Before the twins came to the Hall, the Sound-Weaver worked with smaller kin of theirs: a pair of little voices from the same forge, no bigger than loaves of bread. They could not shake the floor, and they never tried. What they did was speak the middle of things clearly, the country where voices and melodies live, and the Sound-Weaver had long held to a lesson an older craftsman once gave him: settle the middle of a song, and the rest will follow it into place. So when word reached the Hall that the forge had made a larger pair, he expected a great deal of them. The forge had named them for loudness, and in the Hall they were the Loud Ones from the day they arrived, though loudness turned out to be the one thing they would not give him.
He met them the way he meets everything, with his hands. Each twin stood upright, and on its face lay three cold grills of metal in a column: a broad one above, a broad one below, and between them a small one, the high voice. Old builders have a long name for this arrangement, D'Appolito. The forge gave it three letters, MTM, for the two middle voices that stand guard on either side of the treble. With the high voice set between them, the high sound reaches the ear from one true point instead of from somewhere off to the side, and so, when you sit close, the picture between the twins stays exactly where it belongs.
At the top of each twin's back his fingers found an open mouth. This is where the twin breathes. Without that breath the low end would fall away early. With it, two small bodies reach down to fifty, deep enough to carry the kick of a drum.
Below the breath sat five buttons in a row, small and hard, and he learned them by touch from left to right: Sensitivity, Calibration, High, Low, Extension. Each press steps the twin to its next setting, and the twin keeps that setting through any rest, however long. They are twins, but they do not share one mind. Whatever you teach one, you must teach the other.
The first time they spoke, he let them speak as the forge had made them, with no rite performed. They were honest. Nothing swelled, nothing hid. The low end was present enough to work with, the middle was clear, and the top was bright without any glare.
They have one law, and he learned it quickly. They are close-speakers, made to be heard from an arm's length or two away, before the room has a chance to paint its own colour over the sound. Push them toward a shout and the voice frays and breaks. The Sound-Weaver took no offence at this. A truthful counsellor speaks at the level of the table, not across a feasting hall. Anyone who wants to shake the rafters should go looking for larger twins, or for a beast to crouch beneath the desk.
The desk itself had something to say. Wood throws low warmth back up toward the listener and muddies the middle, so the twins carry a desk setting within the Calibration rune, a quiet correction that takes some of that warmth back out.
In the box, coiled beside the twins, lay a small listening ear on a thin cord. For a long time he left it there. When he finally performed the rite, he set the ear on a stand where his own head would be, the third point of a triangle with the twins. He ran the cord into the back of one twin, held down the Calibration rune, and left the room quickly, because within five breaths that twin begins to sing a long rising sweep that is no pleasure to sit through, and any body left in the room changes what the ear hears. Gweeny was out the door before him. When the first twin fell silent, he did the same for the second.
Afterward, the world came into focus. Details he had been listening past for years stepped forward. The space between the twins grew sharper and more exact, every sound settling into its proper place. He has performed the rite in two rooms since, and both times the difference was plain. He has not worked without it since.
The forge sells one further charm: a mirror called X-Monitor, which lets the twins imitate other voices, the speaker of a phone, a car, a television, and keep many listenings at once. But the mirror was made with no thought for those who work by ear, and VoiceOver cannot read its face. It stays on the shelf. If the forge ever opens that door, the Hall will hear of it.
In time the beast came too. The Sound-Weaver chose it himself and carried it home, a squat, dark drum of a thing that crouches beneath the desk and speaks only in the lowest tongue, down below where the twins can reach. When it speaks, the floorboards answer. The forge had made it as a companion for the younger generation of twins, not for his, but he set it beneath the Loud Ones all the same. Now the twins sing the middle and the high and leave the depths to the beast, and none of the three has to strain. The first time it spoke, Gweeny felt the floor answer under his paws and went under the desk to have a word with it.
The forge has since made a younger generation, deeper and louder, with a wider place to sit and listen. Anyone choosing new today should choose the younger. But the Sound-Weaver's twins still stand on his desk, and every song that leaves the Hall is checked against them first. They have never once told him a lie.
For the plain specifications, the full layout of the back panel, and the steps of the rite in ordinary words, read the original review: IK Multimedia iLoud MTM MKI Studio Monitors From A Blindness Perspective.