Martin Logan B10 Speaker Review

[Penelinfi]

So, perhaps a bit of absorption inside the cabinet and certain thickness of materials at rejection points to reduce only 3kHz and above, could help this wider treble dispersion?

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Hmm. IMO a high priced speaker for what you get.

• Peaky treble "smiley curve"
• F3 @ 75 Hz
• ~86 dB sensitivity (disregarding the heightened treble response)

Martin Logan XT B100 & B10 Review (LIVE)

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[AdamG]

Thanks for another speaker review. You have been on a review bender of late and out of pure curiosity what is your backlog looking like? Have you caught up any, just holding your own, or more kit coming in than you can keep up with?

Can you put a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate on the cycle time? How much work in weeks/months do you have in the queue? Looks like you completed 24 reviews in July and 22 reviews in June (including reporting on the Expo).

Amir, thank you for your steadfast commitment to producing high quality product testing and analysis. Your dedication and work ethic (even in retirement) is remarkable and inspiring. Mad respect for what you’ve accomplished here. Amazing and dizzying scope and breadth of product knowledge. You certainly take no prisoners and give no quarter to products that are poorly designed and engineered. No one can look at your body of work and conclude that you ever pull your punches.

 

[Grotti]

The term 'reference' was used in relation to 'quality', not to level. But regarding your further explications, it is possible to have decent output volume with small drivers in even smaller enclosures in two steps: get rid of the port, tailor the response electronically (1) and cope with unpreventable distortions by isloating them in using a dedicated midrange driver from as low as possible (2) in a true 3-way design. Paradoxically the smaller the speaker, the more desirable the midrange becomes**. This contradicts common wisdom and is not to be seen soon, while e/g Adam Audio and Dynaudio offer quite small 3-ways for studio use already.

I experienced room filling sond pressure levels, way beyond what I would like to have regularly, let alone my neighbors' undeniable interests, with pieces from Kraftwerk, Yello, Infected Mushrooms, The Residents, or more high-end-ish Marcin's "Kashmir" (truely ironic). It works, bass was tight and felt very clean and voluminous at the same time. You'll see something alike maybe in 5 years ;-)

Anyway, a tuning at 65Hz for a stand-alone speaker box is regarded a bit high on my side if not supported by e/g SEAS's "DD" system (http://www.seas.no/images/stories/vintage/pdfdataheet/h097_and_h190_33f-wka_and_dd.pdf).

**given human hearing, one needs at least a certain level of sound pressure level; the smaller the bass driver the higher the excursion; the higher the excursion the higher the (intermodulation) distortion; isolation of mids becomes more pressing

You forgot to mention the Neumann KH 310 when it comes to small 3way speakers.... And I doubt that you will achieve tight, clean and considerable deep bass from a small speaker with a small bass driver by eliminating the port and force the speaker electronically to deliver, what it couldn't in a small enclosure without it. The only way is to increase displacement, which is limited without running into distortion and not to mention IMD, which is coupled to displacement in a small 2way design.

So if you want deep, loud, tight and clean bass, get a bigger speaker (or a subwoofer). Back on topic now...

 

[sarumbear]

@amirm may I ask you to please add the very basic and visual specs of the speaker in review, like driver and box size? Yes, we can search the manufacturer's page but it will make the review better, in my opinion if you add those. Thank you for listening.

 

[abdo123]

Previous review by Erin talked about speaker exaggerating lisping. That didn't match my listening tests. Yes, if a track had lisping, it became more pronounced. But by itself, I didn't hear it doing much of that, if at all. Overall impression of the speaker was that it was doing something right as there was nice fidelity across a lot of my reference tracks. With a speaker that has poor tonality, that percentage drops precipitously. Not here. Yes, there was a bit of brightness but nothing to the point of standing out a lot.

It seems like Erin's unit had a somewhat louder tweeter.

 

[Robbo99999]

Thanks for another speaker review. You have been on a review bender of late and out of pure curiosity what is your backlog looking like? Have you caught up any, just holding your own, or more kit coming in than you can keep up with?

Can you put a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate on the cycle time? How much work in weeks/months do you have in the queue? Looks like you completed 24 reviews in July and 22 reviews in June (including reporting on the Expo).

