The MidiLand S4-3050M Speakers

Want to know the secret of some great products? Not a new concept, but if a manufacturer collects various pieces from other great products and does a mix & match, quite the interesting creation can take shape. Remember the S4-4060's? Grab the satellite modules. Think back to the MLi-490's. Pair the excellent 6.5" polypropylene subwoofer with the aforementioned sats and violá! A seemingly new speaker system emerges.

When I was informed of the opportunity to review the 3050M's, I jumped. Why? Because the satellite modules and the subwoofer impressed me in earlier reviews and months ago, I briefly thought, "geez, this piece with that piece would make quite the audio marriage." Thanks to MidiLand for the review samples. Let's see how successful they were at integrating two pieces of previously successful systems together.

Factory Specifications

The S4-3050M's

Power Output: 50 Watts RMS
Frequency Response: 20Hz-20KHz ±3dB
AC Adapter: 24 VA
Input Sensitivity: 300mV
Total Output: 96dB SPL
Warranty: 3 Years
MSRP: $99.95 USD

http://www.midiland.com

7/10 Rating

While the subwoofer enclosure isn't a mirror image of the 4060's, it is very similar to the 490's reviewed many months ago. You may recall that the 6.5" polypropylene unit garnered more than faint praise from this dedicated listener.

Similarly, the satellites dug up memories of satisfying high frequencies from a single full range driver. No, the 3050M's don't possess a tweeter, but if there were any such full range driver that sounded like one existed beneath the acoustic covering, this 2.5" would have my vote.

All controls are mounted on the subwoofer housing itself. This made me bend over and reach under my table far too many times to adjust the volume, so leaving your system's desktop audio controls active and minimized becomes almost mandatory.

Gray isn't exactly my favorite color but what struck me as odd was the off-white coloring of all the connector wires. Somehow, it seemed out of place on a system attempting to make some kind of non-off-white fashion statement.

The satellites also sport the 15º and 25º tilt option. When aligned one way, they point at an angle that is either 15 or 25 degrees above the horizontal normal of the table surface. In general, this might prove sufficient for those users that prefer the lazy man's slouch position, whereas the nose barely peers over the keyboard, but as for some of us that value our spinal columns, I preferred to raise them 4 inches above the table.

A quick look inside revealed a smallish 6,800µF 25V main filter capacitor and seemingly MidiLand's favorite Philips OM8383S four channel amplifier. One of these days, I'm going to find someone at Philips that will "leak" that datasheet in my direction. For now, all I can do is speculate on how it does its job so well.

Data acquired and reported of this type is done without any opinion or bias whatsoever. For a quickie brush up course on audio terminology and measurements, point your browser to the Audio Reproduction Systems article.