MartinLogan Motion 40 Loudspeaker Review

[gadgtfreek]

All in all, my first impression is that the MartinLogan Motion 40 is a tremendous tease. The Folded Motion tweeter takes you almost to the point of electrostatic magic but stops just short of three-dimensionality. On the other hand, the Motion 40s are easier to integrate into a room than a typical electrostatic speaker, so I think it’s a pretty equitable tradeoff. By the time you read this, MartinLogan will probably have announced new Motion Series surrounds and center channel to match with the Motion 20s and Motion 40s. We’ll be testing them as soon as they’re available and reporting on the full system at that time, complete with measurements and updated ratings. But if they all perform as well together as the Motion 40s do by themselves, it ought to make one killer non-electrostatic system.

http://www.hometheater.com/content/martinlogan-motion-40-loudspeaker

 

[jayn_j]

I'm sure these are fine speakers, but I really don't trust reviews from HT magazine. Those guys are the spiritual successor to the old Stereo Review, where the saying back in the '70s was "They never met a speaker they didn't like"

 

[gadgtfreek]

I take em all with a grain of salt, but IMO, HTM does a good job with their reviews. To me, speakers are subjective and one needs to listen for themselves, but their AVR, Blu-ray player and display reviews are nice and detailed. Im not as much reading them for the reviewer opinion of quality, but for the technical aspects like amp performance, video performance and after calibration performance.

They also just dont give everything a top pick speaker which is nice. I like posting speaker reviews simply so folks can get an idea of what brands are out there, because so many are missed.

 

[jayn_j]

Well, my knee jerk here was this sentence:

The Folded Motion tweeter takes you almost to the point of electrostatic magic but stops just short of three-dimensionality

I took this as a warning sign that the speakers may be less than ideal in placing images on the soundstage, especially for units at that price point. Perhaps I am reading too much into it.

Anyway, thanks for the pointer jason.