Marten introduced their new 'Bird' loudspeaker at this year's show.

I didn't get to hear this room very much, but Neli did, and the general consensus of people that I ran into during the show was that they liked the sound very much.

Me? I would have wired this room with the Jorma Design No. 2 cable and the other Marten room, with Bladelius electronics, with the No. 1 - just given the nature of the two cables and the two lines of electronics - but I am just a lowly Show Reporterrrr and this is a job for the Mixibitors. :-)

I know, all these rooms go by and I do not say anything about the sound. Cool chairs though, huh?

Really, the sound in a room has to generate a certain level of interest, to exceed a certain level of price / performance - or just performance - for me to be interested in writing about the sound. Remember, the sound in a room can be ruined by one piece of equipment [or cables, but this is somewhat more difficult, ...but it can be done!].

I think this is the room that was interesting enough that I stopped back through a second time [it is hard to know for sure since the signs on the meeting rooms have no numbers, unlike the signs upstairs.]

What attracted me to this room was the good tonality, and at least some separation between the notes dynamically - which was kind of rare in many of the last rooms. I did not know that they were using the MasterSound equipment, which I had heard good things about, until I processed the photos a few days ago [I just photograph them, I don't LOOK at them... apparently].

When I came back, and listened more intently, the sound was obviously very unbalanced top-to-bottom, compressed in some areas, more open in others etc. etc.

Not being familiar myself with this equipment, I took a lot of photos.

The setup in this room was unique.

You come into the room, and all you see is the equipment rack [see below]. Then you walk around a partition and you get to to see the system - the speakers and amp. You see that cable going down the middle of the floor? That is going from the equipment rack by the entrance to the amplifier.

They said they did this to show off the new, smaller, Continuum Criterion turntable. But I originally thought it was because of vibration problems, trying to isolate the turntable from the speakers - so I was confused by the whole thing. Not a unusual thing to happen to me at shows, in the best of times.

I was confused [told ya :-) ] by the new rack and they had to tell me that this was not the Caliburn table, the appearances are so similar. But as you can see, it is only about 1/2 to 2/3 the height of its big brother, the Caliburn.

This less expensive (say around $45K) setup comes with a Stillpoints rack instead of the art deco one that comes with the Caliburn.

It pains me to not just spurt out what I think about this whole approach to vibration control.  I do find myself wondering, however, if perhaps the Stillpoints rack might sound better than that of the more expensive Caliburn setup.

Given the unique design of these speakers, I listened for awhile, albeit mostly off axis.

I did find myself wondering just what people in this room who were listening so intently were hearing that I wasn't. There was indeed some nice control and authority in a section of the midrange. But it was the kind of control where it sounds like it is 'trying hard'.

So I don't know, I think I preferred the room with the Peak Consult speakers and smaller Criterion table over this one, as it had more harmonic color and a less cold, less 'hi-fi' sound. But not by much.

I took a number of photos in this room, both because it looks like they have speakers that look somewhat like the *Marten Miles III which we carry, and because it sounded pretty good in this room, in a musical, Enjoyable kind of way.

We saw these at RMAF, and it is one of the few rooms that sounded better here than there.

Still, there are so many anomalies that it is hard to say what it really sounded like here - but at least the midrange was somewhat transparent to the musicality and richness of the amplifier - which is more than can be said for many of the other speakers at the show.

Growing up in New Mexico, these speaker's appearance reminds me of Kachina dolls, or something very Native American looking, anyway. Even the New Mexican state flag has a resemblance. Either that or they remind me of the death ray machines Earth builds to fight off Martians in early '50s movies.

Some people can get away with designing audio equipment from technical specifications and not by ear... and some can't.

Do you see their slogan there? "No loss of fine detail". Finally, some truth in advertising - that is what, in my opinion, this line of speakers does very well: render fine details. What we would call a Sophisticated sound. They are also Enjoyable and in some sense Emotional and even Sweet. What they aren't is Real (there is a certain lack of transparency) or Impressive.

In this room, the left channel was having to work around three guys who were better dressed than I.

Going for that big, Impressive yet Enjoyable sound at a price point. Not much else can be said for them, except that this is a better approach in my estimation than the legions of their competitors going for Impressive yet annoying, in not downright offensive, sound, and often at higher price points at that.