[SteveFord]

Gary,
That is one hell of a system - would you mind telling us more about it?

[GaryArthur]

Steve,

Thanks for asking. If you don't mind I'll turn this into several posts and do my best not to bore you.



Overall this is a 7.1 audio/theater system that I use primarily for music and an occasional movie. The front mains are Martin Logan CLX Anniversary editions. I love these speakers but they do have some special space and accoustical requirements for them to sing to the best of their ability. I have the mains 66 inches off the front wall, 18 inches off the right wall (a little tight) and the full room is 43 feet long.  The center is an array of 4 Martin logan theaters. I'll give a little more information on the center in a separate post.  Also up front we have two original ML Descent subs and a 108" Stewart screen.   

[sleepysurf]

Holy moly!  You really ought to post this on the Martin Logan Owners forum too!

[GaryArthur]

Holy moly!  You really ought to post this on the Martin Logan Owners forum too!

Probably will in the not too distant future. I do post there from time to time.

[GaryArthur]

Staying with the speakers but moving to the rears we have the two ML Prodigy's that I purchased 10 years ago and two Velodyne DD18's:



The Prodigy's were my first ML's and I still believe they were one of ML's best. Here again like the CLX's, the Prodigy's need a large room to be at their best. I have had the Velodyne's for 6 or 7 years. For music I have them dialed way back (about 8 out of 99 on volume) and tightened up. Under these conditions they are not overpowering and are surprisingly musical for such a large sub. But for action movies I open them up and let the thunder roll. Not shown is a pair or Pioneer S-IC891 Reference standard in ceiling CST speakers.

[GaryArthur]

This is and old picture of some of the electronics and it was taken before I had everything finished.



Meridian 861 v6 controller with the HD621 for HDMI.

Bryston 28B-SST^2's for the CLX's. Steve's avatar says "A wimpy amp will kill all joy quickly". At 1300 watts at clipping these beasts bring every corpuscle on the CLX's joyfully alive.

Bryston 14B-SST for the Prodigy's.

Bryston 4B-SST and 6B-SST for the center.

Bryston 4B-SST^2 for the sides.

Oppo BDP-93, Meridian G98DH for spinning discs

DBX Driverack 260 loudspeaker management system and two DBX 2231 graphic equalizers for the center array.



 

[GaryArthur]

I designed and manufactured the stand for the 4-Theater array. If your interested I posted a short set of pictures and an explanation on the Bryston circle earlier this year:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=73275.920

[GaryArthur]

I personally don't believe Martin Logan makes a center channel that has enough gravitas to truly work well with the CLX's. Last year I contacted Paul Grove (sales director at Martin Logan) and Peter Soderberg.  We discussed making a custom CLX center by slicing and dicing a CLX panel or two. I can't go much over 50 inches high and a drop-down screen won't work for me. The ML crew spent some time looking at my concept but we all agreed that the results would be problematic. Paul and Peter suggested that I work at refining the theater array that I had put together a few years back for the Prodigy's. I wasn't sure that I could get the theaters to match up with the CLX's since the Theaters have a considerably "darker" sound. So in my design I made sure I could restore the Theaters to their original state for resale. As it turned out I need not have been concerned.

Originally I thought I would use 5 theaters and I may add the fifth one later since the electronics are all in place. I used the 3 dbx products mentioned earlier plus a Dayton Audio OmniMic spectrum analyzer to measure the speakers response and dial them in. From the earlier picture you can see that I used the tweeter on only one of the Theater's and I gave it an extra 7 dB. I may post the measurements and some additional details at a later date but for now just let me say I am very happy with the results.

For the record I used some of the information posted by Jonathan Foulkes, JonFo on the Martin Logan Owners site, and I thank him for his detailed posts.

Regards,
Gary


 

[SteveFord]

No, not bored, you're going to make me late for work!
The word for that system is "inspirational".
What are you using in the way of speaker cables and interconnects? 

[Jeff_Z]

..........and I thought my ML system for home theater was over kill.  I stand corrected and in awe.

I have CLS iiZ's for the fronts, one Theater i for the center, one Depth for the sub and Sequel ii's for the rear.

As Steve said a truly inspiration home theater.

BTW  In all the years I have had my system, I have only replaced the panels in my CLS's and replaced the two sided tape which holds the panels in my Sequels  ii's.  Other than that it has been happy listening.

Jeff

[SteveFord]

I will have a set of CLS IIZ's before I croak (if I have any say in the matter).
They keep popping up on Audiogon but always too far away from Happy Valley here.
I asked about the interconnects and cables as I take it they're as sensitive as the Magnepans are? 

[JP78]

I had CLS IIz for about two years. It's love'em or hate them...I hated them, then got a pair of sealed Adire Audio Rava subs (I miss Adire) and then I loved them; though I did let the CLS IIz run full range so there was an SPL limitation.

I think it's one of those speakers that has to be experienced once by all audiophiles as it sets a benchmark in a couple performance parameters.

I also had a pair of Dynauio mini-monitors at the time and it was odd to see such a little pair of speakers have so much more bass than the CLS panels.

Best,

[Wayner]

I've had my reQuest speakers since 1999. There are no issues at all. One word of caution would be to keep them (and all electronics) out of direct sunlight. Not sure what that would do to the electrostatic panel over the years, but it can sure fade colors, etc.

Wayner

[thunderbrick]

Bought a used set of Quests about 15 years ago to replace my stacked DQ-10s, and in my room the MLs sounded gawd-awful!  I dare not let my (then) wife know that my "last" speakers were grating on my nerves, but that was also before I knew anything about room placement.  I did get used to them but borrowed an amp that sent some sort of spike into them and wrecked them both.

Thinking it might be the power/crossover boards I hauled them 4 hours to the ML factory in Lawrence, KS for testing.  Those wonderful folks not only  dropped everything they were doing, but gave me a full facility tour before bench testing my circuit boards.  They told me the 'stats were fried, gave me a great deal on a new set of panels, taught me how to install them, and sent me on my way.  In less than an hour I had them back up and running at home, and kept them for a few more years.

The way they treated me you'd have thought I owned a huge CLX home theater set.  Couldn't be happier!

I worry less about what can go wrong than how the manufacturer will handle things when the DO go wrong.  Top tier all the way!

Side note:  My lovely (new) wife just walked in with ANOTHER damned artificial Christmas tree!  The friggin' DECORATING has begun!

So much for listening to tunes today...........

[Jeff_Z]

I will have a set of CLS IIZ's before I croak (if I have any say in the matter).
They keep popping up on Audiogon but always too far away from Happy Valley here.
I asked about the interconnects and cables as I take it they're as sensitive as the Magnepans are?

Steve,
 I would say although no specific cables are required, the better cable will be a nice improvement.  This does get in to an area of long winded arguments on which cable is better.  I would say a good quality cable is preferred.  I have used several and when "I have moved up the chain" there has been improvements.  Some of them were definitely noticeable and others were subtle or gave a better "clarity" within some frequency ranges.  How bout that for dancing around the issue.    If you want to dicuss it in detail we can do by email or phone.  I do want to avoid a flame war.

Jeff

[Wayner]

OK. Here is my little secret. The MLs should be plugged into the same power strip (or power center) as the amp. This seems to clear things up more then speaker cables.

Wayner