Soundbar Reviews

Here are two words I never thought I’d use together in a sentence: audiophile soundbar. Yet MartinLogan’s new Motion Vision model indisputably qualifies. The Kansas speaker maker is certainly audiophile-approved, with hybrid speaker designs whose electrostatic panel mid/tweeters and cone woofers — the current range peaks at $25,000 per pair — made their bones among serious audio buffs decades ago. More recently, ML’s Motion family of more conventional box speakers employing cone woofers and “Folded-Motion” accordion-pleat tweeters (an update on the Heil “Air-Motion Trans former” high-frequency transducer first seen on ESS speakers in the 1970s) has won broad approval.

MartinLogan’s newest addition to the Motion speaker family is a one-piece, DSP-surround soundbar — known as the Motion Vision — combining hardware front-left, -right, and center channels with virtualized surround. MartinLogan also? sent along with it a companion subwoofer, the conventionally coned Dynamo 700w, which is a nicely compact, eminently tossable (27 pounds), 10-inch sealed job, to extend response to legitimate home theater regions.