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Re: 3.6 vs. ML Prodigy

Posted by Duke (D) on November 12, 2005 at 15:51:23

In Reply to: 3.6 vs. ML Prodigy posted by 3fd on November 12, 2005 at 04:54:46:

I've owned several Maggies including 3.6, and a Martin Logan or two(older models, not Prodigy), and I've owned several Quads. I now own (and sell) Sound Labs.

Obviously you have the Prodigy's working well in your room; room size/listening distance can be a significant issue with hybrid electrostats. The reason is, the SPL falls off more slowly with distance from the line-source-approximating panel than from the point-source-approximating woofer. I measured a hybrid in my room where the panel and woofer were perfectly matched at 9 feet, but the panel was 4 dB louder than the woofer back at 24 feet. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but there's a very wide range of subjective assessments of Martin Logans - some people say they have too much bass, some not enough, some just right. I think it's a room size/listening distance thing, much moreso than with other types of speakers.

On the other hand, Maggies will sound much closer to the same from one room to another (assuming lack of obvious room problems), because their radiation characteristics are pretty uniform up and down the spectrum. Now this is all just for background, and may be stuff you already know.

The Maggies will give you a wider sweet spot, the Martins better imaging within that sweet spot. The tonal balance from way off axis will be better with the Maggies. You will get some tonal balance shifts as you move side to side with the Maggies, due to their side-by-side driver placement. Within the 30 degree arc coverd by the panel of the Martins, the sound is quite uniform.

My critical listening has been done more with Sound Labs and Quads than with Martin Logans, but I'd have to say expect better inner detail and low-level resolution from the electrosts. The Maggies seem to need a bit more juice to "come to life", so if your listening habits include a lot of low-level listening then electrostats make more sense.

I really like the tonal balance of the Maggies. The 3.6 is very, very intelligently voiced in my opinion. The really deep bass is lacking, but Jim Winey uses a broad, shallow dip in the upper midrange/lower treble region (down a dB or two from 2 kHz to maybe 8 kHz) which psychoacoustically balances out the lack of deep bass and also makes the speaker more forgiving of poorly-recorded or somewhat harsh program material.

Speaking of bass, I think the cardioid-pattern woofer system of the Prodigy is very intelligent, and matches up very well with the dipole panels. Dipoles generally speaking won't give you the bass impact that a real good box woofer will.

The Maggies do suffer a bit from dynamic compression, and the tonal balance does change a little with sound pressure level, but that happens with many loudspeakers. Briefly, in the case of the 3.6 the ribbon tweeter is virtually free from power compression, but the midrange and woofer panels aren't. With most speakers, the tweeter compresses less than the woofer. I have not done enough in-depth listening to the Martin Logans to know if they have any similar issues, but if so they haven't stood out to me. The symptoms are the speaker sounds a bit dull at low volume levels, then sounds just right at medium or medium-high volume levels, then becomes overly bright at very high volume levels. Brightness at very high volume levels can be caused by other things as well (such as high-order harmonic distortion), so that in and of itself isn't a sure sign of dissimilar power compression characteristics.

Now of course it depends on what qualities you place the higher priority on, but it's possible that the Maggies would be more of a step sideways. The Prodigies are very nice speakers, and so are the Maggie 3.6, and it's a compliment to the Maggies that they are sonically competing with high quality products twice their price. Of course, they like most planars have a rather significant hidden amplifier cost!

Best of luck with your system,

Duke

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