Marten Mingus Septet Statement Edition

As I prepared this review of the Marten Mingus Septet Statement Edition loudspeaker ($199,000/pair), I asked the Marten people to tell me something about the company and its values.

- JIM AUSTIN

Here's the reply I received via Marten's Martin, Global Sales Manager Martin Dunhoff: Marten was founded back in 1998, but Leif [Olofsson], our founder and chief engineer, started making speakers long before that. ... He wanted to hear music as it was in real life.... Leif wanted to make a speaker that accurately reproduced the truth and beauty of natural sound. To achieve these goals, he experimented very early with using drivers and tweeters with hard surfaces, ceramics and, later, diamond, beryllium, and aluminum. He soon realized that these materials were able to provide a new type of listening experience. ... It was demanding and difficult to implement—for instance, all the components in the crossover filter must be of very high quality. But he was now able to create a speaker with almost no distortion. The desire to improve and test new solutions and materials has always been one of the key factors for Marten. This led to the use of ... first-order crossover filters.

There it is, that last bit: first-order crossover filters.

First-order crossovers are such a pain that most manufacturers avoid them. Yet first-order crossover filters are essential for true time-domain integrity. Only designers who think timing matters—a lot—go to the extra trouble. It’s quite a lot of extra trouble.

Marten designer Leif Olofsson obviously believes it’s worth it.

On timing