Is the Martin Logan brand declining?

[jaffrie]

Hey Mark,
Are you flying Banshee ? Guess we're in the same boat. Audio & Rc helis.
Well I don't know about you guys, I've been through 3 sets of ML speakers
including a Vantage but sold all accept my Odyssey. Not sure about you
guys in the States but I'm not getting good service from ML. Only help
that I really got is from a nice gentleman Roberto whose in this forum.
So now I've resorted to diy repair & servicing. I also got great advice
& help from 2 nice gentleman from Diyaudio site.

Cheers

 

[RCHeliGuy]

Hey Mark,
Are you flying Banshee ? Guess we're in the same boat. Audio & Rc helis.
Well I don't know about you guys, I've been through 3 sets of ML speakers
including a Vantage but sold all accept my Odyssey. Not sure about you
guys in the States but I'm not getting good service from ML. Only help
that I really got is from a nice gentleman Roberto whose in this forum.
So now I've resorted to diy repair & servicing. I also got great advice
& help from 2 nice gentleman from Diyaudio site.

Cheers

I had a Banshee for about 18 months. It's the only heli I ever sold and got every last penny of my money back.
It was a very nice heli, but not very easy to work on. Getting the half shafts out was a royal PITA.

Currently I have a TDR, TDR II (set up for speed), Protos Max, Logo 550SX and Protos 500. My TDR is on the bench. It went about 3.5 years without a crash. Oh well.

 

[roberto]

Hey Mark,
Are you flying Banshee ? Guess we're in the same boat. Audio & Rc helis.
Well I don't know about you guys, I've been through 3 sets of ML speakers
including a Vantage but sold all accept my Odyssey. Not sure about you
guys in the States but I'm not getting good service from ML. Only help
that I really got is from a nice gentleman Roberto whose in this forum.
So now I've resorted to diy repair & servicing. I also got great advice
& help from 2 nice gentleman from Diyaudio site.

Cheers

Thanks for your kind words Jaffrie...but I do believe, you just had bad luck. I think that ML service is a top match!
I wish to all of you, a very happy listening!

 

[jaffrie]

Your most welcome Roberto besides what I said of you
is totally true and thanks you kindly again

Cheers

 

[jaffrie]

Hi Mark
Nice to know. Well Im a Sab Goblin guy, got a fleet of it.
3 770s, a500, a 630 & a recently demised 380. lol
Still have my good old compass Atom 500 & T Rex 550
which Im no longer flying. What’s scary is suddenly I’ve
got so many lipos which is kind of a concern to me now. lol

 

[RCHeliGuy]

It appears that HiFi in general continues to slump as an entire market year over year, but they are not alone.

Electric guitar sales have dropped from 1.5M per year a decade ago to about 1M per year.
Piano sales are way down. The market is dying.
Jewelry sales are down. In fact LOTS of things that are discretionary income luxury items are WAY down.

We have a generation who really don't care about cars or many other things that used to be important to us.

Some things like boat sales pretty well tracked the economy and dropped way off from 2006-2012 and have been rebounding since then.

So some luxury items are truly just bound to the economy and others are falling by the wayside regardless of how the economy is going.

BTW RC Heli's were on fire and peaked around 2013/2014 and have been spiraling down since then. There has also been a drop off in RC airplanes which has always been a large market. Drones are selling like hotcakes, but their owners are not joining RC clubs and airfields or becoming part of "the hobby". This is a change in priorities not the economy.

I think that some of us cling to the idea that the things "we" happen to find important will become more important again, but I believe that is mostly wishful thinking.

I was into slalom skiing when it peaked and there are lots of companies building slalom boats before wakeboarding took over and a closed bow slalom ski boat because a special order item from only a 2-3 manufacturers.

I was into racquetball when my local Court South had 10 racquetball courts. It now has 2.

I own a car that I really like that was not only discontinued, but it's competition from a couple other manufacturers were also discontinued.

