$120,000 REVIEW 😳 MartinLogan Neolith

right guys so I got up something special I want to show you guys today you might have already seen it but this has been a long time coming from me since I've been on this YouTube Journey back in 2017. it's these guys here the Martin Logan neolith speakers I've actually owned the little baby versions The ESL XLS but this is gonna be a treat for me I'm gonna get a chance to actually listen to these but just to give us some more tech specs about them let's refer to Andrew he knows everything about them what do these go for they sell for what are they made out of why are they so big yeah uh you know some details this particular pair uh 120 000 a pair so the basically any color we can paint them in there's there's really no up charge until you go to like the really custom like I want the specific shade of of this random color but so you could get like a Ferrari red Bugatti black oh yeah yeah basically if a paint code exists yeah sure we can do that uh yeah yeah this is one of our standard uh uh colors the the deep sea blue which I think is really really cool looking but yeah uh we've done like like you said the the Ferrari red uh we've done one in uh Minnesota Vikings purple we've done you know any any color you can dream of you can match it to your Supercar if you like so yeah we can definitely do that uh but these are incredibly special speaker for us so we actually had a a speaker in the 90s called the statement E2 which was the largest panel that we had ever made well we wanted to make this this is actually now now the largest electrostatic panel that we've ever made it's a 48 inch tall by 22 inch wide ESL panel so the biggest electrostatic sweet spot that we could possibly make and besides the size of the panel we've also got a Ford firing 12-inch carbon fiber woofer and a rear firing 15 inch aluminum woofer so this is truly a full range experience but one of the really coolest pieces about this besides the just the impressive looks and the amazing sound the cabinet's actually made out of phenolic resin so it's an incredibly inert an incredibly dense material it's basically very similar to like what you'd find on a cue ball so very very heavy very very hard and we finished that in in any color you can you can conceive these are in our beautiful deep sea blue that you see here the other really cool thing about this speaker is we've designed it for the ultimate listening experience so behind the glass panel here you'll notice a series of controls that we've installed on here and this is a completely passive speaker so whatever amplification you like to use with accept of course it's by Amplified capable but these jumpers here adjust for a few different things so the top ones here adjust the output of the base drivers so you can see in this configuration here we can tune 8db negative 4 DB down so if there's too much bass for the room you have installed you can tone the woofer down or have it in the flat configuration and then this is actually a listening distance adjustment because the output of the panel is so big it actually will bounce off of the floor so usually an electrostatic speaker that's not the case but the size of this panel we can actually compensate for the floor mounts so here you'll notice on the distance adjustment you can dial in how far back you're sitting so in this case we have a choice of three meters four meters or five meters away and it will adjust the crossover for how far back you're sitting to optimize the output of the speaker so lots of customization any color you can dream of and just some of the best drivers in electrostatic panel that you could ever find so this looks this whole back portion does look like your balance force subwoofers it does look like that um that's pretty intentional uh we liked I thought it was a cool look but this is actually not a balanced woofer configuration each one is in their own sealed asymmetrical uh chamber so the front firing woofer is most of what you're going to hear and then the 15 on the back is just for that last few octaves for those lowest notes so they are are they are actually doing uh different things and let's talk about the size of the uh the panel yeah like why is it so large what's the benefit of having such a large panel so the the thing with electrostatic panels is the bigger you can make it the more output you can get one of the things with with these panels is control dispersion so they shoot sound in a 30 degree Arc so if I have a seven inch wide panel with a 30 degree Arc I have a much smaller Sweet Spot than I do with well now a 22 inch panel so uh being The Wider you can get the more you can cover but then you also start aren't getting more detail you start getting a much larger Sound Stage I mean when you hear these later yeah the Sound Stage is just absolutely enormous so this is almost 1100 square inches of radiating area so incredibly effortless sound an incredible detail but really it's about that that sound stage and that resolution is what the bigger panel gives you do you know what the frequency response of it is uh it's from I want to say 22 23 Hertz all the way up to you know beyond the range of human hearing yeah so you basically almost don't need a subwoofer yeah you pretty much don't uh in most in most rooms you wouldn't be able to hit below what this can already play on its own although if you really wanted to go over the top you could use some of our balance force woofers but most owners don't do that they just use what it comes with right right it's just a fantastic you do need to bring your own power though for that so yeah these These are actually running off of the haggle monoblocks here so do these come with wheels on the bottom of them or yeah so you'll notice uh you know it is a little strange to see speakers on Wheels that's because out of their crates they weigh almost 400 pounds so it's kind of hard to move without them inside the crate they weigh almost 700 pounds so these are actually on the casters just to make them easier to move but they actually do come with spikes to where you can really dig them in for maximum performance we just don't want to scratch up the floor today so so that's why they're still installed on the casters and I do know several owners that leave them on the wheels for for that reason because they like to play with stuff or or change their configuration and they're just really impossible to move without them installed all right so I got a chance well thank you for having me over here to listen to these great speakers uh I just want to give you some of my personal thoughts on them first of all I mean obviously they're they're fantastic looking they're beautiful looking and I would say that these obviously they share kind of like the same characteristics as the ASL XLS that I've had and also the 13 A's just in a much grander scale and they still have that that three-dimensional holographic kind of Illusion I know a lot of people talk about this with like some high-end speakers and all that like they say that your speakers disappear yeah yeah it's just kind of like a I don't know a little metaphor I guess but they really don't disappear but these actually sound like they actually do disappear because I think those uh electrostatic panels they're so lights they can move so quick that it's just it's how does that exactly work like it vibrates air so quickly that it's just uh yeah basically the panel film material that moves the air it weighs so little that it really doesn't color the sound in any way right it's really really