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Published June 1, 2001

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Epos M15 Loudspeakers

"Are they broken?" John Atkinson asked after a minute's audition.

"What!?!" I shouted over Rodney Crowell's "Telephone Road."

"I've just never heard speakers at this price point throw such a vast soundstage before," said John. "Are you sure you've wired the tweeters in phase?"

"Got to have -- just listen to that center fill."

"Oh, my."

That's British understatement for wowie-zowie.

But I understood John's response. I couldn't believe how good the Epos M15 floor-standing two-ways sounded either -- and I'd been listening to them for weeks. That's not to say that $1395 per pair shouldn't buy you a good sounding set of speakers. It should -- and it usually does -- it's just that the M15 sounded so darn good, I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

I heard the news today, oh boy...

They sure don't look fancy. The M15 is a floor-standing, rear-ported, two-way speaker finished in cherry veneer, which is neatly bent around rounded edges and fooled me into thinking it solid wood. The speaker is compact at 33"H by 8"W by 10"D, but it sits firmly on its threaded spike-feet. (For extra stability and resonance damping, you can fill the bottom quarter of the cabinet with dry sand -- I didn't try this since draining all the sand out before shipping 'em back to their American distributor would have been a royal pain.)

The speakers are biwirable, courtesy of two pairs of metal five-way binding posts. The driver complement is a 1" ferrite tweeter with an aluminum-alloy dome and a 6.5" polypropylene woofer -- the original Robin Marshall-designed Epos woofer, complete with phase plug.

Epos loudspeakers have always had the reputation of being "crossoverless," but that's a bit of an exaggeration. Technically, they combine a minimal electronic crossover (a single capacitor wired to the tweeter to control its LF taper) with a minimal mechanical crossover (the woofer's surround controls its HF roll-off). While this is a simple and elegant solution to the crossover problem, it is a far cry from just running two drivers full-range. And thank god for that!

Many years ago, at the onset of my audiophilia nervosa, I built a pair of multi-driver loudspeakers using the finest drivers I could afford. Boy, did they suck. "I can't understand it," I kvetched to my friend Dale. "I bought the same drivers Bozak uses."

"What did you use for a crossover?" he asked.

"Crossover?" Guess I should have read a book on speaker-building first.

It's possible that their precisely-engineered, minimalist crossovers are the reason Epos loudspeakers have always offered an extremely open, uncolored sound. Of course, there's probably a host of contributing factors, ranging from the woofer's cross section to the construction of the cabinets -- but the fact remains that, over the years, Epos has earned a reputation for fast, coloration-free, musically satisfying loudspeakers.

These days, Epos is under new management. The UK speaker conglomerate Mordaunt-Short bought the company from Robin Marshall in the '80s and then didn't have a clue how to market specialty loudspeakers. MS/Epos was sold to Audio Partnerships (a subsidiary of Richer Sounds, a huge discount chain in the UK that buys brands with which to stock its stores) and they, in turn, took Mordaunt-Short's manufacturing offshore to a Chinese factory. AP, too, couldn't suss out what to do with Epos and ended up selling it to amplifier designer Mike Creek, who shortly thereafter became a hyphenate: now he's amplifier-speaker designer Mike Creek. Creek and Phil Knight (a speaker designer with Epos from the start) designed the M15.

And they designed it as the foundation of an HT speaker system -- a matched center channel is currently under development. That's interesting, I reckon, but I auditioned the M15s as part of a two-channel music system. Bowing to my review deadlines, I initially auditioned the Eposes with the superb Arcam A-85 integrated amp ($1495) and the Sony SCD-333ES five-disc SACD changer ($1200). DiMarzio M-Path cables connected the lot.

Oh! Weakness of joy...

"Oh, my."

I was totally unprepared for the huge, coherent, balanced, perfectly natural sound that greeted me when I sat down to listen.

"Oh, my."

I have reference components that cost more than the entire system -- and I'm not implying for a moment they aren't worth it -- but the Epos M15s, the Arcam amp and the Sony SACD changer made music that was just too good to be true.

"Oh, my."

