You’ll find the THX logo stamped on a host of products, but Razer’s Mako is the first consumer speaker system that THX—led by THX Chief Scientist Laurie Fincham—has designed from the ground up.
And while Razer is known for its edgy industrial design, there’s more to the mushroomesque profile of this 2.1-channel speaker system than provocative looks. The shape of the satellite and subwoofer cabinets is a function of two new THX technologies: THX Ground Plane and THX Slot Speaker.
Typical stereo speakers have a narrowly defined sweet spot caused by the triangular projection of their sound waves: The path to your ears is narrow at the cabinet and spreads wide as the waves move into the room. In THX’s design, the tweeter and mid-range drivers point straight down, and the sound waves are channeled through a narrow slot at the bottom of the round cabinets.
According to THX, this design remedies a fundamental flaw with the classic box-shaped speaker cabinet: Some sound waves travel on a horizontal plane directly toward the ear, while others reflect off whatever surface the cabinet is resting on and interfere with the sound waves traveling the more direct path. THX claims its technology overcomes that problem by bouncing all the sound waves off the desktop. As much sense as that argument makes, we found the Mako’s satellites to be only on par with other high-end speaker systems we’ve auditioned—Blue Sky’s EXO 2.1 is one example—and all of those have featured box cabinets.
The system is powered by a proprietary amplifier design, which THX has dubbed ClassHD. THX’s amp uses a tracking power supply that delivers only as much power as is needed to sufficiently boost the input signal at any moment in time. The satellites are bi-amplified, meaning that the tweeter and mid-range drivers are powered by discrete sources.
The amp delivered crisp, distortion-free sound while playing back CDs and game soundtracks, but we quickly discovered that it doesn’t get loud even when pegged. According to Razer, the 300-watt amp delivers 50 watts RMS per channel to the satellites (with the other 200 watts going to the sub, we presume). We found that to be more than adequate for near-field listening and to fill a small bedroom, but auditioning the Mako in the media room at Maximum PC Lab North left us underwhelmed.
Since the subwoofer features the same down-firing speaker design as the satellites, Mako recommends placing the sub on a hard surface. The floors in our primary music-listening rooms are carpeted, but we easily solved the problem by sliding an 18x18-inch square of porcelain tile under the speaker. The Mako’s satellites are very good, but its subwoofer kicks all kinds of ass, serving up the kick drum and bass in Paul Thorn’s sub-punishing “Fabio & Liberace” (from Ain’t Love Strange) without breaking a sweat. This song has exposed the sonic deficiencies in many a speaker system, but the Mako’s sub is one of the best we’ve heard at this price point.
The Mako’s volume control is located on a wired puck with a touch-sensitive surface lit by a sequence of blue and red LEDs. The puck has a 1/8-inch headphone output and a 1/8-inch line-level input (suitable for connecting an MP3 player). The primary line-level inputs (1/8-inch and RCA) are on the subwoofer. In an interesting twist, the satellite speakers connect to the sub via Cat5 ribbon cable (and Razer provides enough to reach just about anywhere).
THX says the Mako can create an “omni-directional” sound stage, and they deliver on that promise: We could sit or stand anywhere in our home-office test environment and still be in the stereo sweet spot. This is an impressive feat that’s terrific for recreational music listening or movie watching; but it’s much less important for gaming, because you tend to be centered in the sweet spot anyway. And you wouldn’t want to use these speakers for mixing down home-studio recordings, because you’d have no way of knowing what the mix would sound like on more conventional stereo speakers.
As much as we like the Mako’s style, subwoofer, and wide sound stage, the system as a whole can’t dislodge the sub-less Audioengine 5 from its roost on our Best of the Best list.