MoFi SourcePoint 888 Floor-Standing Speakers Review

Coming from iconic designer Andrew Jones, they are descended from two other Jones designs, the SourcePoint 8 and SourcePoint 10.

While at first glance, the SourcePoint 888 speakers look very similar to other floor standers, a closer look behind the grills shows some unique design points. Listening to the speakers can be breathtaking, not a word I throw around. Andrew Jones has created something very special, and all the buzz from reviewers and buyers seems justified.

Speaker design is such an interesting mix of art and science. There are endless designs, with many approaches to moving air around your listening room. I’ve heard hundreds of brands and types of speakers, and all have the same goal: the realistic reproduction of music, acoustic or electronic.

A truly great speaker can be of various designs: a flat panel, an electrostatic, an acoustic suspension design with large woofers, or smaller left and right channel speakers with subwoofers to go deep. Still, the best speakers I have heard, no matter what the design decisions, all sound quite similar. They share a wide frequency response, good dynamic range, and pinpoint imaging when the recording was created with that in mind.

So, along comes Andrew Jones, a highly respected speaker designer, whose roots go back to Pioneer, KEF, Infinity, and ELAC. Now with MoFi Electronics, where he has already created two extraordinary speakers, the above-mentioned SourcePoint 8 and the SourcePoint 10. They are what I would describe as large bookshelf-type speakers, but they are best heard on stands. Listeners praised the concentric driver sound, which is distinctive and coherent. I’ll have some details on what a concentric driver is as we progress with the review.

Andrew Jones had the best description of his work:

“The SourcePoint 888 introduces a revolutionary 3-way design incorporating two newly developed 8-inch woofers alongside the refined concentric driver configuration. This synergy creates a seamless, powerful soundstage with exceptional bass extension and dynamic range. The design philosophy ensures a cohesive sound profile, where bass, midrange, and treble frequencies are in perfect harmony.”

A casual look at the 888 speakers and they appear to be like any other floor-stander. But taking off the magnetic speaker grille will quickly change your view. At first glance, you’ll see what appears to be three woofers, but that’s not correct. The SourcePoint 888 is a rather unique 3-way design.

One 8-inch midrange driver houses the concentrically mounted tweeter, with two newly developed 8-inch woofers mounted below. The concentric design is said to improve the speaker imaging, as midrange and high frequencies originate from the same physical space. Bass frequencies are omnidirectional, so they don’t contribute to the imaging illusion.

The 888 is 42” tall, 12.6” inches wide, 16” deep, and weighs 96 pounds each. The cabinet features two rear ports and is available in black or walnut finish. The cabinet itself is braced and virtually insert. Spikes and flat isolation feet are provided if you are setting the speakers on carpet or another surface.

Also unique are the cabinet details. The 888 uses a sculpted baffle with multiple facets to eliminate diffraction. This is claimed to even out the frequency response.

These speakers are heavy, heavier than I thought they would be, given their size. At 96 pounds each, they were delivered on a wooden palette brought into my garage with a motorized forklift. With the help of a friend, I was able to unbox them. They were well packed, and the speakers emerged in excellent shape. I wanted to test them in my moderately-sized living room and my smaller, intimate home theater.

The speakers offer spade lugs or banana plugs, so I opted for bananas for convenience.

The MoFi 888 speakers were driven by my Emotiva 200 WPC stereo amplifier, fed by my Emotiva RMC1-L processor. Sources are my Oppo 203 Blu-ray SACD player and my Roon collection of music fed by my Eversolo DMP A6.

The first tests were in my living room. It’s a mid-sized room, 20’ wide by 16’ deep, with some walls that are not parallel, and there are open spaces to the kitchen area and front door hall. The speakers are 24” from the rear wall and, following the advice of the manual, slightly canted in toward my listening position. The left and right speakers are 8’ apart, and my listening position is 13’ from the center point of the 2 speakers. The room is carpeted, and between the speakers is a low hutch which contains my audio equipment and a flat screen TV.

I listened to a variety of material via Roon, and some CDs and SACDs. My playlist is mostly acoustic, but I also sampled some electronic music. I find that good acoustic recordings and vocals are the best way to decide if a speaker sounds ‘real’. By that, I mean real instruments playing in a good room environment that can be replicated by the speakers.

Getting back to the low end, I thought my subwoofer was still hooked up from the system I removed to audition the SourcePoint speakers, but it was inert. To make sure it was not interacting with the SourcePoint speakers, I moved it to another room. The deep and musical bass remained, and it was as impressive and musical a low end as I’ve heard from a floor-standing speaker in this room.

And I must add, Conclave is some of the best demo material I have ever heard.

It was time to move the speakers to the home theater and see how they do in a smaller space and with music and some movie sound. My theater is set up for multichannel and ATMOS, but I only listened to the SourcePoint 888 speakers in stereo. The speakers were being fed by a 100 WPC Emotiva amp, with an Anthem processor.

I can now understand the enthusiasm of other reviewers, which, before hearing these speakers, I viewed with my usual skepticism. No more. The MoFi SourcePoint 888 speakers are excellent by any measure. Best speakers ever? Probably not, but they are in a small group of well- designed musical reproducers.

I’ve always wanted to hear some Andrew Jones speakers, and I finally had my chance. I think these MoFi SourcePoint 888 speakers are a triumph of design and musicality. I’ve never heard a speaker be so effortless at reproduction, even at high levels. The imaging was faultless, as was the dynamic range and frequency response. The construction of the speakers is also first-rate. I don’t see any shortcuts in the quality of the electronics or cabinets.

I’ve heard a lot of speakers, many more expensive, and sonic memory is not infallible. I’ve listened in a multitude of environments and conditions. Still, in my rooms, I’ve never heard a more impressive speaker that gets so many things right. The big things (frequency response and deep bass) but also the nuances, like the striking of a triangle in the percussion section, or the quick response time when a piano is being played rapidly. In my smaller theater, it was almost like listening to good headphones, where details you might otherwise miss are clearly heard, like the moving of a music stand or traffic outside the recording studio.

Even when played loud with challenging music or sound effects, I heard no distortion. In complex sections of music, the speakers never blurred the details.

I think the concentric driver design is a large part of the success of the MoFi SourcePoint 888 speakers. They present a coherent sound field. Usually, when listening, I’m aware of crossover points and discontinuities in frequency response. I’m often sensitive to midrange problems, and a good voice recording will expose midrange discontinuities. I’m not hearing this in either room where I auditioned these speakers.

What I do get is a very smooth and consistent wavefront that sounds like music, rather than an amalgam of parts trying to sound like one. This is no small thing, and not easily achieved. I’ve heard this from Magnepan speakers as well, but the bass had to be augmented.

At $4999.99, these are not inexpensive speakers. Yet in my estimation, they hold their own against speakers that sell for double the price or more.

The success of the speakers seems to lie in a lot of little choices made by Jones that add up to a superior product. The concentric drivers, for example, contribute greatly to the imaging precision. The bass is the result of the speaker design, the ports, and the way the speaker crossover is designed. And so on and so on.

At the end of the day, this is a relatively high-cost, high-performance reproducer of music. It excelled in both of my listening rooms, and with a wide variety of music. It’s relentless in revealing substandard recordings, and that’s as it should be. Still, some of those lesser recordings I threw at the SourcePoint 888 speakers never sounded better (or worse).

While I was finishing this review, Andrew Jones announced a new speaker, the MoFi SourcePoint V10 Master Edition. It’s a larger floor stander than the SourcePoint 888 and uses 10” drivers rather than the 8” in the SourcePoint 888. We haven’t seen pricing yet, but clearly this will be the new top of the line for MoFi.