M&K Sound – A Brief History

At M&K Sound, we design loudspeakers to sound inherently right, to be universal tools, equally adept with any style of music or movie soundtrack, in stereo or surround.
While other manufacturers were building audio dinosaurs in the form of coffin-sized boxes, M&K led the way into the future with the world’s first satellite/subwoofer system, David & Goliath in 1976. The following year, M&K Sound introduced the Volkswoofer, the world’s first subwoofer with a built-in, dedicated power amplifier. The journey began in 1973, when Walter Becker of Steely Dan commissioned M&K Sound to design a studio reference subwoofer and monitoring system for the Pretzel Logic LP mixing sessions. The result was the world’s first balanced dual-drive subwoofer and Pretzel Logic went on to become a million-selling Top Ten hit and one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. M&K Sound combined expertise in live music recording (RealTime Records) and loudspeaker design, drawing heavily on the research and acoustics background of Dr. Lester Field, who had worked at Bell Telephone Research Laboratories and been a full professor at both California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, before retiring as Chief Scientist and vice president of research at Hughes Aircraft Corporation.
By combining creativity, critical listening and extensive experience in live sound recording with scientific methodology and experience, the foundation of M&K Sound was set. As word of mouth spread rapidly throughout the music and movie industries, M&K Sound systems were created for leading studios, as well as home installations for producers, directors, actors and recording artists. M&K Sound loudspeakers have been chosen for the development and demonstration of the groundbreaking Dolby Digital cinema and home surround format, for the first public demonstration of the high-resolution Blu-ray disc format, for sound production on Star Wars Episodes I-III and countless other award-winning music, film and TV productions. A Who’s Who of the professional audio world – film, music, mastering and broadcast studios – continue to entrust their livelihood to M&K Sound reference monitors and powered subwoofers.

Phase-Focused Crossover

M&K Sound’s exclusive transient-optimized Phase-Focused crossover ensures extremely coherent response over a wide horizontal and vertical listening window.

While other crossover designers consider just frequency response on one axis (the sweet spot), M&K Sound addresses response in both the time and frequency domains, at a wide range of angles in both the vertical and horizontal planes to optimize the speaker’s three-dimensional response.

Deep Bass Concept

All M&K Sound subwoofers employ M&K Sound’s Deep Bass Concept based on careful matching of drivers, amplifiers, sealed enclosures and M&K Sound’s exclusive Headroom Maximizer circuit.

Headroom MaximizerTM allows the full, uncompressed dynamics of the audio signal to be heard, while preventing amplifier clipping and distortion. M&K’s Deep BassTM sealed-box design reproduces bass frequencies below 20Hz with exceptional transient response, accuracy and authority.

About M&K

The M&K Legacy

“This is the story of a speaker company that helped shape home theater and even music recording into what it is today.”

Home Theater Magazine (USA)

The journey began in 1973, when Steely Dan commissioned M&K Sound to design a studio reference subwoofer and monitoring system for the Pretzel Logic LP mixing sessions. The result was the world’s first balanced dual-drive subwoofer. Pretzel Logic became a million-selling Top Ten hit and one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

In the following years, as word of mouth spread rapidly throughout the music and movie industries, M&K Sound systems were created for leading studios, as well as home installations for producers, directors, actors and recording artists.

The M&K Sound has been chosen for:

• King Kong
• Star Wars, new trilogy
• Iron Man
• The Incredibles
• The Lord of The Rings Trilogy
• Finding Nemo
• Pirates of The Caribbean
• Chicago
• Black Hawk Down
• Pearl Harbor
• Cast Away
• Wall-E

And many other major releases

Cases

The Choice of Professionals®

The world’s most eminent musicians, singers, producers, directors and engineers working in hundreds of film, music, broadcast and postproduction studios worldwide, choose M&K Sound loudspeakers.

Every day they make hundreds of artistic decisions based upon what they hear on their speakers. The trust they have in M&K Sound allows them to work quickly and effectively as they create the most breathtaking film soundtracks and music ever recorded. Supervising sound editor Nino Jacobsen has produced sound for numerous films and television series with M&K Sound loudspeakers. In 2014 he was commissioned to mix sound to the the largest, most expensive and most ambitious television and film production in Scandinavian film history. The flagship TV series 1864 features a violent historical drama with epic war scenes.

The sound is mixed in the powerful Dolby® Atmos format that allows filmmakers to precisely position and move sounds anywhere in a theatre – even overhead – to heighten the realism and impact of every scene. This places great technical demands on the sound editing system and loudspeakers. With the reliability of M&K Sound S300 Series, X Series subwoofers and the combination of active MP2510P speakers Nino is guaranteed a precise and truthful reproduction of the sound making it possible for him to pay close attention to detail and nuances in the sound design.

M & K Sound are used by the world’s finest filmmakers, including:

• Warner Bros • 20th Century Fox • Universal • Paramount • Dreamworks • HBO

• Skywalker Sound • Disney • THX • DTS • Dolby Labs • Sony Music • Lucas Film