by Michael

Lamborghini or Marten Coltrane Supreme, Marten Coltrane Supreme or Lamborghini

Christmas season is almost upon us, and as we make out our Christmas lists, there is one question that many people must face.

That question is whether to ask for a popular Lamborghini automobile or the much more exclusive, much more useful loudspeakers from Marten, the Coltrane Supreme.

Of course, many of you might ask, why not both? Good question. But not everybody can afford both and we are trying, in the spirit of the several recent issues of Stereophile and TAS, to address the needs of the readers with more modest incomes.

On the one hand we have last year’s Murcielago…

2006 Lamborghini Murcielago at $288,000 – $319,100

or Gallardo


2006 Lamborghini Gallardo at $175,000 – $195,000

versus the Marten Coltrane Supremes:


Marten Coltrane Supreme Loudspeakers at $250,000

In the interests of choosing the right choice the first time, we offer the following comparisons:

Problems with the Lamborghini:

1) Paying for gas at $3 a gallon [subtract 10]
2) Expensive periodic repair costs [subtract 5]
3) It pollutes [subtract 1]
4) Can’t use it during Winter in many places [subtract 15]
5) Stupid laws prevent driving it faster than prevailing traffic conditions allow [subtract 50]
6) Attracts cute people with dubious morals and motivations [subtract 5. If married, add 10.^H^H subtract 10].
7) Lots of people have them [subtract 20]
8) Conspicuous consumption is often frowned upon outside L.A. [subtract 5 if outside L.A., add 20 if in L.A.]
9) Traffic tickets [subtract 5]
10) You have to get it washed a lot [subtract 10]

Problems with the Coltrane Supreme speakers:

None.

So, the choice is really easy this year. Cool.

Next: The Lamm ML3 versus a Porsche 911 Turbo [hint: the analysis goes much the same way as that for the Lamborghini]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Humor / Marten Design 0 comments
 by Michael

HiFi+ and the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers


I hope nobody thought we were just going to ignore this… 🙂

Most people tell me this was a pretty positive review. We certainly would like to thank Roy Gregory for taking the time and brain cells to describe what these speakers do, as well as putting it on the cover of the HiFi+ magazine this month.


But me, similar to the reviews of the smaller Marten Coltranes before this by Roy Gregory, Mike Fremer, and HP, I want them to describe what the speakers do that is unique. Not just describe it as yet another speaker that does X, Y and Z with music track A and B.


I can sense that they recognize there is a challenge here, to 1) describe these without damaging their relationships with other manufacturers and 2) not sound like they have gone off the deep end, lost too many marbles, and gone wacko like the guy at Audio Federation.


The problem with these speakers is that they are so competent, especially the Supremes as we call them here [and which is what the rest of this post is about, though everything applies to the Coltranes and little cousins, just there are more compromises and less absolutes], that they are completely shocking… or completely boring.


They are completely shocking because we have spent our lives playing with speakers that are colored. Colored neutral or colored sweet, colored impressive or colored dull. Finally there is the music, which has always been painted in the past with some kind of artist’s brush, the artist being the speaker manufacturer.

To be sure the underlying technology, drivers, crossover, cabinet all limit just what can be done compared to the Real Thing. But, given the technology, this is the way speakers should be built if people just want to hear what is upstream. If they do not, then that is OK, and there are a lot of speakers out there that sound great and we love them and we recommend and or sell a number of them.


They are completely boring because they just play what they are given. They don’t futz with the music and pump it up because they think they know what you should like – and it isn’t the actual music, it is how well the designer can SLAM the bass, or render exceedingly fine detail, or throw a gigantico soundstage or build a great looking cabinet or make tall tall speakers or …

They are boring because after you get them, you are done with speakers. Now, if you want to change the sound, you just change the upstream components.

They are a tabula rasa, which means, if I remember my Spanish [Latin] meaning clean slate. They are like a blank piece of paper: scary, challenging, boring, exciting… because it is now up to YOU to setup the components to make the sound you have always wanted.


And this is where the reviewers are at a disadvantage. They, have limited time and limited componentry to try with the speakers. They may have only one room. It took us one year [so far!], three different rooms, five different positions, dozens of combinations of best in-class amps and cables and sources, … and we are STILL just starting to get a handle on what they can do.

Like any good tool, the designer does their best, but they can barely imagine, if at all, what people will be able to do with it. This is true in software and I believe it to be true in high-end audio as well. We are, many of us, mapping new territory in high fidelity music reproduction using the best equipment available. How much fun is that? [that was a rhetorical question, but, just in case… it is a LOT of fun :-)].

So, I am definitely asking for too much from reviewers, but it would have been so great to have them talk about this in their reviews, how these are so, so, so balanced. Like wives versus girl friends, husband-material versus boy friend-material. Something that will stand by our system for years and years.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Marten Design 0 comments
 by Michael

Optimizing the Coltrane Supremes – Bass

[Hopefully, some of these techniques apply to other speakers as well, but regardless, perhaps you might find them interesting as a study in What is Possible with the right design and tools].


This setup in our main listening room is more or less the setup we used at the show [well, the bass towers are on the inside, and there are a few cable changes, but….yeah, the same. Kind of.]


This is part of the Marten ‘Coltrane Supreme’ speaker system. It contains the amp, for the bass towers, and, most important for this current discussion today, the active crossover.


On the back of the active crossover there are controls for the phase and the bass level (volume).

Because we were / are using an integrated amplifier (the Audio Note Ongaku) to drive the main towers, and no preamp in the system, we are forced to change the bass volume every time we change the main volume on the Ongaku.

Turn up the volume on the Ongaku, then turn up the volume on the bass amp. [For some reason, I always think about turning UP the volume, but it is the same when turning down the volume, when and if that ever happens].

So, that is the situation, we are forced to keep adjusting the bass when changing the volume because of this particular system setup we are using.

We keep having to judge what is the EXACT right amount of bass… for a particular volume, and sometimes for a particular song (have to turn it up the bass for reggae, Mon).

OK, here’s the thing. With one person adjusting the bass and others listening to the result, certain behaviors are noticeable.

* The resulting sound is linear, by which we mean that it smoothly changes in response to the change in bass volume… EXCEPT at a particular point

* At this particular point in bass volume, the sound suddenly ‘fills in’. It reminds me of something like an old TV / CRT – like the beginning of Outer Limits – the ‘picture'(i.e. sound) suddenly grows from nothing to fill up the entire soundstage (room?).

* At this particular point, and this is weird [well, it is weird to me, along with being an awesome side-effect] certain in-room distortions disappear.

At this particular point, where the bass level is just so, we could increase the volume to our (my) pain threshold and every note was clear and separated and positioned perfectly – whereas at a lower volume, when the bass was not just so, it was a little bit confused and not completely enchanting, shall we say.

Well, that is all we have to report to this date – we have not tried this here yet, we still have a way to go to position the speakers correctly [ Yeah, we’ve been busy here, which is good, but…]. And we only learned this the last few hours of the show when we felt that it was OK to get a little wild and experiment a little.

Hey I think one lucky room visitor did to hear all this… Perfect Circle, perfectly rendered at 110 – 120dB and something else which I always forget the name of…. But I imagine people outside in the hallway, and in the nearby stairwell between floors, well, not sure WHAT they thought… 🙂

Maybe this has to do more with the ears and not room interactions. Maybe we are just nuts. We’ll let you know when we try the same thing here, in a vastly different space.

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Marten Design / RMAF 2007 / Show Reports 0 comments