Do MartinLogan speakers cost more because they are better speakers?

[Mancave]

The MartinLogan cost more than most of the speakers I saw. When I heard them I was amazed. This was the Motion 8, 6, and Bookshelf speakers Motion 4. I also heard Energy and Definitive for the first time. Energy made my ears bleed from piercing. Definitive was a little less bright. Their smaller center channel speakers were just as bright to me.

I was in the "studio room" where it's nice and quiet so maybe that contributed. I really wish I could have heard Polk and Pioneer budget in there. I wonder if I am just being fooled because of the room acoustics.

Are MartinLogan speakers better than most speakers? Overpriced? Just happened to be what I liked listening too?

 

[zieglj01]

It is not easy to follow you in two different threads.
http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/beginners-audiophytes/83390-bigger-speakers-better-home-theater-big-room.html

Martin Logan is subjective - and can be over-priced.

 

[Mancave]

I didn't think I was asking the same thing. I'll be more careful. Still learning what to ask and what is really the same question.

Whatever you call the MartinLogan "style" that is what I'm looking for. I know it is not bright but I don't know what you call it.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Everyone will have a different opinion. Sean Olive did a double-blinded study comparing the Infinity P363 vs Polk RTi10 vs Martin Logan Vista vs Klipsch RF35. Most people preferred the Infinity P363 over the much more expensive Martin Logan in this one study.

From what I've seen, ML speakers don't measure very accurately. However, they can sound very good. I've compared the ML Vantage vs DefTech BP7000 and I preferred the BP7000 & BP7001.

So no, ML don't cost more than most speakers and they are NOT better than most speakers.

 

[Nuance AH]

Everyone will have a different opinion. Sean Olive did a double-blinded study comparing the Infinity P363 vs Polk RTi10 vs Martin Logan Vista vs Klipsch RF35. Most people preferred the Infinity P363 over the much more expensive Martin Logan in this one study.

I wasn't aware Dr. Sean Olive revealed which speakers were actually which. Mind posting a link for me? Thanks.

 

[zieglj01]

I wasn't aware Dr. Sean Olive revealed which speakers were actually which. Mind posting a link for me? Thanks.

Here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B97zTRsdcJTfZmM1ZjhlN2MtMTQwZC00MzVmLWE1OTQtMWQzN2IzNGNiMjc0/edit?hl=en&pli=1

 

[Nuance AH]

Here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B97zTRsdcJTfZmM1ZjhlN2MtMTQwZC00MzVmLWE1OTQtMWQzN2IzNGNiMjc0/edit?hl=en&pli=1

Awesome - thanks!

 

[gene]

Everyone will have a different opinion. Sean Olive did a double-blinded study comparing the Infinity P363 vs Polk RTi10 vs Martin Logan Vista vs Klipsch RF35. Most people preferred the Infinity P363 over the much more expensive Martin Logan in this one study.

From what I've seen, ML speakers don't measure very accurately. However, they can sound very good. I've compared the ML Vantage vs DefTech BP7000 and I preferred the BP7000 & BP7001.

So no, ML don't cost more than most speakers and they are NOT better than most speakers.

Just recognize who ran the test in question. A company sponsored DBT never produces a winner that isn't their own product. With that logic, if you would have given the same speakers to ML to run the test, I suspect the results would be much different

Recommended reading: http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/science-loudspeakers

 

[JerryLove]

Just recognize who ran the test in question. A company sponsored DBT never produces a winner that isn't their own product.

I disagree; though I would accept that a company would never release the results of a DBT test until they had a product that was winning it.

Dr.Olive started DBTs prior to the design of the new line that actually won them. The gist of what I got from my interactions with him is that the DBTs changed the design choices of the teams.

 

[gmichael]

The MartinLogan cost more than most of the speakers I saw. When I heard them I was amazed. This was the Motion 8, 6, and Bookshelf speakers Motion 4. I also heard Energy and Definitive for the first time. Energy made my ears bleed from piercing. Definitive was a little less bright. Their smaller center channel speakers were just as bright to me.

I was in the "studio room" where it's nice and quiet so maybe that contributed. I really wish I could have heard Polk and Pioneer budget in there. I wonder if I am just being fooled because of the room acoustics.

Are MartinLogan speakers better than most speakers? Overpriced? Just happened to be what I liked listening too?

I like the sound of MartinLogan's myself. Measurements asside, they have an airyness (is that a word?) that most box speakers don't. If you find that you enjoy their sound, you may want to check out Magneplan's line of speakers as well. Not the same, but similar.
Stereo Speakers, Home Theater Speakers, High Fidelity Audio - Magnepan, Inc.

 

[gene]

I disagree; though I would accept that a company would never release the results of a DBT test until they had a product that was winning it.

Dr.Olive started DBTs prior to the design of the new line that actually won them. The gist of what I got from my interactions with him is that the DBTs changed the design choices of the teams.

I had the P363s in my soundroom for over 1 month. It's a decent $400/pr speaker but it's not a $4k/pair speaker killer IMO. The tweeter is a very limited design and the speaker sounds bright which is likely a good thing to a casual listener. It's pretty easy to rig a listening test, sighted or blind, to convey product strengths and weaknesses. That said, I never directly compared the ML to the Infinity but the EMP E55Ti's smoked the Infinity's from my own testing and a close friend of mine that did a blind test between the two. I can't imagine that the ML's would be so bad when so many enthusiasts love their speakers.

And yes, every company to date that cherishes DBT's have always declared victory in their own testing. Infinity always claims to beat Paradigm, and B&W and vice-versa. Very interesting but in the end, I'd take all of those tests with a grain of salt.