Amir, thank you for your steadfast commitment to producing high quality product testing and analysis. Your dedication and work ethic (even in retirement) is remarkable and inspiring. Mad respect for what you’ve accomplished here. Amazing and dizzying scope and breadth of product knowledge. You certainly take no prisoners and give no quarter to products that are poorly designed and engineered. No one can look at your body of work and conclude that you ever pull your punches.

Interesting questions, I'm curious to hear how that looks for Amir with his accumulated queue of gear! Might be quite fun to see pics of his storage rooms!

@amirm may I ask you to please add the very basic and visual specs of the speaker in review, like driver and box size? Yes, we can search the manufacturer's page but it will make the review better, in my opinion if you add those. Thank you for listening.

I agree, I'm often google searching to find the answers to those questions.

 

[fineMen]

You forgot to mention the Neumann KH 310 when it comes to small 3way speakers.... And I doubt that you will achieve tight, clean and considerable deep bass from a small speaker with a small bass driver by eliminating the port and force the speaker electronically to deliver, what it couldn't in a small enclosure without it. The only way is to increase displacement, which is limited without running into distortion and not to mention IMD, which is coupled to displacement in a small 2way design.

So if you want deep, loud, tight and clean bass, get a bigger speaker (or a subwoofer). Back on topic now...

I file the 310 under medium sized. As you doubt my claims, well, that's a very distinctive stance. Please acknowledge the idea to isolate the midrange from the distortion generating bass. I didn't come to verify my findings objectively, other that 3rd parties were quite pleased with the result of my anecdotal experiment. (On this board nobody was interested anyway.) For one, from my personal perspective having massive p/a, cinema sized speakers at hand, the work to develop a passive x-over @350Hz was simply too much and I didn't feel to buy some plate amps to power the little thingies. Second, I found the KEF R3s for a bargain, and saw my hypothesis and following recommendations realized perfectly, so I gave up the DIY altogether.

I think we have been perfectly 'on topic' as the bass response could be the Archilles heel of the Martin/Logan design. But sure, we could leave it as that.

 

[AdamG]

@amirm may I ask you to please add the very basic and visual specs of the speaker in review, like driver and box size? Yes, we can search the manufacturer's page but it will make the review better, in my opinion if you add those. Thank you for listening.

Dimensions (H x W x D, with feet) 12-1/2” x 7” x 9-3/4” 31.8cm x 17.8cm x 24.8cm

Frequency Response: 56 Hz - 25 kHz ± 3 dB

Tweeter Dispersion (horizontal x vertical); 90° x 90°

Recommended Amplifier Power: 20 - 200 watts

Sensitivity: 92 dB

Impedance: 5 ohms

High Frequency Driver: 1” x 1.4” (2.6 x 3.6cm) Gen2 Obsidian Folded Motion Tweeter with 9.2 in2 (59.4 cm2) diaphragm

Crossover Frequency: 2,370 Hz (2-way)

Mid-Frequency Drivers: 5.5” (14cm) Woven Fiberglass cone with cast polymer basket. Non- resonant asymmetrical chamber format. Unibody cone construction.

Cabinet: Rear Ported

Binding Post Inputs: Custom 5-way binding posts

Weight:14.5lbs / 6.6kg

Finish: Gloss Black, Walnut, and Satin White

Link to PDF Specifications sheet; https://www.martinlogan.com/uploads/documents/others/ML-Motion-B10-Spec-Sheet-rev0.pdf

 

[sarumbear]

Dimensions (H x W x D, with feet)

12-1/2” x 7” x 9-3/4”
31.8cm x 17.8cm x 24.8cm

Frequency Response

56 Hz - 25 kHz
± 3 dB

Tweeter Dispersion (horizontal x vertical)

90° x 90°

Recommended Amplifier Power

20 - 200 watts

Sensitivity

92 dB

Impedance

5 ohms

High Frequency Driver

1” x 1.4” (2.6 x 3.6cm) Gen2 Obsidian Folded Motion Tweeter with 9.2 in2 (59.4 cm2) diaphragm

Crossover Frequency

2,370 Hz (2-way)

Mid-Frequency Drivers

5.5” (14cm) Woven Fiberglass cone with cast polymer basket. Non- resonant asymmetrical chamber format. Unibody cone construction.

