MK has always been proud of its professional audio heritage.

Models from the previous generation have been used by studios belonging to Sony, Skywalker, 20th Century Fox, Dolby and DTS USA.

Previous speaker incarnations

In fact, although the system reviewed here represents the more affordable example of the genre, it's a direct descendant of kit originally designed for DTS' use in their post-production rooms in the States.

Those loudspeakers had a small footprint, with high dynamics, great resolution and potency and, of course, were fully-active and bi-amplified for professional use.

The M Series reviewed here embrace similar philosophy, although they are regular, passive designs.

High quality build

Build quality can be considered excellent.

There's an unpretentious single set of pretty gold-plated connections on the back and lots of shinyness all over. If you want a dust-attracting high-gloss finish you've come to the right place.

Our set came in a lustrous black-cat-on-a-dark-night shade for the fronts (the M7s), but the M4-T rear tripoles - cute as nine-pence - were supplied in white.

You can order either shade, even for the subwoofer, which is something of a rarity. You probably won't want to mix and match as we've done, unless you've got a Madness-themed living room.

Simple design

The M Series shares a woofer in common with its Xenon Series brethren. It's called the Xenon SB-12 in the Xenon leaflet but called the M-SB 12 in the M-Series bumph.

Either way, it's a simple but posh item. You get a sweepable phase control with a gain and crossover/defeat knob and that's it.

You can connect and carry onwards in both phono and speaker level, so it can be used with or without an off-board crossover in your rig.

I, of course, hooked everything up to the amp and set about working my way through my test disc favourites, and in particular the SF action classic Terminator 2.

One for fashionistas

The three fronts have two tiny 4in drivers to go with the tweeter, while the slightly trapezoidal rears have a small grille on each face, fore and aft, with a dipolar set of 2in weeny speakers to go with their midbass 4in and high frequency maker.

Overall, I think the look is fabulous. The speakers have a very high standard of finish; the grilles are pressed metal mesh with protected edges and neat indentations for the tiny magnetic grips to fit into.