# Martin Logan Opinions



## Brandon428

Does anyone know anything about the Martin Logan Motion 12? I am thinking about replacing my Def Tech BP8s with them and using them as my front speakers. I’m using a Denon 3311ci AVR btw. Thanks.


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## Brandon428

Also,how are the Martin Logan center channels?


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## kaminar

If no one here chimes in, you can Google the following >>

"martin logan motion 12 avs forum"

Some forum discussions and even Amazon link with 5-star reviews..

-=K=-


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## Brandon428

To be honest I don’t really like AVS forum that much. I’ve always got much better advice from the nice folks here.


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## harsh

Asking someone else how you're going to like a set of loudspeakers in your home theater is pretty out there.


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## Brandon428

Thats not what I asked. I just want opinions of Martin Logan speakers.


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## keith61

I prefer the Bowers and Wilkins 800 Diamond series, if you have the Logan cash, feel B&W out preform the Logan's, but alot is personal opinion.


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## Carl Spock

^ These aren't in that league. They are $300 speakers.

I have a pair of B&W 804 speakers from the generation before the Diamond series and I like Martin Logan's electrostats. I always have, but then I owned a pair of Acoustat 2+2 full range electrostats in a previous life. I loved those speakers but at 7'10" tall, maybe 20" wide and 3" deep, they were completely impractical. I've always thought Martin Logan did a wonderful job of blending an electrostatic driver with a conventional woofer, which is not an easy thing to do. They also have reasonable dispersion for an electrostat, meaning they have some. My Acoustats changed their sound dramatically if you moved your head a few inches sideways.

That said, I can see these are conventional dynamic speakers, Brandon. Don't be fooled by the planer tweeter. It turns out that is actually an older idea than the cone speaker driver we think of as bread and butter in loudspeaker design. It's not an electrostat or even that weird.

As I haven't heard them, I have no opinion of these speakers except it's too bad Martin Logan is trying to be like everyone else. It is as if Ferrari came out with a minivan.

I have to side with those who say an Internet forum is a poor place to look for a favorable speaker review. Maybe discovering a bunch of bad ones will tell you something as a P-O-S is almost always a P-O-S for everyone, but I may love a speaker that you hate. Picking a speaker is like picking a shoe. It has to fit you and you're the only one who knows.


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## Brandon428

Thanks,I always appreciate your opinion Carl! What hinders me from testing the speakers out myself is I live about 3 hours away from anywhere that carries high end speakers. Its hard for me to justify traveling 6 hours round trip just to audition some speakers with gas being so ridiculously high thats why I have to rely so heavily on others opinions. I just usually always make sure I can return speakers if I don’t like them.


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## CCarncross

Brandon428 said:


> Thanks,I always appreciate your opinion Carl! What hinders me from testing the speakers out myself is I live about 3 hours away from anywhere that carries high end speakers. Its hard for me to justify traveling 6 hours round trip just to audition some speakers with gas being so ridiculously high thats why I have to rely so heavily on others opinions. I just usually always make sure I can return speakers if I don't like them.


If you're looking at dropping a couple grand on speakers, a tank of gas is a drop in the bucket, You really need to listen to any speakers you buy...its really the most important part of any sound system...don't be penny-wise and pound foolish.


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## Brandon428

The ML speakers I’m looking at only cost about 600 a pair.


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## lugnutathome

Road trip! Seriously grab a date or a friend for an overnight find something special in the city to do in addition to auditioning speakers and make it an outing!

Take materials you are familiar with so you can note the presence or lack thereof of the sound that suits you. A great set of speakers can far outlive the AV receiver you power them with and they are hands down the most critical element in the sound.

I come from the read the specs years and nowadays those frequency response curve graphs are long gone. Reading the hype material makes some speakers look great then you listen and oh no that's crap. I auditioned a series of Polks because in the photo brochures they seemed perfect. To my ear they sucked verily someone else could have thought they are the best thing ever.

It's your ears here and a long standing commitment to bear once accepted. I have a personal bias to the Klipsch Reference Series speakers myself and in my soundspaces my 3 Yamah/Klipsch systems sound perfect (to my ears as well as my guests). I like the horns ability to disperse the high frequencies properly throughout the room equally, others find the Klipsch speakers a tad strident (a bit too much high frequency presence).

Don "enjoy the process, don't rush" Bolton


Brandon428 said:


> Thanks,I always appreciate your opinion Carl! What hinders me from testing the speakers out myself is I live about 3 hours away from anywhere that carries high end speakers. Its hard for me to justify traveling 6 hours round trip just to audition some speakers with gas being so ridiculously high thats why I have to rely so heavily on others opinions. I just usually always make sure I can return speakers if I don't like them.


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## CCarncross

Buying a $600 pair of ML's is like buying a Mustang with the base 4cyl engine....I assume they are used as they are not a current ML product, and they were near the bottom of their line a few years ago....probably quite a step down from your BP8's....WHat are you trying to achieve again, more volume or better sound? You seem to be kinda throwing darts at a board here....