Blind tests are NOT infallible and until a 3rd party with no vested interest in the outcome properly conducts one, with a significant enough sample size and duration of test time, I'd urge caution in interpreting the results.

 

[Chu Gai]

Are you familiar with how the test was carried out Gene?

 

[gene]

Are you familiar with how the test was carried out Gene?

Yes I read the report and spoke with Sean about it. In fact, I even offered to run an independent 3rd party DBT at their facility along with getting them all of the loudspeaker samples for the test but it was turned down by their legal department. For high end audio Harman has a very small budget for testing upper echelon speakers. Their sample size of brands/models is very limited.

 

[Hocky]

It should be noted that the speakers that the OP is talking about are not traditional ML electrostatic speakers. They're a conventional woofer and planar tweeter design. The test being referenced has absolutely no similarities to the speakers being discussed by him.

OP: I haven't heard those speakers, I don't know if they're any good or not. If you like the sound, buy them. But don't pay anywhere near MSRP, they're on close outs sales pretty commonly. They'll be priced pretty competitively with other entry level speakers.

 

[Chu Gai]

Some of the things that troubled me a bit, Gene, was that the listening tests were carried out in a room with the speakers being placed on rotating turntable while hidden from view. On the face of it, that sounds like a good idea. However I was thinking that while the Harman product just might occupy an optimum position, can the same be said for the other speakers? Are they also in a happy location? Further, some speakers require some sort of specific room treatment in order to sound their best like electrostats. I've never broached this with Sean but what do you think, Gene?

 

[jostenmeat]

OP: I haven't heard those speakers, I don't know if they're any good or not. If you like the sound, buy them. But don't pay anywhere near MSRP, they're on close outs sales pretty commonly. They'll be priced pretty competitively with other entry level speakers.

I have. If I'm not mistaken, I believe these represented the very bottom of the line "towers" from the ESL line, and that I thought there was a large jump in performance each step of the way up to the top. Have you heard the Vantage? The jump from the Vista to that might be as big as from the Vantage to the speakers in your sig. It's been many years though. I have absolutely no idea where my filled up notebook from auditioning sessions might be, it's probably lost.

Regardless, as much as I like stats, it's hard to vouch for their "value". You get them because you have to have 'em. IMO, they do voice better than anything I've ever heard, and I've heard near 6 digit price tag Dyns and Focals, top of the heap BWs, etc. OTOH, they have many compromises too. Placement is difficult, and that's putting it mildly. You want a larger room if even thinking about them, IMHO.

 

[gene]

Some of the things that troubled me a bit, Gene, was that the listening tests were carried out in a room with the speakers being placed on rotating turntable while hidden from view. On the face of it, that sounds like a good idea. However I was thinking that while the Harman product just might occupy an optimum position, can the same be said for the other speakers? Are they also in a happy location? Further, some speakers require some sort of specific room treatment in order to sound their best like electrostats. I've never broached this with Sean but what do you think, Gene?

Agreed 100% ML's need very specific placement to sound their best. I am not a fan of rotational platters and the general blind shootout b/c it gives you a momentary glimpse of performance.

I think there is merit to this approach but to not allow each listener a proper extended demo with the product setup optimally is IMO being intellectually dishonest by declaring victory under a limited test condition like this.

 

[JerryLove]

Considering how hard it has been to track down the contenders (they don't use this in any advertising), and from some of Dr.Olive's posts: I believe that the point of the testing was to improve their speaker performance.

As such: it would be counter-productive to skew the test in any way. It is certainly possible by accident; but to deliberately change the test to favor your product would make it no longer a test; and therefore a waste of their time.

 

[Chu Gai]

IIRC, Gene, what the testers are listening for are abnormalities in the FRz. Sean provides downloadable software on his blog that allows people to train themselves and in this way become better and more discriminatory listeners. Some time prior to the introduction of this software, Sean was posting in the 20K section at AVS. I asked Sean what about other factors like localization, soundstage, or whatever as certainly to my way of thinking those are also factors. He replied something along the lines that they were looking into other aspects of a speakers subjective performance but didn't elaborate.

I would think there are a variety of mathematical approaches that could be used to identify which factors are important and their relative contribution. Then you could use something akin to overlapping resolution mapping to identify what may well be a series of local maxima. Those would then correspond to certain combinations that would yield good results with the important finding that you can trade various performance metrics in an intelligent way to make a well performing speaker. This might have some significance for those designers who opt for sealed, ported, TLS, etc.

In my thinking here, this is just like the work the food industry does where they characterize something like mayonnaise according to a slew of metrics, with only several being important to the actual taste. Make sense, Gene?

 

[Hocky]

I have. If I'm not mistaken, I believe these represented the very bottom of the line "towers" from the ESL line, and that I thought there was a large jump in performance each step of the way up to the top. Have you heard the Vantage? The jump from the Vista to that might be as big as from the Vantage to the speakers in your sig. It's been many years though. I have absolutely no idea where my filled up notebook from auditioning sessions might be, it's probably lost.

Regardless, as much as I like stats, it's hard to vouch for their "value". You get them because you have to have 'em. IMO, they do voice better than anything I've ever heard, and I've heard near 6 digit price tag Dyns and Focals, top of the heap BWs, etc. OTOH, they have many compromises too. Placement is difficult, and that's putting it mildly. You want a larger room if even thinking about them, IMHO.

I mostly agree, but like I said, the speakers that he is referring are not electrostatic speakers.

Wasn't the dbt test being referred to here done in mono? If it was, I think a stereo pair would be a big differentiator between the ML model and whatever else was in the test. Chances are that they're providing imaging and a soundstage like none of the other models could. That is, of course, assuming that they were properly set up in the first place.