January 17, 2011 by Michael

CES 2011 – Marten

This is actually the first room we went to at the Venetian – but because the photo filenames rolled over from 9999 to 0001, the directory listing on Windows listed these at the bottom of the page. OK, yes, I also just plain forgot what order we went to room this Thursday morning – not the least reason is because we went back to most of these rooms several times.

Marten was debuting their new Coltrane 2 loudspeakers ($95K) and M-Amps ($45K pair). The source was the Emm Labs XDS1 and PRE2. Jorma Prime cabling except for some unknown-to-me power cords. So, except for the equipment racks (also by Marten) everything here was very familiar – so I should be able to figure out just what the speakers and amps sound like, right?

Well….

It was only by going back and forth between this room and the other Coltrane 2 room, the Engstrom & Engstrom, that I figured out the speakers, at least to the extent that we now forgive Marten for calling these the *COLTRANE* 2.

The Coltrane 1 is the best medium-sized box speaker made – and by a wide margin [specifically in terms of transparency to the upstream components. Think Ongaku, Fifth Element, your fave turntable, whatever – we personally really WANT TO HEAR what these kickass components reveal in the music]. When we heard about the ‘2’, we thought they were A) going to discontinue the ‘1’ [we now know they are keeping the ‘1’ around, at least for a year or so], and, well, B) $95K for the ‘2’ is a lot more than the $70K for the ‘1’ . So we considered how we would buy up all the Coltrane ‘1’s that came available – making sure we and our fellow audiophiles would always be able to get a pair.

Well, forget that.

Coltrane ‘1’s are great, but… here is what I heard the ‘2’ bringing to the party:

1) A greater sense of ease to the music – which usually takes a larger, more expensive amp to achieve

2) More separation – again, this usually requires better $$$ cables, an amp able to control the speakers better, or a better source [note that this is on the top end, with the 1″ diamond tweeter, and at the bottom, with the dual very large ceramic bass drivers]

3) Uber bass resolution. There was stuff going on in the bass that I previously have only thought could happen in the midrange. *Distinct* notes. *Distinct* notes in the bass octaves, people! For me, this opens a whole new world of music, new melodies that I can follow ‘down there’, and this is what I have been finding myself really enjoying about music lately – all these different melodies happening at once in living color.

So, one really gets a whole lot of sound with the Coltrane 2 speakers that would be hard, expensive, or impossible to get with the Coltrane 1, much less your average everyday $$$ speaker.

The black diamond racing cone feet are twice as tall as with the previous Marten speakers.

You can KIND OF see the 1″ diamond tweeter there. The Coltrane 1 has a 3/4″ diamond tweeter.

WBT Nextgen connectors. Not sure what we think about these, specifically about WBT Nextgen connectors in general.

In the end, I never quite figured out the M-Amps. They didn’t have much of a sound [a good thing for solid-state amps!], perhaps being, I would say, ‘smooth but with resolution’ – somewhat like the older top-end of the Edge amp family [Edge has been moving towards more dynamics, esp. in the lower octaves], or Vitus. They did not seem to grip the speaker as well as Sanders – but these are all very subtle differences here. Because of room bass issues [much better after the first day] it was somewhat hard to get a sense of what these amps do with bass at high volume [it is easiest for me, being the lazy bum I am, to hear how well an amp is controlling a speaker by focusing on the lower notes, although lower mids sometimes work for this purpose as well].