On May 29, 2015, the first morning of T.H.E. Show in Irvine, California, I headed straight for the LMC demo room where I was greeted warmly by Mike Ware, the owner of LMC, and Peter Soderberg, Western Regional Sales Manager of MartinLogan. I corresponded with Peter several times in advance of the show, and I was happy to meet him in person. Both Mike and Peter were informative, friendly and extremely gracious hosts. Mike’s store in Arizona features not only the Neoliths but also MBL 101 X-tremes and Wilson Alexandria XLFs!
I purchased MartinLogan Monolith II speakers in 1989. I upgraded to the Monolith IIIs in 1991. In 2001 I purchased Prodigys, which I still use today. So I was very curious to see and hear MartinLogan’s latest iteration of a large, hybrid ESL.
Visually the Neolith is large and impressive in person. At 375 pounds it is much heavier than any prior ML hybrid/cone integrated speaker.
I have been concerned about the affect on quality control wrought by the purchase of ML by a private equity and the relocation of its traditional Lawrence, Kansas manufacturing facility to a Paradigm facility in Canada. My career background is in hedge funds, and I am well aware that sometimes private equity firms understand, buy into, and support the passion and quality control of the entrepreneurial founders whose companies they buy, and sometimes private equity firms simply try to maximize EBITDA. ML’s entry into Best Buy made me concerned that the latter philosophy might be at work here.
I was happy to see, and I am relieved to report, that there is no evidence of any decline in finishing quality or quality control, at least with the Neoliths. The finish on the Neoliths is absolutely gorgeous. Up close the speakers look like they came out of the cabinet factory at Wilson Audio, and I intend that to be extremely high praise. All seams I examined were straight and tight. Among my various character flaws I am a visual perfectionist and I saw nothing cosmetically imperfect.
The Neoliths were bi-amped with pairs of McIntosh MC1.2kw 1200 watt transistor amplifiers. The source was a Linn CD player connected to some streaming system controlled by an Ipad. Unfortunately for me personally there was no tube amplification and no analog source. I say unfortunately because I generally like only tube amplification and I truly like only analog sources.
Mike Ware kindly played several tracks from Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat (with which I am very familiar), and which is appropriate since it was recorded digitally to begin with.
I hoped the Neoliths would sound like everything I like about the Prodigys, but, if anything, with higher resolution, greater transparency and greater dynamics. In my opinion the Neoliths are at least slightly higher in resolution than the Prodigys and are at least at transparent as the Prodigys. Exactly how much higher in resolution and more transparent (if they are) are the Neoliths than the Prodigys I do not know how to explain or quantify. It would take much more listening in a quiet room for me to describe and quantify the magnitude of these improvements.
The excitement and the surprise came from an increase in dynamics. The Neoliths possess, to my ears, the most dynamic 48” X 24” electrostatic panel ML has ever produced.
For my listening biases the Neolith is a pretty perfect answer. The 12” cone, crossed over to the panel at between 250 and 400 Hz, provides the impact and oomph which I like in the 200 to 400 Hz range.
Since I've been listening to MartinLogan hybrid speakers for 26 years, the sound of the Neoliths was extremely familiar to me. It sounded like everything I've always liked about ML’s speakers (transparency, soundstaging, and resolution) but with greater dynamics. The increase in dynamics made the speakers more impressive and more fun than the Prodigys. The 15” ported subwoofer certainly did its part and helped sustain this increase in dynamics.
Finally, while I have never been particularly sensitive to discontinuity between the electrostatic panel and the integrated cone, I think the sound of the electrostatic panel, down to the 12” cone, and then down to the 15” inch cone, was extremely coherent and well-integrated. I heard no discontinuity.
Could this speaker be any better for the kind of sound I like? If we ask this question in the context of a one tower per channel system my answer is no, I do not see how it could be any better. I cannot imagine ML producing a better one column speaker.
Everything I reported here about the sound characteristics of the Neolith is tentative and preliminary and subject to revision after a true audition. I will not know for sure what the Neolith sounds like until I have an opportunity to audition it leisurely in a quiet, controlled listening environment, with the speakers driven by tubes and playing my standard vinyl audition music.
If I had the opportunity to design my own MartinLogan speaker I would build my ideal ESL hybrid speaker by taking the Neolith speaker as it is, and removing the 15” subwoofer. This would leave us with the 48" x 24" electrostatic panel over the 12” woofer in one column. I would add a second 12" woofer in a BalancedForce configuration using the portion of the cabinet where the 15" subwoofer currently resides. I would then build for each channel a separate subwoofer tower, consisting of three pairs of dual-opposed, 15” drivers and powered with class AB amplification. This four-column system, a Statement E3, would be my ideal speaker system from MartinLogan.
