MayFly Audio Systems MF-201A

If you’ve ever read Homer’s Iliad, you probably remember the Catalog of Ships at the beginning. It’s an exhaustive record of the contingents the Achean army deployed against Troy, naming the commanders, their hometowns, the number of ships in each contingent, and more. Not to put too fine a point on it,1 it’s a snoozefest. It makes you dread what’s next. But of course, if you come to this point only to abandon the Iliad in frustration, you’ll miss the fabulous war epic that follows, chockablock with action, drama, and romance.

For me, the MayFly MF-201A speakers were a bit like that: a great poem or novel that initially fails to grab you—okay, me—or, if you prefer, a slow-burning movie that doesn’t become engrossing until the second act.

Baked Dragons

The Mayfly MF-201A (to keep things short and simple, I’ll call it the 201) is the brainchild of Ottawa-based Trevor May, the founder of MayFly Audio Systems. May is a veteran guitarist and sound designer who builds two types of products that have opposite intentions. His equipment for guitar players includes a stomp box called the Sketchy Zebra that generates swirling vibrato and phase-shifting effects. Another one, the Dirty Window, produces different types of tubelike distortion.

The groovy nomenclature doesn’t carry through to May’s other enterprise: designing and manufacturing hi-fi speakers, a field where distortion is the enemy and tonal purity is paramount. I wouldn’t have minded if a pair of Baked Dragons had turned up on my doorstep, or, say, a duo of Funky Beavers. Instead, we have the blandly named 201 standmounts ($4900/pair); plus, to satisfy bassheads, the matching MF-301 passive subwoofers ($10,000/pair; bring your own crossover and amplification).

The MayFlys are more Eagles than Whiskeytown, more Elvis than Iggy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The subs double as stands for the 201s and are claimed to play down to 18Hz. But I lived with these speakers for a good two months and paired them with various streamers, DACs, and amplifiers; however, I was never tempted to connect subwoofers.