This is my extended coverage of Martin Logan's new Renaissance Speakers speakers shown at CES 2016. It is the result of two visits with a second one a more extended listening session.
As always please note that I am not a professional reviewer and don't really know what I am doing as I express my subjective views of loudspeakers in writing. Much of what I hear is content dependent and for all I know, I am critiquing the content, not the system. But here they are anyway with the pictures.
As you see, this is a typical setup with the loudspeaker toed in 1/3 according to their recommendations. I was directed to sit in the sweet spot by the demo extraordinaire, Dennis Chern:
He is a gift to the company and was a wonderful host. Soft spoken, inviting and frank. The above picture is from my second visit where I had to wait for a wealthy individual who was sitting in the sweet spot picking up the two girls sitting on his sides by bragging about who he was! So I moved next to Dennis and asked my questions with the key one being a little note I saw about the speakers now having Anthem Room Correction (ARC). As some of you may know, Paradigm and Anthem are their sister companies.
I asked him if ARC was used and he said yes and it was optimized for the sweet spot. Later the wealthy guy and the girls left so I sat in the sweet spot for the second time. A lot of you had asked about how well bass blends into the main panel now. I am happy to report that it did so very well. Not only was the bass "correct" but also in correct level and proportion to main panel, not doubt optimized by ARC.
The DSP for ARC sits in the same module as bass amplifiers which are custom implementations of ICE as was explained to me:
Notice the ARC button and the USB PC interface where the software runs. There is an RJ-45 which I assume links the two loudspeakers so that they can be measured together. These are the ICE amplifiers as you see by the designation:
Here is the power supply board:
Crossover:
The blue PCB in the front is the DSP board:
The whole thing sits in a tray that slides under the loudspeaker and attaches with four bolts.
Back to the panel, he is a shot of it from behind:
The frame is quite rigid with heavy angle iron and attached to the main chassis of the bass. I could not get it to flex away from the main chassis like I could with the cheaper model. With music playing, I could still feel vibrations through the frame that got amplified more and more as I got to the top. My wet thumb in the air assessment though said this was a more rigid structure than the one used in the Neolith. Less emphasis on looks and more on stability it seemed.
Here is a view of the wires behind the scenes:
And a shot showing the amps and spec sheets of ESL 15A:
Source equipment consisted of Aurender streamer:
And Berkeley Reference DAC:
Spec sheet of the two models introduced:
Back to the sound, you can see the selection of the music that was played here: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?19539-Music-of-CES-2016&p=368773&viewfull=1#post368773
On many tracks I found the system enjoyable. The main failing for me were vocals. Outside of that in instrumental tracks, they had an open sound that at times was quite captivating. The effect as I have mentioned is always there though and something I personally get tired of in how every track is transformed to sound that way. But others differ from a comment the wealthy guy made that one of the tracks was the best he had ever heard (he was an ML customer already). To me, this was not the case
.
Overall, if you are a fan of ML but thought the bass performance was wrong, you are in good shape with these speakers and should look at upgrading. If you were not a fan of ML before, a second listen with more correct bass performance of these units is in order just in case that was the basis of your negative opinion of them.
As always please note that I am not a professional reviewer and don't really know what I am doing as I express my subjective views of loudspeakers in writing. Much of what I hear is content dependent and for all I know, I am critiquing the content, not the system. But here they are anyway with the pictures.
As you see, this is a typical setup with the loudspeaker toed in 1/3 according to their recommendations. I was directed to sit in the sweet spot by the demo extraordinaire, Dennis Chern:
He is a gift to the company and was a wonderful host. Soft spoken, inviting and frank. The above picture is from my second visit where I had to wait for a wealthy individual who was sitting in the sweet spot picking up the two girls sitting on his sides by bragging about who he was! So I moved next to Dennis and asked my questions with the key one being a little note I saw about the speakers now having Anthem Room Correction (ARC). As some of you may know, Paradigm and Anthem are their sister companies.
I asked him if ARC was used and he said yes and it was optimized for the sweet spot. Later the wealthy guy and the girls left so I sat in the sweet spot for the second time. A lot of you had asked about how well bass blends into the main panel now. I am happy to report that it did so very well. Not only was the bass "correct" but also in correct level and proportion to main panel, not doubt optimized by ARC.
The DSP for ARC sits in the same module as bass amplifiers which are custom implementations of ICE as was explained to me:
Notice the ARC button and the USB PC interface where the software runs. There is an RJ-45 which I assume links the two loudspeakers so that they can be measured together. These are the ICE amplifiers as you see by the designation:
Here is the power supply board:
Crossover:
The blue PCB in the front is the DSP board:
The whole thing sits in a tray that slides under the loudspeaker and attaches with four bolts.
Back to the panel, he is a shot of it from behind:
The frame is quite rigid with heavy angle iron and attached to the main chassis of the bass. I could not get it to flex away from the main chassis like I could with the cheaper model. With music playing, I could still feel vibrations through the frame that got amplified more and more as I got to the top. My wet thumb in the air assessment though said this was a more rigid structure than the one used in the Neolith. Less emphasis on looks and more on stability it seemed.
Here is a view of the wires behind the scenes:
And a shot showing the amps and spec sheets of ESL 15A:
Source equipment consisted of Aurender streamer:
And Berkeley Reference DAC:
Spec sheet of the two models introduced:
Back to the sound, you can see the selection of the music that was played here: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?19539-Music-of-CES-2016&p=368773&viewfull=1#post368773
On many tracks I found the system enjoyable. The main failing for me were vocals. Outside of that in instrumental tracks, they had an open sound that at times was quite captivating. The effect as I have mentioned is always there though and something I personally get tired of in how every track is transformed to sound that way. But others differ from a comment the wealthy guy made that one of the tracks was the best he had ever heard (he was an ML customer already). To me, this was not the case
.Overall, if you are a fan of ML but thought the bass performance was wrong, you are in good shape with these speakers and should look at upgrading. If you were not a fan of ML before, a second listen with more correct bass performance of these units is in order just in case that was the basis of your negative opinion of them.
