Neumann MA 1

Slightly painful (and time consuming) start due to various bugs in the software (e.g. you can select any audio input from your interface for the mic signal as long as it's input one...!), but once I got through to the calibration stage things went much more smoothly.

Things to improve:
- Archiving (saving) and loading previous measurements for comparison and reversion is absolutely essential. If you want a calibration with and without the sub, or you use you monitors in more than one location, this is really essential.

- A quick means to switch between presets is also very much needed.

- Don't forget to apply the calibration before closing the app, or you will have to redo all your measurements!

- Measurements should be salvable independently too, so they can be reused to generate a different eq curve.

- Would be nice to be able to select any input channel, as the interface suggests ;)

- There is also a bug regarding system gain, whereby you have wait a few minutes after assigning your speakers to Left/Right position before testing the system gain or it will repeatedly fail. There's no onscreen indication as to why this is failing.

- I also managed to get my monitor indicators to flash forever by clicking the ID buttons and then going to next screen before they stopped flashing.

- Would be great if the audio IO UI had an input VU meter to help identify when the mic channel was correctly selected and working.

Results: Moaning aside, the results are very good and I think this is an essential bit of kit if you use your KHs for anything critical. The low end was never right, even using their ipad algorithmic calibration wizard (which did help quite a lot over the rear switches) and I had limited trust over the low end of my mixes. Now it sounds really smooth and open across the entire freq range which is great!

Pros:
I got this to pair with the KH 120 II and 750 and once I got it dialed in, it made a night/day difference in sound quality that was pretty shocking to hear and made it much easier to mix down tracks that still sound solid on other systems.

It's worth the extra bit of money to get more out of the premium I paid for the set.

Since the DSP controllers are part of the monitors themselves, you can plug them into anything and once you have it assigned without having to go through calibration again.

Cons:
The tuning software was incredibly unforgiving and if you're getting line noise anywhere in your chain, it unlikely you'll be able to make use of this. Also, if you don't live in a quiet area or are doing this in a room that isn't already isolated from external sound in some way, expect this to take a long while.

Living in a downtown condo, trying to run the calibration process really tested my patience. The sound of someone yelling on the street or cars driving by would cause it to fail and have to start over from the beginning.

It took me several hours to finish the alignment early in the morning. In a quiet area, I think this would only take a few minutes at the most. My only criticism of it would be to not have to restart the entire calibration process if one recording fails.

While I'm sure the mic would work for other tuning/alignment software, I'm pretty sure the Neumann MA1 software only works with Neumann hardware. I'd love to get more value out of it by being able to use it on other speakers.

TL;DR:
If you're buying Neumann gear with DSP controls, I think it'd be silly not to buy this mic and use their software. The bump in sound quality trumps absolutely anything else I've invested in.

The MA 1 is particularly effective in refining bass response and balancing midrange clarity. After calibration, the stereo imaging becomes sharper, and the overall sound feels more natural. This improvement translates into mixes that translate better across different playback systems, reducing the need for endless referencing.

MA 1 is an excellent addition to any Neumann monitor setup, particularly in challenging acoustic environments. It provides an easy, effective way to improve the accuracy of your monitoring system. While it has limitations compared to more feature-rich calibration tools, its focus on simplicity and performance makes it a worthy investment for most users.

Rating: 4/5

by AYNC