I’m curious about this. I’ve been a member of this forum for over ten years now. When I started, it seemed like there was so much interest in and enthusiasm for this brand. And this forum was filled with discussions about the speakers, the brand, and hifi in general. Nowadays, it doesn’t seem the same. There doesn’t seem to be all that much discussion of ML’s current products, particularly the high end ones, as there used to be. As has been noted in another thread, all of the forum moderators and many of the long term members don’t even own Logans anymore. Few member’s systems sport the newest high end Logan’s. And there doesn’t seem to be a plethora of new members joining after purchasing the higher end ESL speakers. It seems like we discuss politics much more than electrostatic speaker’s these days.
So is this a function of the declining brand appeal of ML, or just a natural decline in the popularity of this forum? I was struck by these thoughts recently reading the PS Audio forums and noting the amount of participation they have and the amount of daily discussions about their current products. I think that is partially facilitated by the participation in those forums by PS Audio employees, especially by the founder Paul McGowan and one of his lead engineers. It seems like a long time since anyone at ML participated in this forum.
Years ago, when ML made some major changes, fired some longtime employees, merged with Paradigm, moved production to Canada, made some questionable CEO hires, and moved into lower tier home theater and architectural type products, while jacking up the prices of their high end ESL’s, I was concerned that they were diluting their brand and would run it into the ground. I wonder if we are not now witnessing the effects of all that. I wonder whether they have priced themselves out of their traditional market for high end ESL speakers and can’t compete with the likes of Soundlab, Magnepan, and so many other “non-traditional” speaker companies.
My Summits are working just fine for me now, but if I were to replace them in the current time frame, I expect I would lean towards Soundlab over ML’s current offerings. For equivalent money, I think I would get a much better speaker. I would also consider Roger Sanders’ speakers, and a few others. The ML brand just doesn’t seem to hold the caché that it once did, especially for the prices they now charge.
I mean, the Ren. 15a is basically the modern equivalent to the old Prodigy, but at 2.5 times the cost of the Prodigy a mere 12 years ago. That’s a pretty big price jump in a short amount of time. Especially considering you can get the Maggie 20.7’s or the Soundlab Majestic 545 for under $14 grand. Or Sanders 10e for $17 grand. All of which are arguably as good or better than the 15a at $25 grand. We’ve had a decade of low inflation, and the move to Canada was supposed to have cut costs of production. Yet ML’s pricing has more than doubled for an equivalent level of speaker, while Magnepan, Soundlab, and others really haven’t risen that much.
I’m curious what everyone’s thoughts are on all of this.
