There is one giant flaw that I cannot live with on the new 3s. NO WALL MOUNT FOR THE SATELLITES FFS!!!!! Could not believe it and am sending mine back. Also, pretty annoyed that it is only APTX, not APTX-HD. To be honest they may not have bothered though simply as the speakers don't warrant it. Also they are 65 watts rms vs 90 watts rms on the classic Ms. That is nearly a third of a drop in power. I did a side by side testing and not having the satellites mounted in the far corners of the room slightly angled down meant that for me, even using SPDIF optical from my laptop sounded a lot less expansive and warm than the old Ms just with standard 3.5 analogue laptop output.
I spent two days researching any possible solutions for mounting the satellites in room corners, there is nothing out there short of getting something custom made. If they were going to drop the wall mount hole, why not at LEAST have a screw mount hole like almost all other decent satellites out there?? I've even been exchanging emails with AE to see if there was any way around this. This for me is a major step backwards from the original design, and the follow up M, and a betrayal of the model's history. In two houses over 7 years I've always mounted in the room corners, and this alone improves the listening experience by an order of magnitude.
So..... dug out my old Cambridge Audio DacMagic Upsampling DAC which 6 months ago started crackling in use with an ancient DELL XPS 17" media beast (used for running a projector in the living room) when the Creators Update of Windows 10 came out. WOWZERS!!!! The Ms now sound amazingly fresh again, the DAC has added depth, much greater separation of instruments, the bass is a lot tighter, and the highs crisp and clean. Even a hint of mids!
For years they've been in the bedroom just for lazy nights watching movies either sent to TV or projector with a laptop headphone out and some music off the same, with a proper high end hifi in the front room. The reason I tried the 3s was for the convenience of bluetooth using my phone for music in the bedroom, but instead I'm going to order a Bluetooth 5 (with APTX-HD) receiver from Aliexpress and plug that into the Cambridge DAC.
As long as the Ms keep on trucking (how much longer can they last...?), I think I prefer them paired with what was a high end DAC in its day than the new less powerful model. If you have the Ms and are confident they are in good shape, if you are not already doing so, hook them up to a DAC and give them a listen.
A final few words on the new 3s. When I plugged in the power lead I actually felt the backplate shift the tiniest amount upwards when I pushed the lead in so quality control concerns and in my humble opinion, while the sub looks fine, I think the satellites look like average desktop speakers from 10 or 15 years ago. Pretty boring and boxy. Whereas the Ms satellites look great and classy in either colour. I have them in white and they have a really unique, distinctive and furthermore understated design.
.....and that remote sux.
