

MartinLogan recently introduced its Motion line of entry-level models, with traditional cabinets and conventional cone midrange-woofers.

However, they’re expensive to make - it’ll cost you about $2000 USD to take home a pair of the cheapest ESLs made by MartinLogan. To the non-audiophile, electrostatic speakers simply look cool. Although the design staff is still based in Lawrence, much of the manufacturing has been moved to Paradigm’s facility in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.Įlectrostatic (ESL) speakers are renowned for the lightning-fast transients that audiophiles crave. In 2005, ShoreView Industries, a private-equity firm that also owns a stake in Paradigm, bought MartinLogan. Founded by Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland, the company is best known for their extensive line of electrostatic speakers. I think our local BB-Mag had them hooked up at one time but not the last time I was there.MartinLogan is a loudspeaker manufacturer based in Lawrence, Kansas. That would be your best pare them for yourself. Some Best Buy-Magnolias or other M-L dealers may have FX's wired up for listening. You may have to use an Omnimount kind of ceiling mount rather than the built-in wall attachment but that depends on whether you want to mount up high on the walls or physically on the ceiling away from the walls. IMO, the Motion 4 can be an excellent height speaker, positioned up high near the ceiling & rotated so the narrow part is at the bottom so that it aims downward. For me, the 4's physically fit my situation better than 15's because of the height of the Magnepans. But my choice would still be to use the Motion 4's or even Motion 15's as front heights. If I did want a diffused surround field, I'd use FX's as rears. I looked at that approach and rejected it as it goes against the philosophy of a defined, more focused front soundstage.


There are some speaker companies who disagree, namely Atlantic Technology, who makes a 'z" speaker that is bipolar design, like the FX. But even so, my inclination is still to use monopoles as heights rather than diffuse & make less precise the front soundstage. but if you are already using a bipolar/dipolar speaker for fronts, then it might not be as much of an issue. Usually it's surround speakers than get the bipolar/dipolar treatment. My reasoning is this - if you have good L/R fronts that image very well for music as well as movies, using bipolar/dipolar heights could degrade the precise imaging in the front soundstage, making it more diffuse. I do want directionality.Īgain, only my personal opinion - dispersed diffused sound will work better as rear surrounds rather than front heights. This is only my opinion but even though I have dipolar Maggies, similar in nature to M-L e-stats, I don't like diffuse surround sound. Your choice is obviously directional vs diffused. I use M 4's as heights over & to the sides of Magnepan 3.6 planars.
