In the US, you get a bargain—$1995 for the basic speaker with black oak rails, single-wire. Light oak trim, please fork over $100 more. Bi-wire, gotcha for another $100. I'm not sure the oak trim is worth a C-note—the black is fine. But bi-wire is probably worth…
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The speakers are popular in France, too, from what I see by the ads in French hi-fi magazines. I should point out that the Aerius i, which retails for $2000 in the US, goes for around $4000 in France—thanks, in part, to France's killer 21% VAT. And in Britain, a pair of Aerius i speakers will set you back $l2300 (about $3750).
In the past, I've criticized speaker manufacturers for not making their models easier to drive. But an electrostatic/cone speaker hybrid is a special case. You can't expect that such a speaker will present an easy amplifier load. All in all, I think MartinLogan is to be commended for making the Aerius i as easy to drive as it is. This speaker, while fairly demanding, is not a current hog.
While a 25Wpc Musical Fidelity A2 was not quite up to the job (hardly surprising), a 50Wpc Musical Fidelity A220 was. So was a Bryston B60 integrated, which is driving the pair of Aerius i's in my…
Sidebar 5: Aerius i Measurements
As coincidence would have it, Stereophile Guide to Home Theater received a pair of MartinLogan Aerius i's for review in late 1998. The planned review never actually appeared in print, but I did perform a full set of measurements at that time.
Fig.1 shows the later version's plot of impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle against frequency. The broad-brush picture is similar to the earlier speaker's plot. The impedance drops to a very low value above the audioband and there is a single, sealed-box peak in the bass, but the details are…
"Let's face it, we recommend way too many components."
The speaker was Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt, at an early 1990s writers' conference. In those days before e-mail, the magazine's scribes and editors used to gather in person to discuss the products in the forthcoming "Recommended Components." And if there is one thing that Stereophile does that benefits its readers but equally antagonizes nonreaders, it is our biannual publication of "Recommended Components," the latest installment of which, fully revised and updated, appears in this issue (footnote 1). Whether you surf the…
As Laura Atkinson shuffled into my listening room one evening, she spied the Stage loudspeakers tucked away in the corner. "Hey, Dick, those look like Apogees, but they're kind of small." Rising to the occasion, I responded with: "Honey, I shrunk the Apogees." At roughly 3' tall by 2' wide, the Stage is far from intimidating; it even feels more compact and is certainly much cuter looking than the old Quad ESL. Yet Junior's resemblance to the rest of the Apogee family is unmistakable. The canted baffle, the vertical tweeter/midrange along the inside edge of the baffle, and the pleated…
Miracle at the Sands
Apogee's Jason Bloom is not one to bury his head in the sand. But during the 1990 Winter CES, I found him holding court at the Sands, one of the Strip's old-guard hotels. That's where I got my first glimpse of the Stage. Positioned 4' from a bare wall the Stage produced magnificent sound from my far-field listening position. I remember thinking to myself, "Jason has done it again—best sound at the show." The soundstage was utterly transparent from the most delicate treble detail to the bowels of the bass octaves. The veiling that afflicts an appalling number of…
Apogee's Jason Bloom is not one to bury his head in the sand. But during the 1990 Winter CES, I found him holding court at the Sands, one of the Strip's old-guard hotels. That's where I got my first glimpse of the Stage. Positioned 4' from a bare wall the Stage produced magnificent sound from my far-field listening position. I remember thinking to myself, "Jason has done it again—best sound at the show." The soundstage was utterly transparent from the most delicate treble detail to the bowels of the bass octaves. The veiling that afflicts an appalling number of…
I'm sure that most of you have been in the situation of strolling down a street and catching a puff of music leaking from an open window or doorway. At that moment, have you ever had any trouble instinctively telling the difference between live and canned? I should think not. A piece of cake, right? If you've ever failed this test, do not pass go; proceed directly to jail with a lifetime subscription to Stereo Review. It's not so easy to analyze the factors that contribute to at least the audiophile's ability to so effortlessly make this sort of distinction. A key factor to my mind is that…
I'm not suggesting that all of the other cables are no good. Clearly, the Stage is quite sensitive to the choice of speaker cable, and in other contexts with other loads, the Symo's competition will do very well. As you know, I've lived with Space & Time TFA/Return for a long time, and have found it to be an exceptional performer with a variety of speaker loads. This was the first instance in which it significantly failed to measure up. Just when you think you've discovered a universal cable, a counter-example presents itself. It seems to me that dealers and audiophiles had better…
Despite being the baby of the Apogee family, the Stage, as Jason puts it, can "boogie." It can move from soft to loud, as the program material demands, with the speed and impact of a photon torpedo. Relistening to familiar program material through the Stage can prove to be a startling experience. Most of you should be familiar with Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla—the Philips recording with José Carreras (Philips 420 955-2). Larry Archibald has accused this performance of lacking a suitable degree of primal savagery. That may very well be, as this production highlights the lyrical aspects of the…
Late in the evaluation, I received a sample of the Cary Audio CAD-5500 analog CD processor. My first impression was that this is one hell of a processor. It carried the Stage and the entire system to new heights (a full review is forthcoming). The areas of transduction in which the Stage already excelled became even stronger: soundstage transparency and the clarity and ease of the presentation were noticeably increased. And as a bonus, the mids became more liquid and suave, while the sense of depth increased as you would expect from a tubed unit. It also appeared that one reason for its…