Marten Miles 5?

Jay

Jay

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New York, NY
I've never heard any of their speakers, but this model is interesting to me. Beautifully finished and very reasonably sized. The recent review of the Duke 2 is what piqued my interest.

Does anyone have experience with Marten's Heritage line? I would love to hear impressions.

marten duke 2

Marten - Heritage Miles 5

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No experience with Marten Heritage, but I do have friends that own Marten Coltrane and Marten Django XL. Never heard anything from Marten that didn't sound like music. Like most of the Ceramic Driver speakers, they have a sweet spot in terms of volume level. They are also Very revealing of the chain before them. I thought the Django XL (spent quite a bit a time with them) was a great bang for the buck. It can go head to head with speakers like Sashas without flinching at half the price. I would encourage you to pursue them if they interest you.
 
Did by chance anybody heard Miles 5 with ARC amplification. I have a good offer for those but no idea about the match (except my guts feeling - which is positive). I heard them at Marten show room and was quite impressed but they've been fed by SS amp. Trying to arrange at the moment with Swiss distributor who also handles ARC a demo session but first hand experience would mean a lot...

Thanks guys!

Cheers
 
Jay said:
I've never heard any of their speakers, but this model is interesting to me. Beautifully finished and very reasonably sized. The recent review of the Duke 2 is what piqued my interest.

Does anyone have experience with Marten's Heritage line? I would love to hear impressions.

marten duke 2

Marten - Heritage Miles 5

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I have owned the Duke 2 and continue to enjoy my Bird 2 (both are Heritage line).

Very nice speakers indeed - please feel welcome to PM me with any questions. Thanks


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gian60 said:
Hi my dear friend Andy,
Happy to see you next time
Gianluigi
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[emoji4][emoji106]

Next time I will give you more notice and we'll coordinate better. Always nice hearing from you and again congrats on that amazing hifi setup you have!!

Lastly thanks for turning me on to Fausto. Your vinyl sounds divine!



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Next time i will bring you to 2 my friend living 5 km from my home
one with Bergmann,Atlas,CH L1 CH P1 Viva mono Aurora Wilson Alexandria
other with Micro,Kondo IO limited Mark Levinson 31.5 30 32 33 and Wilson X1
and will have one good dinner together
 
Do the Miles 5 have the updated crossover design that was used in the Duke 2 (And similarly Bird 2)?
 
Today I was not lazy so I packed amp/preamp and my cables and went for the listening session to hear with my ears match of ARC with Miles 5 and with Focal Sopra 2 speakers. There is literally 0 info on the matching with those two particular models and as they are both potentially interesting i just had to do it.

First one we heard was Miles 5 and I just don't have anything negative to comment. Match is there - stage, presence, dynamics I mean just everything was beautiful. Even the guy in the shop was surprised...
Than we had Sopra 2 on stage...well here I also can't negatively comment anything - great sounding speaker with more "greasy" sound than Miles 5. Lower notes are a bit less defined and focused vs. Miles 5 while mids and highs are superb.

Overall I came out quite confused as I was very very close to pulling the trigger for Miles 5. Additionally coming home and hooking my setup with Ushers I'm actually even more unable to bring the decision as Ushers just sound great. I'm not sure if Miles 5 justifies the price gap vs. Usher...:weird::sigh:
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Very interesting comparison. I have only heard the Martens at trade shows, so I really can't tell anything definite. But they sounded good at the show.

The Focals in turn did not impress in show conditions. Might also be a question of preference, I personally prefer good definition to musicality.


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Kuoppis said:
Very interesting comparison. I have only heard the Martens at trade shows, so I really can't tell anything definite. But they sounded good at the show.

The Focals in turn did not impress in show conditions. Might also be a question of preference, I personally prefer good definition to musicality.


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+1 I agree here


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I'm glad you got a listen. I have heard Marten a few time as shows, they were not to my taste. I really like Naim and can't ever remember a bad listen, a couple of my favorite listens were with Totem and recently Proac. My first experience with Proac. Some of the other Focal series are a bit more lively than the Sopra, you might try another model if wanting something with more jump. ATC I think would be a good match. The new Dynaudio Contour models are impressing me as well.
 
