Marten Design Archives - Page 13 of 16

November 7, 2006 by Michael

Showroom 4 – the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers…

… in a small room.

The Marten Design Coltrane loudspeakers, Audio Note Kegon amplifiers and Audio Aero Capitole CD player.

This room is 10.5 x 20 x 9 feet tall.

The sound very much reflects the sound of the Capitole, ultimately musical, a little sweet, a touch of raspberry and tobacco – oh, wait, I mean a little round and luscious.

It sounds quite good – though the room can be overloaded at about, I would guess to be 90dB or so, unlike our larger rooms. In other respects the system interacts very little with the room, so little in fact that it was a little surprising.

We know that the Coltranes were designed to be able to work well in small spaces – but were still unprepared for the results. Very much like the Audio Note speakers, which were designed to use the room’s acoustical properties to best advantage.

I mean, most of us play our systems, our speakers, in a room, right? And most if not all speaker manufacturers know this, right? And only some manufacturers expect audiophiles to live in a padded cell… [unlike society at large 🙂 which is probably quite happy yet mystified to see us building our own padded cells. Self-incarcerating lunatics. How conveeeeenient.]

We are currently running with Nordost Tyr speaker cable, which is very good but not quite as good as Valhalla – lacking some finesse and truth in comparison. We hope to optimize this system quite a bit before we are through.

The Acoustic Dreams equipment rack with… yes, the Kharma MP150 amps.

We were only able to try the Kharma amps for a few minutes, while a pair of balanced interconnects flew in and out of here.

You see, the MP150 only come with Single-ended OR Balanced connections. This one has balanced. We do not have any balanced cables here (long story, suffice it to say that very little of the equipment here is balanced).

So, when our 2m Valhalla balanced interconnects arrive (we sell a lot of Nordost here – might as well have a balanced cable around) we will get to hear these little big amps again.

Two questions:

1. Is it improper for us to put these amps on the Marten Coltrane loudspeakers (there is something of a friendly rivelry between Kharma and Marten)

2. How many people besides us and Steve want to see pictures of the Elrod Statement power cords – the LARGE Elrod statement power cords hooked up to these guys? Power cords that are about the same width as the amplifiers?

Thought so.

Kharma MP150 amp with smaller Elrod power cord and Nordost Valkryja speaker cable

This last picture was hastily taken with the smaller, one might even say reasonably sized, Elrod power cable attached to the amplifier.

Finally, this system will have the Audio Note M8 phono on it for a few days this week, and with the Brinkmann Balance turntable running through it. THAT should be interesting. Hopefully we will get time to put the Audio Note cartridge on the Brinkmann, and with the Audio Note S4 stepup transformer, see what THAT sounds like.

This is what they call F-U-N.

November 5, 2006 by Michael

Breaking in the Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Oh! What hard work! Whew!

Please, no more!

Well, maybe just a little…. 🙂

This is the first post with our new Category scheme – This is what we are calling “Showroom 2” although it is really the South side of listening room #2 (it shares listening room #2 with showroom #3, which is on the North side).

The intention is that people can click on this Category (or on the photo of the room at the top of this window) and see what we, or the people who come up here for auditions, have been up to vis-a-vis each of the systems we have here.

We have a tendency – like most people who really enjoy this hobby – to keep messing around with a system until it is sounding its very best given the room it must live in and the equipment at hand. And we have a realtively large number of very high-quality, some might say extremely high-quality, equipment at hand.

There is also two of us – so, because the sound must please us both, we are unlikely to construct something that sounds great for one person and gawd-awful to everyone else.

We are also not so stuck up or pretentious [at least not yet 🙂 … I hope] that we don’t listen carefully to what our visitors have to say about the sound – which, more than fine tuning the sound of the systems, helps us understand whole new perspectives on what people’s different sonic priorities are. What this means is that sometimes a system here will be setup, for example, to be more in-your-face, room-pressurizing, withn the soundstage at or in front of the speakers and sometimes it will be setup to be a more laid back, 10th row, kind of presentation – and sometimes in between, based on a particular visitor’s preference. At these times this Blog will point out the type of sound we were trying to achieve – and you can match that against what you personally prefer.

