Martin Logan - wow

Hey Duke,

That's a nice turorial on electrostatic and panel speakers, and I find myself in general agreement with your insightful assessment. One thing you did neglect to mention, was that with large, full range electrostatics there is normally a sizeable bass resonance (typically 16 dB) somewhere between 50Hz and 100Hz, which is related to the mass of the air surrounding the diaphragm and the tension of the diaphragm. Maggies may not have this issue because their diaphragms are considerably more massive than that of an electrostat (but they have other shortfalls as you noted).

So, while hybrids have specific types of integration problems to overcome, full-range electrostatics have their own unique inherent problems. What it really comes down to is that ALL speakers (including dynamic types) are a blend of compromises and the audiophile must decide which particular set of flaws (and strengths) he can tolerate in the long term (based on his/her personal preferences).

BTW, Brauser, that was a cheap shot. And I noticed you failed to state which speakers you personally own... I'll chalk your comments up to your relative inexperience with electrostatic speakers.

Duke makes some excellent points - and he is right on when he says that the most important thing is to correctly match your amplifier with panel speakers. I have no idea whether or not your amp will match well with Martin Logans, but Ascents are not overly difficult to drive so you should be okay.

I have heard Ascents in a room almost exactly the same dimensions as yours, and they will sound just fine. Odysseys and Prodigys probably need a little more breathing room than 14' of width, and you will need to move your listening postion forwards and backwards a bit to find the sweet spot, but this won't take too long to accomplish.

Two more points - first, Martin Logans are not the sound for everybody, but if they are your "cup of tea", don't waste too much time talking to people who don't like them because they hear music differently than you. This is not a slam at anyone, it is definitely a "different strokes for different folks" issue. Instead, spend lots of time listening to other speakers to try to find something you like better. If you keep coming back to the panels, then you will know that you are a Martin Logan guy. I am a Logan owner, and with my gear, in my room, Logans (CLS IIz) are the answer for me. If I were to move to another listening space, I might change my mind.

Second, a subwoofer is not necessary with Ascents, but if you are a real "bass hound", you may eventually want to go that route. Martin Logan makes a decent sub, but there are other brands that may do the job as well. If you decide on ML speakers, give them a few months of breaking in and getting used to before you get too worried about a sub.

Happy Hunting!

Plato -

The low-frequency resonance phenomenon you mention can indeed produce a very significant response peak if it isn't adequately addressed.

Roger West of Sound Lab uses a patented technique called "distributed resonance", wherein he divides up each of the seven vertical facets into 12 cells. Each cell is the same width, but of a different height - hence each has a different drum-head resonance. By carefully staggering these resonances, not only is the overall response smoothed but it's extended a bit lower than it normally would go. The result is excellent pitch definition in the bottom octaves (one customer, a concert violinist, told me that the Sound Labs were the only speaker he'd ever heard properly reproduce both cello and double-bass).

Martin-Logan also used a version of distributed resonance on the CLS - that's the purpose of those divisions you see on the panel.

The concentric rings of the Quads probably also distributes the drumhead resonances a bit, though not as precisely as the Sound Lab technique does. To my ears, the bass of the 989 is less coherent than the bass of the smaller 988 - perhaps the additional bass radiating area of the 989 suffers from low-frequency diaphragm resonances?

If I'm not mistaken, Magnepan tunes their panels so that the resonant peak occurs below the normal dipole roll-off frequency, and thereby extends the bass deeper than it normally would have gone.

Obviously, hybrids don't have to worry about low-frequency diaphragm drumhead resonances, but they do have box colorations and radiation pattern incongruities to deal with. My vote is for full-range panels, where practical.

Esoxhntr, congrats on being a CLS owner! In my opinion, that's the most physically beautiful loudspeaker ever made. And they sound wonderful as well. The CLS was my favorite Martin Logan speaker, and I sure was sad to see it go. I spend some time talking with Gale Sanders a couple of nights ago, and tried to convince him to bring back something along the lines of the CLS.

Duke

I owned a pair of Martin Logan SL-3 speakers for 2 1/2 years and I sold them because of the lacking of bass. When I first heard them in the showroom I also fell in love with the midrange. There was so many times that I had to check to see if the woofers were working because the low frequencies were missing. So my point is that if you have all ready noticed the lacking of the bass it will only annoy you more so in the future.
kevyo

Hi Ehart,
I hope you found my info helpful! I really enjoy my ML and Classe set up and I think you will too!
martinloganowners.com has lot's of info and the good thing is everyone is ML owners and you will get good useful info and everyone is there to help in getting the best from your system. The info will be from ML owners and not from people hearing them once or in a poorly set up dealers room with tons of equipment jammed into a too small of room, etc...
I think ESL do things right and the same goes for box speakers but the ESL does more of it right and the most important things to boot! Happy Listening!