@Golum

The Marten Heritage line is is the most refined and natural sounding I've heard to date, but system matching is key. The Accuton ceramic drivers are among the worlds best, and yet, can very easily be made to sound fatiguing with bad matching. It looks like you're running a digital front end, and I'm not familiar with your particular DAC. My experience with Marten Heritage speakers is limited to Duke 2 and Bird 2, and then, mostly analog front ends. My friend owns the EAR DACute DAC (in addition to top notch analog front ends) and listens through Marten Bird 2s with the diamond tweeters. At his house, while the DAC sounds nice (mostly due to its Wolfson chip and transformer coupled tube output stage), it doesn't compete with analog in terms of emotional engagement. Digital tends to sound more claustrophobic and less full bodied than analog on Martens, and I would not suggest making a speaker change unless you've auditioned them in home. Especially given the fact that you seem very happy with what you've got!!! Then again, I've had much the same observation regarding digital on most high fidelity systems, and don't want to start any religious wars. Just giving you my firsthand experience with Marten. ;-)
 
Thanks a lot for the reply and very insightful info to Bazelio & Peabody. I somehow don't want to sound or be misunderstood that there is no match with particularly Marten. There is a match and it sounded great indeed. My issue is that my current setup, read, LSs sound very very good but for the difference in €/$ I was expecting much bigger difference. I came home after audition, played same tracks, and I was like - what the hack this is on par with what I heard 30min ago...With all changes I made so far in the system I always had a significant step and with what I heard last week I'm sure this will not be the case. So seems like my quest is still on :-).
As Peabody mentioned I have for a while on my list to hear ProAc and ATC - somehow I have a good feeling regarding those two. Just today I realized that Avantgarde has the new "semi" active version of model Zero XD which came into picture. I heard those last year (active ones) and was really blown away.
Digital front end wise - DAC I'm using is from the small manufacturer based on the PCM1794 DAC with quite brutal I2S conversion part - dual mono output stage with JFETs and with this one I'm really happy.
 
@Golum your problem is a great one to have!!! Deciding between Usher diamond drivers and Marten Miles 5!! I haven't heard these Usher speakers myself, but after looking up information about them, I'd love to! It's very hard to advise for anyone in this situation since you have some boutique gear in your chain that most people won't be familiar with. If you are able to audition the Martens in home, that might be the only way. Your room acoustics vs the store room acoustics. This will make a difference. Also your streamer and DAC at home will make a difference. I prefer week long in-home auditions if possible, where you listen to your most familiar tracks with the Martens in place for a day or two and only then go back to your User speakers and re-listen to the same tracks. In this way you will get a feel for the broader picture of soundscape rather than trying to go back and forth zeroing in on little details.

Good luck!
 
Yes you are totally right regarding the Usher vs Miles 5 and their diamond tweeters. I sincerely believe these Ushers are kind of undervalued in our circles.
Home auditioning :huh: - huh it's kind of very difficult ball game here...I would say that dealers here are not that customer oriented as in US so they are not really willing to bring the stuff for auditioning - especially the big dealers.
 
Golum said:
Yes you are totally right regarding the Usher vs Miles 5 and their diamond tweeters. I sincerely believe these Ushers are kind of undervalued in our circles.
Home auditioning :huh: - huh it's kind of very difficult ball game here...I would say that dealers here are not that customer oriented as in US so they are not really willing to bring the stuff for auditioning - especially the big dealers.
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I can appreciate this but that's really so unfortunate. Too bad... it's a worthy exercise to go through if you'd only have the opportunity.


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Golum said:
Yes you are totally right regarding the Usher vs Miles 5 and their diamond tweeters. I sincerely believe these Ushers are kind of undervalued in our circles.
Home auditioning :huh: - huh it's kind of very difficult ball game here...I would say that dealers here are not that customer oriented as in US so they are not really willing to bring the stuff for auditioning - especially the big dealers.
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Long time ago I auditioned the Usher mini dancer 2 (before the diamond tweeters). It was one of the worst speakers I have ever listened to. together with the Tannoy DC8t. It could have been a mismatch somewhere in the audio chain. But to MY ears the Ushers were lacking in dynamics and low end power.
 
Mordante said:
Long time ago I auditioned the Usher mini dancer 2 (before the diamond tweeters). It was one of the worst speakers I have ever listened to. together with the Tannoy DC8t. It could have been a mismatch somewhere in the audio chain. But to MY ears the Ushers were lacking in dynamics and low end power.
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As you very much correctly said your ears - and I don't object. That's, I guess, a nice part of this sport - you like something and I like something else so there is a room for everybody from all different perspectives - sound wise, visually wise and at the end cost wise.
 
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