MARTIN LOGAN SUMMIT X LOUDSPEAKER REVIEW

Martin Logan’s top hybrid electrostatic, the Summit X, is a powerful technological statement.

Hi-Fi World - February 2014 issue

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Martin Logan’s top hybrid electrostatic, the Summit X, is a powerful technological statement, Noel Keywood finds.

Electrostatic loudspeakers have a clarity and a purity that is both obvious and stunning. They also have a gloriously large sound stage on which instruments and singers are placed with eerie precision. But on the negative side, they struggle to produce bass and struggle to remain unseen! And I’ve struggled to get them to work in my home for longer than I can remember. Martin Logan’s budget (£3.5k) Electromotion hybrid electrostatics work for me, however. So how would their top-of-the-range Summit X costing £15,000 perform I wondered? Yes, that’s expensive, but not as top quality loudspeakers go.
    And here we are talking quality with a large Q, as delivered by a very special see-through drive unit that uses a fine Mylar film – think Clingfilm – driven by electrostatic forces to move air. It looks magic – and its looks don’t deceive: it is magic.This is Martin Logan’s wonderful XStat panel, the electrostatic bit. Beneath it lies a compact bass cabinet in which, on the Summit X, are two bass units, one firing forward and one downward. Both are driven by on-board power amplifiers, in order to deliver powerful bass from a small box no wider than the panel above it. And that’s why the Summit X is defined as a ‘hybrid’ electrostatic; the electrostatic part covers most of the audio band, from the highest of highs down to the lower midband, below which the forward firing, internally powered bass driver takes over to handle all the lows, aided by a downward firing unit.
    

What you get with this premium model is Martin Logan’s largest and best XStat panel – quoted as 44in tall and 11.3in wide (Imperial units because Martin Logan are a U.S. company), or 111.8cms x 28.7cms.Full range electrostatics that produce all the audio band – including bass – from an electrostatic panel are necessarily wide and visually intrusive. See Martin Logan’s own CLX, Quad’s 2905 or Kingsound’s King III for examples. The narrow Summit XStat panel, however, visually better blends into a room, helped by its transparency – and this is the advantage of a hybrid: they are room friendly. Martin Logan say the panel works down to 270Hz, covering just a bit more of the lower midband than the Montis (340Hz) and our measurements confirm this.