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## Brandon428

I just want better sound. I heard MLs a few years ago and I was amazed at their clarity. I don’t remember what model they we’re but they weren’t the Motion 12s. Is having BP8s for surrounds over kill?


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## Carl Spock

CCarncross said:


> I assume they are used as they are not a current ML product, and they were near the bottom of their line a few years ago....probably quite a step down from your BP8's....





Brandon428 said:


> I just want better sound. I heard MLs a few years ago and I was amazed at their clarity. I don't remember what model they we're but they weren't the Motion 12s. Is having BP8s for surrounds over kill?


Thanks for the compliment, Brandon. 

CCarncross, they could well be new. Polk Audio is still selling speakers as new, and are new, which were current half a dozen years ago. Their PSW-505 subwoofer is a great example of that. It's now 60% of the price it was when it was current and is a great sub for the money. Here is a real advantage of manufacturing in the Far East. The production capacity there is so vast, the cost of producing another run of a discontinued product is very low. You can sell this stuff for cheap for years and years. If Polk's plant was still in Baltimore, they couldn't afford to make more PSW-505 woofers as they'd need the capacity to make a new, more expensive and more profitable sub.

Brandon, your BP8s would be great as surrounds. With Dolby Digital, the surround channels are full range. CCarncross is also right to question whether the speakers you are looking at would be better than what you now own. I'm not sure they'd be a step down from the DefTech's but they might be a step sideways. You want better sound? Save up some money and buy a pair of speakers you like for $1,500 in year or two. Certainly the Martin Logans you heard before were an electrostat. There is something about a big electrostatic driver that is magical. They are so fast, open and coherent. I'd consider owning Martin Logans today but I'm happy with my B&W 804s for now.

If you like Martin Logan, another speaker you should consider is Magnepan. Take that tweeter out of the Motion 12s, make it a big, full range driver, spend 40 years figuring out how to do that right as it is a trick and a half, and you have the current generation of Magnepans. They won't have deep bass but at being boxless and three dimensional, and just plain real, they are champs. You can hear a band made up of actual human beings playing in front of you. They also aren't as fast as an electrostat but being musical and fast aren't the same things. Magnepans are very musical, plus they make three great pairs of speakers for under $2,000.

A word of warning with a bipolar speaker built like a Martin Logan or a Magnepan: you have to have them well away from the back and side walls. In a standard rectangular room, they often have to be out into the room. But if you can do this, they can open up and become sonically invisible. It's awesome.


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## CCarncross

Brandon428 said:


> *I just want better sound.* I heard MLs a few years ago and I was amazed at their clarity. I don't remember what model they we're but they weren't the Motion 12s. Is having BP8s for surrounds over kill?


This really screams that you are going to have to go out and audition some new loudspeakers... 

I just recently bought some new mains for my HT, after using my previous mains for 17 years...bought the same manufacturer.

Paradigm.....moved from the Monitor series from 1995(MKIII era), to Studio Reference 60's....amazing speakers for the money....

http://paradigm.com/products/produc...ng/paradigm-reference/studio-series/studio-60


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## spartanstew

I think it's been mentioned, but unless you've already treated the room you're using, buying new equipment is probably not a wise investment. What you currently have would probably provide great sound with room treatments.


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## Brandon428

I'm gonna try to go this weekend and audition some speakers!  I'm looking at these http://www.bestbuy.com/site/MartinL...74269&id=1218308694947#tabbed-customerreviews

Will my Denon 3311ci be enough to get good performance out of them?


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## Carl Spock

Now you're talking, Brandon. These are real Martin Logan speakers. Enjoy your road trip. It was said upthread but do take along music you know. If you play an instrument, take some music of that.

Your Denon would be fine to drive these but certainly you'd benefit from more and better power in the future. Also consider your sources. You might want a better CD and/or DVD player in the future. They'd also benefit from that. Buy a speaker like this and you've just bought a sports car. Not only does it handle better and is more fun to drive, it also picks up all the bumps in the road.

I'd adjust spartanstew's advice a bit. You don't need room treatment necessarily. You do need to be conscious of speaker placement. If you buy these speakers, I can almost guarantee you they won't sound best where you first place them in the room. You'll have to move them around, rearranging the room, maybe multiple times. Sometimes you have to move the speakers only a few feet. Other times they have to move to different walls. Play with them. They are a big toy for big boys. And no amount of room treatment will solve an awful room (too square, too parallel, too reflective, not enough spaces for sound to break up and get lost). I know. I've tried.


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## Carl Spock

Brandon, you know why electrostats are so good, don't you?

First, a regular cone or dome speaker, or even a planer speaker like the Magnepan, works by sending an audio signal through a wire. A magnet is nearby. The fact that audio is a wave - think of a sine wave - and is changing, causes that wire to be attracted or repelled by the magnet. Now attach a piece of paper or plastic to the wire. That paper or plastic will also move, which will move air. You hear the movement of the air. It's called music.

