MartinLogan’s newest loudspeakers have us questioning the old adage about getting what you pay for

The sad fact of the matter is that most readers of Home Entertainment will take one look at the prices of MartinLogan’s new Motion Series loudspeakers and never even consider auditioning them. That’s a curious thing to say, perhaps, in a publication that has reviewed and enthusiastically endorsed speaker systems with stickers comparable to a Porsche 911 Carrera 4, but without the installment plans or leasing options.

The Motion Series suffers from exactly the opposite problem. In an industry (like most) where price is so often conflated with prestige (not to mention performance), what are we to make of a full 5.1 system at the top of its line that costs barely more than two months’ lease on said Carrera 4—especially when it comes from MartinLogan, a company that has produced its share of Porsche-priced loudspeakers in the past?

Of course, the first thing that pops into most minds at the mention of MartinLogan isn’t their pricing, but their technology and singular aesthetic flair. The company’s name is very nearly synonymous with hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers (like the Purity pair I reviewed exclusively for our website in February; see tinyurl.com/mlpurity). But electrostatics are, by the nature of their design, large (given that their diaphragms only move miniscule distances between thin metal screens, they have to have quite a bit of surface area to generate much volume and frequency range), complicated (see above, re: large diaphragms with tiny tolerances), and hence expensive to manufacture.

To move into the market with a smaller, less expensive speaker, MartinLogan had to look to other technologies. In the case of the Motion series, that technology comes in the form of a Folded Motion tweeter similar to that of Sunfire’s Cinema Ribbon speakers. (What? You didn’t expect the same company that offers the beautiful but Brobdingnagian CLX full range electrostatic speaker in shocking Aniline Red to release a traditional woofer/tweeter combo, did you?)  Put simply, each Folded Motion driver starts life as a larger rectangular element with eight times the surface area of a typical 1-inch dome tweeter. It’s then corrugated into an accordion shape, and instead of pushing and pulling air the traditional way, it squeezes the air between its folds to generate sound waves.

Why? Really, you’d have to hear one of these little beauties to understand just how different it sounds from a traditional loudspeaker. Even in plain old two-channel stereo mode, the pair of Motion 12 towers at the heart of my review system exhibit a rich dimensionality that is, quite frankly, eerily verisimilitudinous. The plucked and bowed violins in the intro for Andrew Bird’s “Effigy,” from Noble Beast, seem to flow into the room and ebb back behind the soundstage in a way that other speakers wish they could pull off. The sonic image from each speaker pushes and kneads into the other while remaining wholly distinct. And as the ethereal violins of the song give way to very dry, forward-mixed acoustic guitar, it’s not as if only the timbre changes—the speakers themselves seem to morph into something utterly different, in size, shape, and placement.

Truth be told, on their own the Motion 12s are right on the cusp of being too small for my 19-by-17-foot media room (which opens into the kitchen). At respectable listening levels, they more than hold their own—and they sound fantastic with everything from ABBA to Zappa—but really cranking the sound to neighbor-aggravating volumes pushes them just a hair past their comfort level. Add in a pair of surround channels in the form of Motion 4s (the larger of the line’s two bookshelf speakers), a Motion 8 center channel betwixt the 12s, and a subwoofer (for this system, the company’s Dynamo 1000 12-inch sub and wireless receiver), though, and the Motion system is more than capable of filling said media room to the brim with sound. And I do mean filling. The jaw-dropping imaging and startling depth that spring from the Motion 12s in stereo mode translate into an absolutely awe-inspiring surround sound field.

Forget walls of sound—this system drops aural bombs and simultaneously blows bubbles of audio that float through the air and pass one another inside your head. The gap between the front and surround soundstages virtually disappears. The Motion 4s at the rear of the room seem capable of tiptoeing up and whispering in my ear or running to the end of the block and letting out a bellow. The jungles in Avatar take on a whole new life through the Motion Series system: you don’t just hear the flora and fauna surrounding you; you feel like you’re tangibly in their midst. Fifteen minutes of playing the old west action game Red Dead Redemption—the cicadas chirping around you, the trains in the distance really sounding like they’re in the distance—and you swear you can feel dust in your lungs.

My only complaint with the system at first was that the largest available center channel, the Motion 8, desperately needed more mass to compete with the Motion 12s in my upper-midsized media room. There’s just a bit of resonance in the Motion 8 at higher volumes that slightly deteriorates the sound quality, although a bit of thick felt cloth under the speaker to isolate it from my TV stand helped immensely.

As I was wrapping up work on the review, though, MartLogan sent me a pre-production sample of its upcoming Motion C (set to officially debut at this year's CEDIA Expo). The C is an upgraded version of the Motion 8 that doesn’t look or feel that much more massive (it’s a few inches wider and a little over 10 percent heavier), but features a much more inert cabinet (and over twice the power handling capability, incidentally).

The difference in sound quality is significant, though—far more than the $150 difference in price would indicate. The sound is more robust, but more importantly dialogue clarity is noticeably improved. And the new angled shape of the cabinet makes a lot more sense when you consider that the vast majority of these speakers will probably be placed on furniture beneath a TV, and therefore need a bit of pointing up into the room. (If not, wall-mounting the Motion C is as ridiculously easy as it is with the rest of the series; wall-mounts are even included in the box.)

If you’re considering a Motion system and debating the upgrade from Motion 8 to Motion C, stop debating. Drop the extra Franklin-and-a-half and pat yourself on the back for getting an amazing deal. 

Quite frankly, though, if the rest of the system didn’t perform so startlingly well, I doubt I would have been nearly as hard on the Motion 8 as I was. The Motion Series speakers would be a value at two or three times their price. At less than $3400 for a full top-of-the-line 5.1 system, they’re a downright steal.

But don’t let that keep you from giving them a serious listen.

Price
Motion 12 Floorstanding Loudspeakers: $1499.95/pair
Motion 8 Compact Center Channel: $399.95 each
Motion 4 Compact Bookshelf Loudspeakers: $249.95 each
Dynamo 1000 Subwoofer: $995

Contact
785.749.0133, martinlogan.com