[Me? I am agnostic, I personally do not care where the soundstage is – I just want the sound to be good. Often in-your-face means strident and agressive sound, and I do not like that, but it really does not have to be like this. Neli likes a little more laid back sound than I – but we both have, with the Audio Note M10, heard some great front-row-center sound].

South side of listening room two – the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers and Lamm ML2.1 amps

Speaking of which, I have been listening near field a lot on this system? Why? Who knows. I guess because that was where the chair was and I didn’t feel like moving it. For a week now.

Rix Rax equipment rack with Walker turntable, Audio Note CDT3 transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and Lamm L2 preamp

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Coltrane Supreme bass towers’ amp in background

Marten Design Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker with Lamm ML2.1 amp in background

Rear of one channel of the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers

Breaking in with a couple of classical CDs from IsoMike (thanks Ray!) on infinite repeat, and, well, you see the ports on the back of the bass towers? That is there so that the bass towers can handle VERY loud SPLs – so loud that the bass twoers cannot be harmed no matter how loud the music is played.

It is a mystery to me why people would listen to it so loud —-

So we are playing the IsoMike CDs and The Who, Who’s Next. With the Lamm L2 set on between 9 and 10 oclock (the volume starts at about 7 and we have turned it up to 1 to 2 oclock at times on different systems) the 18 watt ML2.1 -driven Coltrane Supreme system was NOT so loud that we couldn’t shout in each others ears to be heard… but…

This is of course a great CD. A great CD. Not so sure about some of the ‘extra’ tracks but a capital ‘G’ Great CD. Mastered on 1995, if I remember correctly, it also sounds pretty good sound quality wise, too… Reeeeeal good in fact. 🙂

As far as breaking in – the bass towers already sound great, but the midrange ceramic drivers still need losing up, so I can only imagine that the bass towers are also going to improve over time, as well.

The 2 inch diamond midrange is spooky. Instruments and voices just ‘appear’ THERE and then slip away back into the sound stage. The whole speaker can be thought of as a supporting cast to this one driver (and maybe the lower midrange driver with the two round black spots). I guess it probably will break in more as well… what in heck will that mean I wonder? Kind of scary…

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Lamm / Marten Design / Rix Rax / Showroom 2 1 comments

May 27, 2006 by Michael

System #3: Marten Coltrane, Lamm ML2.1, Jorma Prime, HRS MXR

The System: Marten Coltrane speakers, Lamm ML2.1 amplifiers, Jorma Prime speaker cable, HRS MXR equipment rack. Also Lamm L2 preamplifier, Audio Note CDT-Two and DAC 4.1x Balanced. Nordost and Shunyata cabling.

We mentioned how amazing this was sounding in our review of the Jorma ‘Prime’ interconnects.

What does does amazing mean?

Here is what amazing means:

The Coltrane speakers are so freakin revealing… The Jorma Prime cables are slightly more forward than their No. 1 and even the Valhalla, and this new effect was already taking hold. Now, with HRS’s MXR rack [we set it up yesterday, much more on this later :-)] in place of the Acoustic Dreams, the system sound is even more ‘present’.

We kind of take it for a given that the Coltrane speakers are a little laid back – given the highest quality, completely neutral components up front. But maybe not…

Witb these two new, admittedly over the top, additions to the system… the sound is much more of a engulfing, in the room type of experience.

Our good Canadian friend, Dave H., [you there Dave? Missed you in Monteal] used to talk about how he wanted the sound to come to him, to not have to focus on listening to what was being played, to have the sound ‘take control’ [my words] as it were.

The system was already subtley sinister in the way it would sneak up on a person and make one stop mid sentence, whether one wanted to or not, as the music Took Control.

But now, …

It is hard to move, much more hard to get up.

It is like ‘if I miss this next note, my life will have been worthless and empty’… ‘I must hear this next note!’

I think this house is going to be much more quiet now… because if we start playing any music, we aren’t going to get ANYTHING done.

[Though I am much more disclipined than Neli, and this system is on the same floor as her office. She, she is doomed. So if you can’t get her on the tele as easily as you could before today, you’ll know exactly why!]

And the new Audio Note CDT-Three transport just arrived. We are doomed! 🙂 🙂 🙂

in Audio Note / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / HRS / Jorma Design / Lamm / Marten Design / Nordost / Popular / Reviews / Showroom 3 / Sounding Off 3 comments

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