Oh, it could use more deep bass. Tubas and string basses are reproduced as slightly smaller instruments. On the other hand, trombones and cellos are full-sized and full-bodied. And if you crank the Arcam up to certified-stupid levels (as I, of course, did to play Johnny Winter's Deluxe Edition [Alligator ALCD 5609]), the highs start to sound a tad hard and spitchy. But on most material, if played at something approaching normal listening levels....

"Oh, my."

It's not just the natural sounds of the instruments. I think we all expect that from speakers nowadays, even really inexpensive ones. And it's not the way that lyrics seem so intelligible through the M15s. If anything, that would seem to point at a mild emphasis at around 150Hz. No, it's their sheer openness that first impresses.

Well, that and a vast soundstage. When I first set the M15s up in my listening room, I used more or less the same position I had employed for the Soliloquy 5.0s, Dynaudio Contour 1.3 mk.IIs or ProAc Response One Ses -- about 48" off the front wall and about 70" apart from one another, with my listening position about eight feet away. Center fill sounded a tad cramped, so I moved the speakers a few inches further apart and listened again. Ditto, so I spread 'em even further. Same thing. I ended up with the speakers 90" apart -- and I had a seamless left-to-right soundstage that extended beyond them and that caused the front wall to completely disappear.

"Oh, my."

But oh! The silence sank...

It was a gray spring day, which for some reason made me hanker to hear Ravel -- go figure. So I pulled out the SACD reissue of Boulez Conducts Ravel [SS 89121]. These interpretations rank among my favorite performances of this music, chiefly because of Boulez' clarity and elegant adherence to structure. His vision of Daphnis et Chloé eliminates about thirty layers of gauze without sacrificing a shred of atmosphere, and the SACD reveals that Columbia's recording was far more vivid and dynamic than any CD or even LP release has shown before now.

The soundstage was vast -- not only did it portray the New York Philharmonic in a broad and deep configuration, it tacked the Camerata Singers onto the rear. And darned if I couldn't even make out that they were on risers!

From the haunting beauty of the solo horn's rising melody to the last sighing susurration of the chorus, the M15s re-created all the subtle timbral distinctions Boulez managed to coax from the NYP. The suite was all color and motion, and the Epos speakers rendered it all in 3D holography -- and let me tell you, that last row of singers was waaaay behind my front wall. Considering that it felt as though I would have to shout to communicate with the singers in the rear, it's amazing how the M15s were capable of reproducing their faintest whispers with such precision.

"Oh, my."

Of course, I have experienced loudspeakers which do all right with big busy works but can't handle solo instruments or sparsely populated soundscapes. When you hear a lone clarinet, say, or a solo guitar, you can tell a lot about how much the speaker imposes its own character on the music.

So I learned a lot from Guy Van Duser and Billy Novick's Lovely Sunday Afternoon [Daring Records 25161-3035-2], which consists of a series of duets between guitar and clarinet. Most of the pieces follow a similar form -- the duo states the theme and then the clarinet solos over guitar vamping, followed by the guitar soloing and a final return to the theme. The feeling's so intimate here, it sounds like a couple of old friends just hanging out and talking. They've had this conversation before and they'll have it again -- they change just enough to keep things interesting.

The Epos M15s captured the differences in Novick's tone from song to song, while keeping it recognizably the same instrument. When Novick wailed the blues, as he does on "Frankie & Johnny," the speakers caught the fat honk of his attack -- as well as the slow vibrato-less decay of his bent notes. Van Duser's finger-picking is full of texture -- his variation in attack and his facility at complicated rolls and trills are technical marvels -- and the M15s caught his sound perfectly, from the click of finger pick on string to the bloom of his soundbox in the lively acoustic.

"Oh, my."