In an electrostatic speaker, take a sheet of something, very thin and light. Hold it tight in a frame. Put a static charge on it. It's the same as rubbing a balloon on your skin except with a lot more voltage. Mount screens on either side of the sheet. Pump the audio signal to the screens. It will cause the charged sheet to move forward or backward. 

In a conventional driver, the cone or dome is being moved by the speaker's voice coil. There is a lag and resistance. Paper and plastic bends. It isn't being accelerated uniformly. But in an electrostatic speaker, the whole diaphragm is being moved at once. Force is being applied over every square millimeter. There is no lag.

Electrostats are fast. 

They are also coherent. The whole sheet puts out all the midrange and treble. You do have a woofer with this speaker, and making that transition from an electrostatic to a dynamic driver is something Martin Logan is very good at, but 75% of the music is being put out by one driver. It all hangs together.


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## CCarncross

Brandon428 said:


> I'm gonna try to go this weekend and audition some speakers!  I'm looking at these http://www.bestbuy.com/site/MartinL...74269&id=1218308694947#tabbed-customerreviews
> 
> Will my Denon 3311ci be enough to get good performance out of them?


Truthfully, your Denon is good enough to get good performance out of what you already have unless you just don't like the sound of your current speakers...did you recently put those in or have you had them a number of years and just decide you don't like them anymore?


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## Carl Spock

With all of my talk about the advantages of electrostats, let me mention the disadvantages:

1) Limited volume. The Martin Logans might not play loud enough for you, Brandon It's hard to move a lot of air with them, especially with a small version like you are considering.

2) Limited bass. That's why the separate woofer but considering the trick is in the blending of its sound with the elctrostatic panel, that's where Martin Logan will spend their money and engineering, not on a slamming bottom end.

3) Size. The bigger the panel, the louder they will play.

4) Reliability. I'm sure with their years of experience Martin Logan panels are very reliable but it is a more complicated design than a dynamic driver. The danger comes when they arc and a spark jumps from one of the screens to the panel. That's never good and as it is a short, can be death for a panel.

5) Cats' claws and direct sunlight. Neither is a good idea to expose an electrostat to and yet somehow, they are attracted to both.


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## Brandon428

First and foremost I want to thank you all again for such great advice. 

I just wanted to give an update. I auditioned the Martin Logans and I was still pretty impressed by their clarity. They are very directional and I find they didn’t disperse the sound quite as well as I was hoping but to me the clarity makes up for that and in my opinion isn’t a deal breaker.

I tend to be a pretty impulsive guy but I decided not to just buy them then and there but to shop around and see what other speakers I could audition. I decided to go to a couple of other places in N.O. and check out some other brands that I’ve never had the opportunity to listen to. I remember Carl mentioning Magnepan which I had never heard of before and I knew they had a nearby HiFi shop that carried that brand. 

Boy am I happy I suppressed my impulsiveness that day! After hearing the Magnepans I was in aw! Music sounded as if I were listening to it live. It was just incredible! So I decided to go home and do some research before I let my impulsiveness get the best of me. 

After doing a lot of research I took a shot on a pair of Magnepan MG12s that I found online line for a great price. When they delivered them I immediately connected them to my Denon. I was disappointed,at about 70-75 vol.(I have my volume set to absolute) which is the volume I usually listen to music to I barely could make out any detail and it just had no oomph! So I cranked it up to about 85-90 and they started to sound a lot better. After listening to 4 or 5 songs my Denon AVR shut off and went in to protect mode. I knew I had to get an external amp because my Denon just couldn’t handle it. 

So I decided to check out some local pawn shops for an amp and I found an Adcom 545. He was asking $250 for it but I got him to go down to $180 and he gave me a 3 day warranty to try it out at home and if I didn’t like it I could return it for a full refund so I bought it.

I got home,wired it all up and WOW! I was just hoping to be able to listen to more than 5 songs without my AVR shutting off,but I didn’t expect it to make that huge of a difference! It’s night and day to me. Now they sound freaking amazing! I listened to some Pink Floyd,Eric Clapton,ELO,Beatles,Metallica,Eagles,Peter Frampton and a bunch more and I was just blown away by the clarity. I heard things in songs I listened to 1,000 times I never heard before. A lot of people say that Magnepans don’t rock but I played everything from heavy metal to classical and the Magnepans sounded incredible. Now for dance music,techno,etc. that has a lot of DEEP bass you will need a subwoofer but I was really surprised at how great the bass sounded especially with the dedicated amp now powering them. 

I’m currently saving to get a bigger amp,Magnepan center and surrounds,and a couple of fast subs. I highly recommend anyone that is looking for incredibly detailed speakers to check out the Magnepans! Just a warning though,make sure you have a good high current amp to push these things because they are torture on a AVR and you won’t get good sound out of them at all. Another thing to remember is that these speakers will play every detail even the bad details,so make sure you have a good source for playing your music or movies to be able to truly enjoy and appreciate the sound. 

And one of the best things about the Magnepans are that they are not insanely expensive. To me they are by far the best price vs. performance audiophile speakers you can buy.


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