Marten Getz
This is not a standard butter&bred review.
I've heard Marten Getz loudspeaker here and there, but never have had a chance to focus on them peacefully, and lend my ear to them as comprehensively as I would've liked to. Or as profundly as I once listened and evaluated Marten Birds. This time was no exception but at least I was given an opportunity to sit alone with the Getz for a longer period of time.
The Marten Getz is the least expensive model of the Marten Heritage series. It's a 3-way design featuring a 9" woofer , a 7" midranger, and a 1" tweeter. But its bass is not reflex loaded. Instead, Marten has added to the Getz a newly-developed, custom-made, 9" aluminium passive radiator just below the woofer on the front baffle, the aim being "a more even, controlled and full-bodied bass performance".
Otherwise the Getz sports similar ceramic drivers, including the tweeter, as the Bird does (diamond tweeter is optional), or rather drivers with hard ceramic membranes producing that distortion-free, open, detailed and transparent sound that give many Marten loudspeakers their typical sonic label.
The midrange driver is said to have resonance damping and laser-drilled holes in the ceramic cone. This simplifies the crossover and is assumed to provide even lower distortion in the crucial midrange. The crossover carries high-quality components including copper-foil coils and silver-in-oil capacitors. The crossover is of second order, and the XO-frequencies 400 and 2900 Hz.
Made of specially-selected 23mm veneered MDF, the Getz cabinet has non-parallel walls and heavy bracing to kill resonances. Measuring 1160 mm tall, the speaker looks good and cool sumptuous /ei mitätön too, as do other Marten speakers. The Getz is available in an exclusive piano lacquer finish, in walnut, cherry, maple, or black. Finishing is excellent.
As to the remaining specs, impedance is 6 Ohms (4.0 Ohm min), frequency range 30-40000 Hz (+-3dB), sensitivity 87 dB / 2.83V. Terminals are WTBs, internal wiring by Jorma Design, and the steel stands sit on Clearlight Audio cones. The net weight is 35 Kg each.
The amplifier I was using was the ASR Emitter II together with a battery powered PS: a powerful enough combo for the Getz and not a bad match in other respects either. The source was McIntosh MCD301, and the cables by Cardas. Marten says that thanks to the front-firing passive radiator the Getz can be placed near the back wall, if necessary. However, I preferred to have them dragged away circa one metre from the wall behind them.
The Sound?
Absolutely on the side of correct. Saxophones for example sounded nice and believable, and first and foremost in that tonally rich way they should, without ear piercing listening fatique or compression. I also liked the sound of the cello on my own test-CD despite the slight bass boost that gave the cello too much volume. The more I fed the system with bass rich music, the clearer it became that the upper bass - lower mids area wasn't as clear cut and dry as it could have been. But I wasn't sure to what extent the Getz is to be blamed: when I moved away from the listening chair, the nature of the bass changed towards cleaner determination. The fact that the mid bass wasn't similarly emphasized also speaks for some room interfearances.
Be as it may, I got a feeling that the Getz, as in fact the Bird, needs careful placing in order to avoid bass abundancy and deliver its best in the bass region (eg. to avoid situations where the bass played with a bow resonates but pizzicatos are clean, or where instruments sound pure over the top registre but are colored at the low end). But once eveything is taken care of, the bass of the Getz - and the Bird - can be truly wonderful, full-fledged and mature and controlled.
There was loads of enlightening air in the midrange leading to a liberated and lively reproduction of many type of music. I found this feature to be a very important for how this speaker sounds. It's where it excels. It breaths with music, and that's essential.
Of the other instruments, the piano tone was generally good, occasionally a bit tough on top and rounded over the two lowest octaves, but dynamically convincing and echoes of the piano body and the recording room well repeated. Timing was great. And again, the feeling of the sound was good. Guitar sounds were mostly correct from bottom to top, metal strings having excellent timbres and purity. Vocal music came out well as well, smooth, balanced, vibrative.
Violin sonatas were some sort of bravures with the Getz exemplifying dry, well defined and seamless midrange to HF region. The violin sound was both delicate and informative. The more colorless the violin sound, the more significance the musical message has (on some samples the lower end was a bit colored). The Getz also held this type of music well together, unbroken, non-discrete. In another sample, the ratio between the cembalo and the accompanying orchestra was from the text book.
Another great example of music that suits the Getz wonderfully was the music of the Magnificent Seven, a 1960 western film on a group of gunmen protecting a Mexcian village (a resetting of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai). The bass part was too warm but otherwise the sound was hugely emotional!
The soundstage that the Getz created wasn't deep, deep, deep, and yet reverberations on the recordings were clearly audible. Also, the Getz placed some sound sources such as some vocalists quite high up in the soundstage. I liked that, as I like other speakers that do the same.
All in all, the sound of the Getz definitely had a touch of quality in it. It doesn't sound as universal and self-sufficient as the Bird did, and I don't mean only the bass extension. There's difference in price (16400e against 24900e), and there's a difference in the performance level, and that's how it should be. But the Getz doesn't sound just like a downgraded Bird; it has its own voice and its own good reasons for sounding like it does. And its own musical story to tell.