Audio Video News

MartinLogan, known for those electrostatic speakers that audiophiles love and everybody else confuses with Japanese shoji screens, conducted its first U.S. demos of the new $25,000-per-pair, 25th-anniversary CLX flagship speaker today at Los Angeles dealer The Source.

Unlike most electrostatics, which use conventional cone-type woofers to handle the bass, the CLX is all 'stat from top to bottom and side to side. Alongside the usual curved electrostatic panel for the mids and highs is a jumbo-sized flat electrostatic panel to handle the bass. Actually, it's two panels, one behind the other. According to MartinLogan international sales manager Peter Soderberg, "sandwiching" the panels doubled the bass output - and also allowed ML's engineers to design the CLX so it could fit through a standard door.

(By the way, just in case you're not conversant in the physics of electrostatic speakers, here's how they work: A transparent polyester membrane impregnated with conductive material hangs between two screen-like metal stator panels. The membrane is charged by a power supply, while the stator panels connect to your amp through a transformer. When voltage flows into the stator panels, the membrane moves back and forth, producing sound. Capiche?)

Soderberg's demo certainly proved that the CLX can kick out serious bottom end. He boldly played CDs that most electrostatic speaker demo-ers would shy away from, including everything from drum recordings to Linkin Park. What most impressed me, though, was the CLX's vocal reproduction: Even in the too-small room used for the demo, the speaker seemed to float vocalists in the air 8 feet in front of me, and the sound was clean, clean, clean.

The 25th-anniversary version has a frame made from solid aluminum; the standard version has a veneered frame and costs $5,000 less per pair. Both should be available in late July or early August.

The demo also marked the launch of a new amp from McIntosh Labs, the $11,000, 300-watt MC2301. It's Mac's first fully balanced tube amp, which means it's like two mirror-imaged amps working together, one handling the positive half of the signal, the other handling the negative half. The result: Better noise cancellation and faster transients. A pair of MC2301s drove the CLXs, and the match seemed audibly synergistic despite the clashing of the speakers' ultramodern look with the amps' decidedly 1950s vibe. -Brent Butterworth