By Thomas J. Norton, Guide to Home Theater
May 2000

Lawrence, Kansas, about an hour's drive west of Kansas City, is an unlikely spot to start a loudspeaker company. But it's the home of Kansas University, and in 1979, former KU students Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland (now you know the origin of the MartinLogan name) teamed up to design and build electrostatic speakers.

The history of the electrostatic design concept up to that point had been spotty, but marked with flashes of brilliance: the Janszen tweeter, the original Quad ESL, the KLH 9, the Infinity Servo Static I, the Beveridge, and the Acoustats-all of them dazzling, high-end speakers that frequently outperformed the conventional designs of their day. But they were also invariably exotic, expensive, and were often trouble-prone. Nonetheless, Gayle and Ron, inspired by the promise of the technology, just knew that they could solve the problems and change the world (like young entrepreneurs everywhere)-or at least the world of the electrostatic speaker. Their first prototype blew up.

They stuck with it, ultimately devising an efficient way to produce consistent and reliable electrostatic panels. But it was a long haul, during which Ron Sutherland left to start his own audio electronics company, Sutherland Engineering. He still builds subsystems for ML. Gayle Sanders stayed on as president, however, and today MartinLogan is arguably the world's leading manufacturer of electrostatic speakers.

The sound was exceptional in all respects.
Aside from the obvious strengths of electrostatics in general, the system continued to play louder, without obvious distress,
than any electrostatic system in my experience"

But the main subject of this piece is not the history of the company, or even the nuts and bolts of building these devices but to have a look at a spectacular home theater that shows off the best of MartinLogan's current efforts.

That home theater is a featured attraction in Gayle Sanders' new home. The theater was envisioned from the start as a no-holds-barred installation. Built into a basement that opens to the outdoors at ground level (thanks to a steeply sloping lot), the open, 25x45x14-foot space includes not only the home theater, but a recreation area and an aviary. Fortunately, drapes can be drawn across the latter to muffle the chattering of Peaches and Roxanne, two very talented parrots who are the featured attractions in Sanders' bird collection.

But turning the unfinished basement into what you see in the photos was no simple task. Load-bearing walls had to be removed, and the resulting long, unsupported length of the space required the installation of a 45-foot, two-ton steel I-beam to support the house above. Decorator and designer Tracy Steams, who was primarily responsible for the room's final look and detailing, shored up the center of this beam with the decorative column visible in one of the photos.

No outside home-theater installer was involved in the system. Gayle Sanders himself assumed that chore, leaning on his industry contacts for advice. Key among these in the early stages-defining the optimum room shape and topology-were Art Noxon of ASC and Bruce Brisson of MIT. Later, Art Montes of Definitive Audio in Seattle came on board to help with the final system implementation.

The walls of the room consist of a double layer of Sheetrock separated by a layer of Decidamp, a damping material marketed by ASC. Resilient channels separate the walls themselves from the staggered studs. These two features help isolate the area from the room's heating and air-conditioning system. That system is separate from the system that serves the rest of the house, and is further isolated by absorptive lining in the air ducts.

The back of the room remains relatively live, acoustically. The front is more damped, but the front wall is still essentially reflective, to complement the speakers' dipole radiation pattern. The most interesting acoustic feature of the room is a "cloud" that hangs above the front speakers. This is a solid, curved structure with a minimum height of 10 feet, its concave shape acting as an effective diffuser. (At least, it seemed to be effective. The only way to tell for certain would be to rip it out and listen without it-a limitation of all such permanent acoustical treatments!)

At the heart of the sound system itself are the MartinLogan Statements-immense, $70,000/pair panel speakers that anchor the left and right front channels and are the company's most ambitious effort to date. The Statements are as physically imposing as they come: large electrostatic panels cover most of the audible range, eight dipole-configured 7-inch drivers per side handle the 50-200Hz range, and the separate sub-bass towers each have eight 12-inch drivers. The center-channel is MartinLogan's Logos. The side and rear surrounds are pairs of ML Stylos and Script speakers, respectively. (Since my visit, the Stylos speakers have been replaced by Scripts.) A pair of Krell FPB 600 power amps (600Wpc into 8 Ohm) drive the Statements. One of these stereo amps is used for each channel and operates in a bi-amp mode to drive the woofers and main towers, respectively (the crossover between the electrostatic panels and the mid driver arrays remains passive). The active crossover contains two-position equalization for the subwoofer. A 5-channel Sunfire Cinema Grand amplifier drives the center and surround channels.