hard to describe until you hear it yeah um it's there's just nothing else like it but we've always gravitated towards that thin film sound like obviously starting with electrostatic and then to a lesser extent the folded motion Tweeter but we've also found that the larger you go with it there's not a lot of drawbacks there's actually really no drawback even though the speaker is huge it's still just vanishes entirely um and I you know I'm obviously a little little biased on the way they sound but um just the resolution you get like the detail it can resolve and then the scale of the speaker like it's it's a huge speaker itself but the Sound Stage it can project is just incredible and that's that's one of the things about the speaker is like I don't believe that there's ever too much speaker for a room but this is definitely a speaker where the more room you can give it the more it can Shine for yeah for sure so you know back to the that Airy light detail that crispy High Sparkle that I've heard on other speakers like I don't aim any true no name for Cal you know those brilliant tweeters um they can kind of resolve that same amount of detail but at the same time if you're listening to if you're moving on to a different portion of a song it's like a symbol then say to like an electric guitar yeah whereas that beryllium Tweeter might resolve that airiness from a symbol once you hit that guitar it gets overbearingly loud and really grates on your ears whereas with an electrostat panel such as these guys they remain a very consistent tone all across the uh the upper range so it doesn't actually ever get harsh on your ears and you know when we're talking about that holographic transparency we were listening to the song uh Bird by domini fees May which is one of my reference CDs that I like listening to um just the the depth of the Sound Stage is so deep I mean this room isn't a gigantic room but it's it moves this I don't know what the what is what's going on in that sound but it's almost like like birds or something like that yeah that's kind of flapping in the background I don't think I've heard that in my in my my personal speakers I mean I've kind of heard it but it not to the effect where it's like I could hear the singer up front maybe the guitarist or whoever is there on the left side but then that that sound is coming behind it there's different layers to that background so I don't know what it is but it's so weird it kind of like travels from the left over towards the center of the room right and just it's really hard to explain but it's so light in area that it's just like it almost sounds like it's in the room with you it's just effortless right because if you think about a traditional Dome Tweeter like you know a one-inch Dome Tweeter well that's really like three quarters of a square inch that's 1100 right so there's just so much more material to resolve that detail so yeah it is completely effortless there's no coloration to it and it's just something you have to hear to experience uh I mean there's a reason that a lot of the really high-end microphones are electrostatic in nature right so it's like well if you're going to record on it then maybe you can play back with it and you absolutely can and it's just it's unreal there's a there's a cool look to it obviously the visual component's important because you know anybody that buys high-end audio that that says they don't care about the way it looks come on right like there's there's a cool component to that but yeah there's just an effortless detail high resolution and yeah the soundstage depth is just unreal yeah because because it can resolve all of that detail that's always been there it's just hey we can actually you can actually hear we actually play it in a way that you can hear without being overbearing it's a very very neutral is the best way to yeah describe it and then uh you know we're playing that song I think by collider yeah great song and uh yeah these are basically just like having balance for subwoofers just attached to you know the electric step panel these things can rock I mean they dig incredibly low I mean I can see why you wouldn't need to have a subwoofer with these guys right um but really if you want to take it to the next level I would say get a couple of 212s I mean sure more is always better right but it's just it's it's a very coherent sound yeah because it's it's kind of counter-intuitive okay you have this really super lightweight thin panel yeah and then it has a 15. it's like well when you have a really good one it doesn't color the sound either so and we're only asking those woofers to play a small portion of the sound we wanted the panel to play as much as we possibly could yeah like the vocals I mean it legit sounds like it's right here it's so crisp yeah and you know I like to hear when you know singers males are close to the mic or they're they're you know their lab or whatever um we can hear the the spit in their mouth yeah you start to hear things that maybe you didn't want to but but it was always there like I I can't remember the name of the song there's one where at the very beginning um she's in a recording booth and you can hear like some of the Machinery going yeah and that's one of the few speakers on Earth that you you go oh wow I had no idea that was there uh and it's just yeah it's just on I say magic a lot but there is a magic too yeah right like that's the reason why I that's right you know I was telling Andrew about this earlier like I wanted to have like a reference speaker and I wanted it to be like an electrostatic panel but there's since they're so effortlessly detailed I I just think it's kind of cheating if I'm gonna compare it to like a a dome tweet or a soft Dome Tweeter or whatever it is um I just feel like I would need to have like another Dome Tweeter to compare it to other speakers because they're very different yeah I just haven't heard any Tweeter to sound as good as an electrostatic speaker does I mean it's still one of my probably my most favorite speaker of all time was an electrostatic speaker and then underneath that is what you guys have heard me talk about my second favorite speaker but my number one would still be the more our Logans but uh yeah man if you guys have any time at all definitely come down to this place safe and sound in Chicopee Massachusetts one of the best showrooms I've ever been in I mean it's like an adult toy store they have everything and yeah I think you can count on maybe a couple hands uh how many places actually have these on demonstration and and it's certainly a cool experience yeah for sure and you know despite the room size here I would definitely recommend you getting having a larger space for these speakers because as big of a space as you can because they do need room to breathe I mean they sound fantastic in this room but I feel like they could sound a lot better so definitely get a big room for these guys definitely but anyways guys thanks for watching thanks for hanging out with us don't forget to like share and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video foreign

Channel: Shane Lee

Views: 18,118

Keywords: Home Theater, MartinLogan Foundation Motion Series Speakers, martinlogan motion xt review, martinlogan foundation speakers, martinlogan home theater, martinlogn f20 review, martinlogan neolith review, martin logan neolith review, martinlogan neolith speaker review, martinlogan speaker, speaker review, esl review, neolith speaker review

Id: XRpMEAd-aFc

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023