Toronto Audiofest 2024

What speaker design immediately springs to mind when you think of MartinLogan? If you’re like me, the answer is an electrostatic one. Which is why I was momentarily taken aback when I walked into the MartinLogan room and saw on display the more conventional-looking, three-way, floorstanding XT F100 speaker ($5999/pair) from the company’s Motion Series XT, and this despite the fact I’ve known about the Motion Series XT for a couple of years now.

The thing is, I’d never heard this particular model, which, since 2023, was in its Generation 2 version, along with its stablemates in the series. That meant better drivers than before, including a Folded Motion Tweeter with a larger surface area said to deliver improved directivity.

On FLAC files streamed through a 200Wpc Anthem STR integrated amp ($5999), which features Anthem’s proprietary ARC room correction technology, a hi-res-capable DAC, and an MM/MC phono stage, the MartinLogan XT F100 Generation 2 sounded darn good, better than the one or two models I’ve heard in the original Motion Series XT. It projected a soundstage that was vast and transparent, with gobs of air, infinite decays, a sonic ambient fullness, and floaty, incandescent highs.

The sound of this system, which used power conditioning and cabling by AudioQuest, exceeded my expectations.