I cued up The Bruce Katz Band's DSD-recorded Three Feet Off the Ground [AudioQuest AQ-SD 1056] and it was magic time. Most of the album is just four musicians -- Katz on Hammond B3 and piano, Julien Kasper on guitar, Blake Newman on stand-up bass, and Ralph Rosen on drums -- although guitarist extraordinaire Duke Robillard sits in on two songs. Did I say just four musicians? Somehow producer Joe Harley and engineer Michael C. Ross have captured the way those four musicians occupy an entire room when playing live. When you're listening to live music, you don't hear the drums back in the corner of the room and the bass player over on the other side of the stage and the guitarist somewhere else and the pianist somewhere else, all in their little sonic pools of isolation. No, the sound leaks everywhere and, while the sound of each instrument mostly comes from its location (or from its amp's location), there's a solidified feel to the sound of the ensemble that inhabits the room, melding the individual instruments together and lapping against the boundaries. It's called presence -- and the M15s have it in spades.

And they don't have it at the expense of other desirable speaker traits, either. They swing, for instance. Rosen has a great jazz/blues drumming style -- he has a huge backbeat and he's a dynamic drummer who's clearly learned his Sonny Clark lessons. He's also a beautifully steady time keeper, by the way. The M15s capture all of his rhythmic ebb and flow and lovely dynamic filigree or without losing a bit of his bass drum's body or his cymbals' brassy splash of overtones.

They really rock.

And when it comes to the overdriven sound of Kasper's pyrotechnic stratocaster, or Katz' growling, spitting B3 -- well, it was all there. Ummm, no, as much as I like the M15s, that's not quite true -- it all seemed to be there, and it was certainly implied but the Epos M15s don't really have that last octave of bass extension. Newman's acoustic bass should sound bigger and badder than it does through the M15s and the Hammond has some pedal tones that are sort of suggested rather than reported. Well, that's not a huge surprise -- there's only so much bass you're going to get out of a 6.5" woofer, after all.

But what you do get through the M15s is honest and uncolored music. They don't boom or have that overcooked warmth that some speakers use to compensate for a lack of bass. And they don't lack bass -- they just lack deep bass. They're rated to 50Hz and I'd reckon they actually do produce usable sound at that frequency. That means you don't quite get the open E on a string bass or the bottom octave on a piano. Many listeners won't even notice.

I sure didn't, except when I forced myself into critical mode. That's another thing the Epos M15s have going for them -- they're seductive. That's a quality you don't find in the measurements. (And if you think I'm going to now launch into a subjectivist anti-measurement rant, you're wrong; I happen to believe that today's measurement techniques can tell you practically everything about a loudspeaker -- except whether or not you're going to like the way it sounds.)

"Oh, my."

Oh just, subtle, and mighty opium …

That wasn't an isolated reaction, by the way. Whenever friends dropped by during my audition of the M15s, they exhibited more or less the same response. "What are these loudspeakers?" my friend Ruben marveled when he came over for movie-night a few weeks ago. "They cost what?" He's not in the market -- his ProAc Response One SCs make him very happy. But he called a few days ago to ask about the Epos. He knew a guy who needed a pair of speakers and he thought he should give the Epos M15s a listen before he bought something he wouldn't like as much.

I do, too. They have an awful lot going for them. They're compact enough to fit into almost any room. They have an attractive cherry veneer that makes 'em more like furniture than gear (and, of course, being floor-standers, they don't require stands). They sound great, too. They're accurate and dynamic and natural as all get out -- and they throw a huge, detailed soundstage out of all proportion to their size. Nor do they require expensive partners to sound good -- I loved their sound whether I drove 'em with the $1500 Arcam A-85 or the $599 Creek 4330R.

And where they do go wrong, you can't really blame 'em. You can get more deep bass or speakers that play louder, but you'll have to spend quite a bit more money to both match the strengths of the Epos M15s and better 'em where they could stand improvement.

Give 'em a listen and you'll be smitten. And once you buy them, you can change that moan of delight from "Oh, my" into "All mine."

...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com

Epos Loudspeakers
2 Bellevue Road
Friern Barnet
London
N11 3ER
England
Phone: +44 (0) 20 8361 8864
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8361 4136

E-mail: info@epos-acoustics.com
Website: www.epos-acoustics.com

Distributed in the U.S. by:
Music Hall, Ltd.
108 Station Road
Great Neck, NY 11023
Phone: (516) 487-3663
Fax: (516) 773-3891

Website: www.musichallaudio.com

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