By June 29th, "we had a fantastic quite overwhelming launch. Regarding a loaner, at present the number of speakers in existence is really only the one pair of final production displayed at our event. Given the holiday season, realistically another set won't be ready until late September. However, during ~2 weeks of August I think we can arrange to ship to you and return the production set. In between we have various potential partner events where we need the pair. I'm not completely sure yet of the August dates but will know by mid July. Could that fit your schedule?" It certainly could. "The speakers will arrive in two flight cases at just under 100kg/ea. The cases have wheels on one end to maneuver relatively easy. A lifting and placement guide will be included along with power and speaker cables. A user manual will be online by the time you receive them. I will be on hand to answer any questions. I'm very much looking forward to hearing of your experience with our active loudspeakers." Against the standing designer, we appreciate that his tweeter sits just above the belt for visually unobtrusive height. If you're still mystified by 'M', it's for 'mains' to hint at a surround and/or center model in the wings. For once nobody should wonder whether anything bigger is planned. With M already exceeding the range of audible rather than purely pressure-sensed bass reach, who'd want or need more? By the same token, if nothing bigger is needed, neither is anything smaller. We might wish for a more petite sticker but how much wiggle room could scaling down the current woofers to dual 8" exploit? All the rest of it would probably stay the same unless the midrange too shrank by 1-1½". None of it promises significant savings. If so, this design simply is what it is; end of.

Ole Siig at the launch event.

"Plans are afoot to develop active Atmos home-theater center and rear speakers based upon the same design principle and patented acoustic platform. Like M as mains, they'll have a Dante® input for lossless multi-channel installation with hidden wiring. The aim is amazing home theatre sound in ordinary rooms as part of stylish interiors, no special cinema acoustic treatments required. Likewise, a set of surrounds may be used for a 2.0 system with sound quality like M, just not quite 16Hz but making a still respectable true ~30Hz." So there's that though timing, availability and pricing remain TBD.

"Two flightcases via DB Schenker should take between 5-7 days to reach you. I will include power cables with UK and EU plugs. Also included are 5m AES/EBU and coaxial S/PDIF cables. Either will work as speaker interlink or connect to your digital source equipment. The analog speaker input is on a standard XLR.

"Here you can use either a balanced cable or an XLR-to-RCA version. I have a set of the latter on order which I hope to include. Each flightcase weighs 100kg to need two people.

"You'll notice a lifting handle on each speaker that the Getting Started guide advices to replace with the included bolts. If you plan to take pictures that might be a good idea. Otherwise simply leave the lifting handles mounted. The Owner's Manual that covers the PC/MacOS controller app included on the USB stick will be available in a few days also under the documentation tab. You'll need this only to use the built-in 10-band equalizer to voice the speakers for your preference and perhaps compensate for room acoustics. As the set we sent you was completed for our launch events, there was no time to laser-print the plinth with CE markings and connector labels. The CE test completed successfully with the EMC and safety reports being sent to us."

To reload, M's innate DSP includes user-settable response tweaks accessible by app and display. The recently reviewed Kenaz AD36 with 700wpc class D and German DSP was fixed despite PowerSoft's built-in preset slots. Its Taiwanese designer strangely opted for short-circuiting DSP's higher IQ—of tailoring the frequency response to room and preference—with a fatal brain aneurysm. Now his speaker behaved as dumb as all passive speakers do which interact with our room in unpredictable sadly non-adjustable ways. My way or the highway. M exploits DSP's surgical adaptability. That liberates us from having to use far coarser course correctors like cables, cones and digital front-end differences. To be sure, this EQ sits atop sub-200Hz 'immunization' from room effects. That's bult in with Ole's now patented bass system as the design's core MO. His 10-band digital EQ is about ironing out minor wrinkles and/or tailoring tonal balance. The major dry cleaning happens as a purely acoustic function of Ripol's cardioid bass dispersion.

With the necessary long cables included, I could enter M both XLR off our Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe with Muses-based analog atternuator; and AES/EBU off a Singxer SU-6 USB bridge whilst using Audirvana Studio's 64-bit dithered digital attenuator on my 27" iMac. Since digital signal transmits in a series protocol to bundle left/right channel data into one stream, we must tell each speaker whether it's left or right via its touch-screen display and left/right page swipes. Here we also activate the factory presets as Ole's default response tuning. The included power cords attach via professional locking connector to guarantee a superior safer link than our ubiquitous IEC standard. The RJ45 port is for Dante.

Upon delivery, the first plastic flightcase I opened sadly showed its contents beheaded. In transit—possibly having been turned upside down or flipped hard onto its side?—the head array had broken off clean below the bore of the midrange's wooden tail to dangle freely on its hookup wire. It could still sit back upright on its crack as shown but obviously was too precarious. Looking at the 5-6mm thin walls which the bore leaves on either side of the HDF frame exposed a structural flaw for so bottom-heavy a speaker. The black frame should at least be black acrylic if not solid metal. For €75K/pr I also thought the finish of this first proof-of-concept pair too rustic. "That damage is very disturbing. It's sad news for which I can only apologize and learn from. Of course Schenker transported this pair before without incident. We'll look into how best to address the top's strength which is slender for acoustic reasons. Hopefully we can get this sorted before long and have another chance at a 6moons review later in the year." I'd suggest that the packaging too needs a revisit and become a Clip-Lok type. At 75kg with a very low center of gravity, it's mandatory that a recipient can simply walk the speaker out of its flightcase rather than having to lift it out of/back into a deep case with tight cutouts. Better yet, add removable castors which get replaced with the current footers once each speaker is in its final location.

For now then this report remains a preview on a really interesting concept whose finish quality, structural integrity and packaging still need tweaking. Even the included 1m twist-lock power cords must get longer to insure that they'll actually reach since they can't be replaced with standard IEC-terminated specimens. 3-4 meters would be a good start. "We'd like a second chance to get this right, not least as the shipping company outside our control clearly mishandled the shipment." 2nd chance coming up. What's more, "the next TCA-M active speakers we build will have the entire treble clef frame in aluminium. Apart from being extremely strong, this will also cater for futher styling options already being requested by customers". The shipping mishap thus triggered a structural redesign to make the product even better and bake in new cosmetic options; a perfect example for how to turn sour lemons into delicious lemonade.

Part Deux to come in due time…