Secrets of Home Theater and HiFi Looks at the Classic Swan M1.

Chris Groppi takes out a pair of M1′s for a drive.

With thousands of pairs distributed to audiophiles worldwide since the late 90′s, the M1 has an impressive legacy. The speaker’s distinctive planar-magnetic tweeter, sometimes called a “ribbon” tweeter, actually doubles the conventional speaker’s high frequency cutoff point from approximately 20kHz to some forty thousand cycles. I think I can safely say that the M1 puts the highs back in high-definition.

It’s not always easy to mate a midrange / midwoofer with such a device, but it’s not for reason of “speed”, as many believe. The trick is simply very good crossover integration, something we’re going to be addressing summer 2007 in a new way.

But back to that midbass driver; the M1 uses HiVi’s finest 5.25″ / 135 mm midbass driver — they threw all the tricks at this unit and the only thing I know of that I like as much is HiVi’s exotic Danish-style poly cones, even though they’re quite a bit dissimilar. More on how and why that is soon.

With luck I’ll be reissuing the M1 in mid 2007 with a special new crossover with which I’ll be shooting for perfect impulse accuracy. Check back at The Audio Insider’s M1 pages for details.