"It's a new loudspeaker."
"No way! It's bee-you-tee-full."
I nodded, but this was old news. For weeks, everyone new to the household had been pointing out that these lean speakers, with their nearly transparent panels flanked by blond oak rails, were gorgeous, striking, sculptural, far and away too handsome to be practical...in short, nothing at all like any hi-fi gear they'd ever seen.
The SL3's smooth wood finish seems to invite…
The SL3 comes with two sets of feet, one with metal "glider" pads.…
Description: Hybrid electrostatic/moving-coil loudspeaker system. Drive-units: 48" curvilinear electrostatic midrange/HF transducer; long-excursion, sealed-box, 10", damped-paper-cone woofer. Crossover frequency: 250Hz. Crossover type: quasi-second-order, 12dB/octave. Frequency response: 30Hz-22kHz, ±3dB. Dispersion: horizontal, 30 degrees; vertical, 4' line source. Sensitivity: 89dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Minimum impedance: 1.5 ohms at 20kHz. Recommended amplifier power: 80-200W. Finishes: light or black oak, standard; dark oak, walnut, custom…
Digital Front-End: Krell KPS-20i/l, Naim CD3 CD players.
Analog Front-End: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim ARO tonearm, Transfiguration Temper cartridge; or VPI TNT Mk.III turntable with JMW Memorial tonearm, van den Hul Frog cartridge.
Phono Section: Naim Prefix/HiCap, Ayre phono module, or Krell KPE Reference.
Preamplifiers: Ayre K1, Conrad-Johnson Premier Fourteen, Krell KRC-HR.
Power Amplifiers: Conrad-Johnson Premiers Eleven and Twelve, Krell KAS and FPB-600, Plinius SA-100.
Interconnects: MIT balanced…
MIT's Bruce Brisson and Joe Abrams flew to Santa Fe the day before Martin-Logan's Gayle Sanders, thinking that Gayle would prefer to hear the completely treated system upon arrival.
At 16' wide by 17' long by 14' high, my living/listening room is awfully close to a cube; still, the dining alcove behind my listening position gives me another space 8' wide by 12' deep by 8' tall, and this cuts down early rear-wall reflections. Exposed 2" by 14" beams support the ceiling, and the floors are large ceramic tiles set over a poured…
Talking to Gayle Sanders is always a treat; he's enthusiastic and gestures effusively, staying in constant motion until something totally engages his attention. Then, it's as though you can see the intellect click on: His eyes narrow, and he seems to quiver as he brings his full attention to bear. This can cause conversations to move in an odd rhythm, but one adjusts. I recently realized that I had never heard the saga of Martin-Logan's early days. I asked Gayle to tell me how he'd gotten into hi-fi, and why he'd been driven to build…
Sanders: True, our first transducer had none of those elements. I built that first speaker right out of a hardware shop: perforated aluminum for the stators, Plexiglas for the spacing elements, epoxy glue to hold everything together. I found some half-mil polyester film somewhere and sprayed insulation onto the stator. To get a conductive coating onto a diaphragm, I burnished graphite onto the film.
Phillips: You just rubbed it into the polyester?
Sanders: That's right. It gives a nice semiconductive surface—you don't…
Sanders: That's the classic drawing-on-a-napkin-in-a-Chinese-restaurant design story. Ron and I were eating dinner, chit-chatting about speaker design. As we talked, I sketched a waveform moving away from a point-source. It became clear to both of us that the information on-axis was farther away in time than the information coming from the sides—I drew these little points and we literally connected the dots. I looked at the napkin and said, "Ron, could it…