Regards the Minx speakers I remember hearing them on demo in Richer sounds and they sounded amazing!! am guessing there place is only really to be used in the surround sound department?......... Dont you like them?
I don't really have any feelings about them either way. I've heard them on a short movie demo in-store, but haven't ever installed any. The brand is almost exclusively supplied by Richer Sounds, and since a typical RS customer is also likely to be a DIY installer then it's unlikely they'd call on the services of a pro installer like me.
What I can do though is make an educated assessment of performance based on the technology used.
The Minx satellites use
BMR drivers. The same technology is used in Monitor Audio's
Shadow speakers and the Kef
T-series. Both those manufacturers are renown for R&D, so if anyone knows how to get the best out of the technology then it's Kef and Monitor Audio.
Then there's price. Kef's and MA's BMR-based systems weigh in at well over £1000. That's a big psychological hurdle for buyers. So the commercial decision to price north of £1000 isn't taken lightly. You could argue that you're being asked to pay a premium for the name. There may be a small element of that; but more likely it's that they both feel this is what it costs to make a BMR-based system work in the context of the rest of their ranges.
Now look at the driver implementation. Kef and MA both still use a conventional tweeter for high frequencies. The BMR drivers are used for midrange only. Cambridge Audio goes a different way. There is no tweeter in any of the Minx satellites. It's just a BMR driver in the 215 satellites. The 325 and 525 satellites add a 2.25" long throw woofer. The design approaches are different. Where Kef and MA want to produce the thinnest speaker possible, Cambridge Audio wants to make a satellite with the smallest front surface area (the 215). Doing away with the tweeter helps achieve that. This is possible because a BMR driver has a larger useful frequency range than a similarly sized midrange driver. It produces more usable treble, so it can double as a tweeter more effectively than a conventional driver of the same cone area.
If we compare to Bose; they also use a single 2.5" midrange driver and no tweeter in their satellites. But it's a conventional driver. The treble is at frequencies where the driver is going to be struggling with distortion. This is partly why the Bose sub/sat systems sound detailed on a short listen but is ultimately fatiguing when listened to at length. BMRs aren't perfect for treble either. They still produce a ragged top end. But on the whole they're a better compromise than a midrange cone driver.
Now you have some background we will come on to the audio side of things. Both the Kef and MA BMR-based systems can be bettered for music by each company's own conventional sub/sat systems. This is despite the Shadow and T-series systems having tweeters, and more drivers and costing as much or more than the alternatives. So where do you think that leaves us with the Cambridge Audio speakers?
On balance, I think the MBR drivers offer advantages in frequency range that make the Minx satellites a better choice than a single-driver satellite speaker such as Bose. But on its own an MBR doesn't beat something that also has a tweeter if your tastes include music.
