The Design

The Telesto speakers are a four-way sealed enclosure design. What is unique about them is that there are two tweeters. The top one is a conventional 1" silk dome design, mounted in its own enclosure, and the second tweeter is horn-loaded. Together, they deliver the high frequencies, with the horn-loaded tweeter handling the lower portion of the highs, and the top tweeter extending to 40 kHz. Two 4" midrange drivers and an 8" side-mounted woofer round out the driver array. The horn-loaded tweeter has a wave guide that is shaped like a pointed cone.

The enclosure is egg-shaped so as to reduce standing waves, and on the rear panel, there are two sets of binding posts for bi-amping.

The MKVI subwoofer reviewed here is the 10" version of the sub we reviewed in March, which uses a 15" driver. It has the same amplifier and amplifier controls, including three EQ bands (20 Hz, 30 Hz, and 40 Hz). The 10" sub is $600 less than the 15" version. It's also smaller, and I suspect this might be a major factor in choosing it for purchase, as "smaller" seems to be the buzzword these days. The trick for subs though is getting lots of air moving at low frequencies in small enclosures. Earthquake solves this problem by using long throw drivers, with one of them being a massive passive radiator. In the larger sub that we reviewed, both the active driver and passive radiator are 15" in diameter. With the 10" sub reviewed here, the active driver is 10", while the passive radiator is 12". That is why it is named the MKVI-12.