"The bass, as heard on the Statement subs,
was truly frightening. I have never heard
another sub that could approach them."

On the video side, a Runco DTV-980 Ultra projector, driven by a new Faroudja DVP3000 video processor, fills a 100x54-inch Stewart Videomatte 200 Microperf screen. Originally, the center speaker was located behind the screen, firing through the latter's perforations. But Sanders didn't like what that did to the sound of the speaker- and who better to judge the result than the speaker's manufacturer? The center-channel was moved to below the screen.

The theater is not used just for entertainment, but is a required stop on regular training sessions for MartinLogan dealers in town for sales-training sessions. The large space at the back of the theater area serves to contain the crowds of salesfolk, many of whom have likely never heard a pair of Statements in a home-theater setting- or perhaps have never heard them at all. (Not all ML dealers are equipped to set up and demonstrate such a system.)

The first thing Sanders played for me was music, which amply demonstrated the capabilities of the Statements. They will play exceptionally loud-far louder, even in this very large room, than I or most listeners would ever want to listen-with unmistakable immediacy and presence. But they also have the spacious, detailed quality craved by lovers of electrostatics.

The sound was exceptional in all respects. Aside from the obvious strengths of electrostatics in general, the system continued to play louder, without obvious distress, than any electrostatic system in my experience. No polite, dynamically limited sound here. And while I felt that the smallish Logos center was perhaps a little overwhelmed by its hulking neighbors to the east and west, I have to admit that much of this impression was visual-the Statements simply dwarf the little Logos. I heard nothing obviously amiss in the blending of the left, center, and right signals-or in the rest of the system, for that matter.

But I was perhaps most strongly impressed by the subwoofers. Sixteen 12-inch drivers move a lot of air! Even Sanders was surprised by what he heard from Soldier, one of the DVDs I'd brought along. The bass from this disc, as heard on the Statement subs, was truly frightening. I have never heard another sub that could approach them. The large room certainly helped, providing plenty of room for the system to breathe. The more-rigid-than-usual walls also likely provided assistance in supporting the bass. While such rigid walls are often less than desirable-the slight flexure of regular Sheetrock provides some bass absorption, which can lessen the magnitude of standing waves -I can't argue with the result here. The only thing I neglected to do was get up and walk around the room to check for bass consistency-the bugaboo of most enclosed domestic spaces. But from where I sat, the bass was not boomy, just awesomely deep and powerful. Unfortunately for those who can't afford the entire Statement system, the subs are not available separately.

"From where I sat, the bass was not boomy,
just awesomely deep and powerful."

I also noted that, despite the huge bass pressures generated by the system, there were no obvious rattles in the room. While a sweep test (which we did not do) might have excited a buzz here or there, the bass-rich program material we listened to did not.

The system's video side, while not quite up to the state-of-the-art level of the sound, was still nothing to sneeze at. I saw no obvious problems with the perforated screen-a relatively high-gain (1.8) Stewart Videomatte 200. But the screen's perforations are largely unneeded with the center-channel mounted below it; while replacing it with a non-perf, lower-gain version might further improve the image, it might also have sonic consequences. A perforated screen allows at least some of the wall reflections generated by the rear of the front dipole speakers to pass through it (note that the screen is mounted well forward of the room's front wall); a solid screen would block some of these reflections, possibly degrading the sound.

Overall, this home theater was outstanding. But just as I was pondering how I might arrange to hang around for a few days to watch, oh, maybe 15 or 20 movies, the audition came to an abrupt halt. I was adjusting the volume with the touchscreen remote control when I accidentally pushed System Off. As I scrambled in vain to find some sort of Delete Command button, the audio and video shut down, the lights came up, the screen retracted, and the room drapes opened! Sanders admitted that the remote programming was still being refined. Even the most impressive system, it seems, can always be improved.

Gearguide
Speakers: MartinLogan Statement Evolution (2), MartinLogan Logos center speaker, MartinLogan Stylos surround (2), MartinLogan Script surround (2)

Power Amplifiers: Krell FBP 600 (2), Sunfire Cinema Grand

Processor: Theta Casablanca surround processor

Transports: Theta Voyager I.D/CD/DVD player, Faroudja DVD player, Basis turntable

Video: Runco 980 projector, Faroudja DVP 3000 scaler, Stewart Videomatte 200 Microperf screen (100"x54")

System controller: Lexicon 700T

Computer: Pentium II, 450MHz, 128MB RAM, SoundBlaster Live soundcard, Voodoo 3000 videocard, and Trailblazer wireless joystick.