Cabinet

Rear Ported

Binding Post Inputs

Custom 5-way binding posts

Weight

14.5lbs / 6.6kg

Finish

Gloss Black, Walnut, and Satin White

Link to PDF Specifications sheet; https://www.martinlogan.com/uploads/documents/others/ML-Motion-B10-Spec-Sheet-rev0.pdf

Thank you for this but my request was generic not for this product. Sometimes a tested speaker doesn't have the manufacturer's website or it is difficult to find it. Case in point are the following where Google search show you the outlets only.

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Not to mention when a speaker tested is a DIY. The explanation of "This is a very small speaker which literally fits int he palm of your hand" alone is not very ASR like, don't you think?

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[MZKM]

@Maiky76 When I have some time I will work on finding why we have small differences between computations.

Has to do with how the calculations are setup, for instance which frequencies are used for the 14 bands, as well as what frequency is used for the "with sub" score which replaces the actual LFX frequency. I mentioned the lack of detail about the 14 bands to Sean Olive and he said he'd try to check his notes, but he never got back to me. Either way, it's close enough.

 

[Ron Texas]

These are widely available. Best Buy carries them. Thank you @amirm .

 

[Jim777]

Thanks Amir (and others that have contributed analysis). This review was also a nice lesson, I learned or better understand a few things now. You put in some hard work and share the knowledge from it, stuff that is not necessarily in books, and in a fun format.

 

[LTig]

Flat response, low distortion, good looks. What's not to like?

Wide radiation pattern too. Will really "fill the room."

Directivity error despite a waveguide, strong port resonance. That's why I voted not terrible. I don't think fixing these 2 points would break the budget.

And you need a sub to get decent bass. This speaker's f3 is rather high, probably due to having ~ 3 dB higher sensitivity than other 2-ways of this size. It's a design decision.

 

[Ajax]

If adding a port creates so many problems, and the principal purpose is to deepen the base, then why not simply have a sealed cabinet and add a sub?

I assume a port would add 10 - 15 hz base extension, from around say 60 down to 45 hz depending on cabinet size. So why not run a pair of sealed bookshelf speakers full range and add a sub that can be tweaked to a targeted response using REW or simply to suit your taste.

My current system is located on my patio with only one wall and 3 open sides and a 12' high vaulted ceiling. It consists of a Benchmark DAC2 with the XL out into a Buckeye/Hypex NC252 that drives a pair of B&W AM1 speakers full range. The RCA out of the Benchmark feeds an old 10" Velodyne sub, that has a remote to control the volume. The cross over is set at 60Hz.

Sound is incredibly clean with plenty of base.

 

[abdo123]

If adding a port creates so many problems, and the principal purpose is to deepen the base, then why not simply have a sealed cabinet and add a sub?

Because it harms the performance of your product on its own. 60% of listener preference is bass extension.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Directivity error despite a waveguide, strong port resonance. That's why I voted not terrible. I don't think fixing these 2 points would break the budget.

And you need a sub to get decent bass. This speaker's f3 is rather high, probably due to having ~ 3 dB higher sensitivity than other 2-ways of this size. It's a design decision.

It looks like its rated sensitivity is based upon its elevated treble response rather than its mean. So the actual value is much lower and thus more akin to similar small bookshelf speakers.

 

[Brian6751]

Excellent review @amirm. So, would you agree that it's most likely the low distortion in that audible range that makes this speaker sound detailed and not just the elevated treble and therefore not "Fake Detail"

 

[unpluggged]

For this kind of money there is no reason this should exist when you can get a pair Neumann KH 120 A or Genelec 8030C, and made in Europe, too.

 

[Grotti]

For this kind of money there is no reason this should exist when you can get a pair Neumann KH 120 A or Genelec 8030C, and made in Europe, too.

Not everyone wants to go the active way and when it comes to the look of the mentioned speakers, my wife wouldn't choose a Genelec or Neumann. At least two reasons why speakers like this have their customers. And they are easily serviceable for anyone with basic knowledge, a screwdriver and a solder station.