I purchased MartinLogan Monolith II speakers in 1989. I upgraded to the Monolith IIIs in 1991. In 2001 I purchased Prodigys, which I still use today. So I was very curious to see and hear MartinLogan’s latest iteration of a large, hybrid ESL.
Visually the Neolith is large and impressive in person. At 375 pounds it is much heavier than any prior ML hybrid/cone integrated speaker.
I have been concerned about the affect on quality control wrought by the purchase of ML by a private equity and the relocation of its traditional Lawrence, Kansas manufacturing facility to a Paradigm facility in Canada. My career background is in hedge funds, and I am well aware that sometimes private equity firms understand, buy into, and support the passion and quality control of the entrepreneurial founders whose companies they buy, and sometimes private equity firms simply try to maximize EBITDA. ML’s entry into Best Buy made me concerned that the latter philosophy might be at work here.
I was happy to see, and I am relieved to report, that there is no evidence of any decline in finishing quality or quality control, at least with the Neoliths. The finish on the Neoliths is absolutely gorgeous. Up close the speakers look like they came out of the cabinet factory at Wilson Audio, and I intend that to be extremely high praise. All seams I examined were straight and tight. Among my various character flaws I am a visual perfectionist and I saw nothing cosmetically imperfect.
The Neoliths were bi-amped with pairs of McIntosh MC1.2kw 1200 watt transistor amplifiers. The source was a Linn CD player connected to some streaming system controlled by an Ipad. Unfortunately for me personally there was no tube amplification and no analog source. I say unfortunately because I generally like only tube amplification and I truly like only analog sources.
Mike Ware kindly played several tracks from Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat (with which I am very familiar), and which is appropriate since it was recorded digitally to begin with.
I hoped the Neoliths would sound like everything I like about the Prodigys, but, if anything, with higher resolution, greater transparency and greater dynamics. In my opinion the Neoliths are at least slightly higher in resolution than the Prodigys and are at least at transparent as the Prodigys. Exactly how much higher in resolution and more transparent (if they are) are the Neoliths than the Prodigys I do not know how to explain or quantify. It would take much more listening in a quiet room for me to describe and quantify the magnitude of these improvements.
The excitement and the surprise came from an increase in dynamics. The Neoliths possess, to my ears, the most dynamic 48” X 24” electrostatic panel ML has ever produced.
For my listening biases the Neolith is a pretty perfect answer. The 12” cone, crossed over to the panel at between 250 and 400 Hz, provides the impact and oomph which I like in the 200 to 400 Hz range.
Since I've been listening to MartinLogan hybrid speakers for 26 years, the sound of the Neoliths was extremely familiar to me. It sounded like everything I've always liked about ML’s speakers (transparency, soundstaging, and resolution) but with greater dynamics. The increase in dynamics made the speakers more impressive and more fun than the Prodigys. The 15” ported subwoofer certainly did its part and helped sustain this increase in dynamics.
Finally, while I have never been particularly sensitive to discontinuity between the electrostatic panel and the integrated cone, I think the sound of the electrostatic panel, down to the 12” cone, and then down to the 15” inch cone, was extremely coherent and well-integrated. I heard no discontinuity.
Could this speaker be any better for the kind of sound I like? If we ask this question in the context of a one tower per channel system my answer is no, I do not see how it could be any better. I cannot imagine ML producing a better one column speaker.
Everything I reported here about the sound characteristics of the Neolith is tentative and preliminary and subject to revision after a true audition. I will not know for sure what the Neolith sounds like until I have an opportunity to audition it leisurely in a quiet, controlled listening environment, with the speakers driven by tubes and playing my standard vinyl audition music.
If I had the opportunity to design my own MartinLogan speaker I would build my ideal ESL hybrid speaker by taking the Neolith speaker as it is, and removing the 15” subwoofer. This would leave us with the 48" x 24" electrostatic panel over the 12” woofer in one column. I would add a second 12" woofer in a BalancedForce configuration using the portion of the cabinet where the 15" subwoofer currently resides. I would then build for each channel a separate subwoofer tower, consisting of three pairs of dual-opposed, 15” drivers and powered with class AB amplification. This four-column system, a Statement E3, would be my ideal speaker system from MartinLogan.
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