie the cat's favourite rocker on the left sidewall, I noted far fewer and less intense boom notes than other rear-ported monitors of recent acquaintance had set off. This suggested that this particular bass alignment was inherently well damped to not require class D-style restraints. Regardless, I heard more of the front wall in the bass than I did from the Druid/Submission combo. That's the price to pay with rear ports. You hear some time-delayed energies ricochet off the front wall. To test ultimate LF, the kilowatt class D Wyred4Sound SX-1000R monos in-bound for review would take the final pulse on LF to show whether on that aspect, the Pass Labs might have left anything under the table.

For a proper not wake but wake-up service after their long though quick journey from faraway China, I ran signal for a few days before getting serious.