This is a review and detailed measurements of the MartinLogan 4i speaker. I purchased this from Amazon a couple of months ago. It costs US $188.
The design of the 4i is unique and gives a feeling of quality/luxury:
As you see it has an AMT tweeter and woofer. I thought the bottom thing was some kind of port. Alas, it seems to just be a belly button.
The port runs into it so maybe it does something:
The binding posts are spring loaded and very difficult to terminate with bare wire. I guess it is designed to be flush mounted to the wall but then what happens to the port?
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% throughout the range.
Temperature was 60 degrees F. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
MartinLogan 4i Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Gosh, what were they thinking with that tilting up response? Sounding good in a showroom? But what showroom these days? Folks buy things online but maybe it impacts the first impression. Aside from that we also see a lot of little peaks that indicate resonances. You can see the source of some in the near-field response of the radiating elements:
That tall resonance peak from the port around 850 Hz is unfortunate. I also can't figure out why the port is tuned so low. Would it not be better to be tuned a bit higher so that it provides more support for upper frequencies that are sagging right now?
Early window response shows some additional issues:
Combined we are going to have a bass-shy, bright speaker:
Normally we like to see that arrow point down almost 10 dB. Here it is hardly doing so which means perceptual effect would be one of brightness.
The little woofer distorts a lot as well:
Directivity story is good though:
Here is our impedance:
Dips to below 3 ohm so better have a decent amplifier.
MartinLogan 4i Speaker Listening Tests
I always start with my female vocals. For all of two seconds the sound was OK and then became so jarring and sharp. High pitched as you can get. And not clean either. Switching to bass heavy tracks resulted in no reproduction of lower notes resulting the overall volume noticeably going down. Boosted the bass a bit with EQ which helped tonality but the terrible fidelity of the highs remained so I gave up.
Conclusions
Martin Logan marketing material talks a lot about them bringing down the sound of their electrostatic speakers to these boxed units. Well, if this is the sound of their electrostatic speakers, heaven help them all! The 4i is basically a pretty screech box. OK, I am being a bit harsh. But just a little. This is basically a "lifestyle" speaker designed to look good. The sound it produces if not that fit for consumption.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the MartinLogan 4i speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The design of the 4i is unique and gives a feeling of quality/luxury:
As you see it has an AMT tweeter and woofer. I thought the bottom thing was some kind of port. Alas, it seems to just be a belly button.
The port runs into it so maybe it does something:The binding posts are spring loaded and very difficult to terminate with bare wire. I guess it is designed to be flush mounted to the wall but then what happens to the port?
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% throughout the range.
Temperature was 60 degrees F. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
MartinLogan 4i Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Gosh, what were they thinking with that tilting up response? Sounding good in a showroom? But what showroom these days? Folks buy things online but maybe it impacts the first impression. Aside from that we also see a lot of little peaks that indicate resonances. You can see the source of some in the near-field response of the radiating elements:
That tall resonance peak from the port around 850 Hz is unfortunate. I also can't figure out why the port is tuned so low. Would it not be better to be tuned a bit higher so that it provides more support for upper frequencies that are sagging right now?
Early window response shows some additional issues:
Combined we are going to have a bass-shy, bright speaker:
Normally we like to see that arrow point down almost 10 dB. Here it is hardly doing so which means perceptual effect would be one of brightness.
The little woofer distorts a lot as well:
Directivity story is good though:
Here is our impedance:
Dips to below 3 ohm so better have a decent amplifier.
MartinLogan 4i Speaker Listening Tests
I always start with my female vocals. For all of two seconds the sound was OK and then became so jarring and sharp. High pitched as you can get. And not clean either. Switching to bass heavy tracks resulted in no reproduction of lower notes resulting the overall volume noticeably going down. Boosted the bass a bit with EQ which helped tonality but the terrible fidelity of the highs remained so I gave up.
Conclusions
Martin Logan marketing material talks a lot about them bringing down the sound of their electrostatic speakers to these boxed units. Well, if this is the sound of their electrostatic speakers, heaven help them all! The 4i is basically a pretty screech box. OK, I am being a bit harsh. But just a little. This is basically a "lifestyle" speaker designed to look good. The sound it produces if not that fit for consumption.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the MartinLogan 4i speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
