Is there a "Martin Logan sound?"

[MtBiker]

I have a QSC GX3 and a Denon receiver on hand. The room is decently damped with full carpeting, heavy drapes, and a massive 3" deep acoustic panel behind the couch. Some Magnepan 1.6's sounded fantastic in the same room a few years ago, but I did not have a chance to live with them. I will have to try toe in and different speaker and sitting locations in a few days--I just packed up much of the house for painting. Maybe the current listening distance of 15ft is beyond the sweet spot for this little panel. I am also only 90% certain I didn't reverse absolute phase on one speaker at some point in my A/B setup...

I forgot about the NAC. I never turned it on.

Wirewiggler's coil/resistor mod, unless I have pictured it wrong, should shelve high frequencies a little bit while increasing impedance above the shelving point...whatever point that works out to being.

[a.wayne]

Originally Posted by MtBiker

I was hoping that some people familiar with Martin Logans could weigh in with their opinions or critique my logic. I have a pair of Martin Logan Clarity's on indefinite loan and am not a fan of their sound. The speakers I have to compare them to measure flat, but they clearly (pun intended) do not have the same detail or low distortion as the ESLs. However, the tonal balance of the ESLs seems to be very, very (VERY) far off. So far off, that even my wife cannot stand to watch TV with the ESLs, because the volume has to be cranked in order to simply understand speech on every channel and in every circumstance.

I have more amplifier power than I need, and there is plenty of breathing room around the speakers in all directions. This leads me to conclude that there is one of two problems here:

1. A high crossover point between a dipole and a monopole just below the baffle step is a bad idea.
2. A short panel that operates as a line array at high frequencies and as a point source just before crossing over is a bad idea.

They may have already employed some clever equalization, but by blending radiation patterns in two stupid ways, the speakers might still only sound good at a specific distance. This could also be related to the fact that when I auditioned a range of Martin Logans years ago, I really only liked their largest ones at the time. It may have been the long line or the lower crossover point, or...

For me , there is an ML sound ......... Bright and hard sounding and on there Hybrids the integration is horrible .

My 2 cents ..