Times change!

 

[adeep42]

Marc, Well said!

 

[Timobi]

I love Apple products but the iPod crowd helped kill audio Well 2 channel as you know certainly has made a big comeback but truth is it can be expensive and not many dealers stock stuff to truly demo. Long gone are the days where you had your neighborhood dealer with about 10 rooms of gear.

I just purchased a pair of CLX Art speakers from Shawn at DaVinci Media. Not that old at 54 but all my friends use their phone for audio.

 

[RCHeliGuy]

I don't think the iPod and Apple Store had anything to do with killing audio.

If anything I think they allow for a much better experience while walking/jogging or in your car.

By the same token having music servers actually allows people to play any resolution and quality recording that they want while eliminating lots of complexity.

I'm completely freed from all media and have everything at my finger tips. In addition if I just want music streaming in the background that is definitely higher quality than background radio stations. So on the whole the source material up to the DAC is a LOT better for everyone now.

Personally I think it may have to do more with people being much more interested in very large TV's and then moving towards soundbars, and surround systems. Suddenly it was more important to have lots of little speakers and a special effects subwoofer than two large speakers.

Then again on the whole cars have MUCH better stock stereos in them that have been tailored for the car.

 

[JonFo]

^^^ Mark, well stated.

I see the niche for large-speaker audio remaining, even if smaller than in the past. I believe ML ESLs will continue to sell, as they are unique in both looks and performance. The carnage will be in all those boutique 'box with dynamic drivers' that all seem to run together.

But I do see competition in the form of smaller, but much more integrated systems consisting of active bookshelf sized speakers plus a pair or quartet of subwoofers which are driven by a 'smart' interface that integrates them into the room. That can potentially out-perform some high-priced 2Ch box speaker + Integrated 'audiophile' amp.

Look no further then the amazing audio tricks the new Apple HomePod pulls off to deliver some impressive audio from a single speaker. Self-adaptive room correction and all kinds of other real-time feedback adjustments will make smaller setups deliver results that can outdo much larger traditional speaker setups.

 

[amey01]

even if smaller than in the past. I believe ML ESLs will continue to sell, as they are unique in both looks and performance. The carnage will be in all those boutique 'box with dynamic drivers' that all seem to run together.

I've been hearing about this since 1992 (which is when I started reading about audio).

I'm yet to see anything other than a growing and expanding industry. We are very lucky to have such a thriving and diverse hobby.

If you have an interest in most *any* other hobby [insert hobby here - whether it be cars, RC helis, shooting, sport....whatever it might be], do you have the benefit of 500+ speaker manufacturers and 500++ electronics manufacturers, each researching, competing and offering something different.............

And pertinent to our other thread......lately......probably nigh on (or well over) 100 manufacturers of different damned power cables from which to choose!!

I challenge you to think of *any* hobby that has the diversity and thriving community of which we have the benefit........just one.

deliver results that can outdo much larger traditional speaker setups.

Maybe in the future, yes. But I really can't see the day where a serious buyer of an EMM DAC, an ARC amplifier and a pair of Dynaudio Consequence will think to themselves "what the heck, an Apple Homepod will do". Really?

They are two different markets. They will probably take a lot of the market from Bose however.

Appropriately, that other company which audiophiles love to bash; but which has absolutely no inclination to compete in the audiophile market - active or implied.

 

[RCHeliGuy]

I've been hearing about this since 1992 (which is when I started reading about audio).

I'm yet to see anything other than a growing and expanding industry. We are very lucky to have such a thriving and diverse hobby.

You can pretty much get anything you could possibly want.

There is a difference between the growing trend of brick and mortar establishments closing and an industry dying.

Having all the local HiFi centers close down does not mean that you can not get anything you want on the Internet.


That said, when I was in college it was pretty much true that a pretty large percentage of the guys I knew wanted to have a nice stereo and it was even a priority. I had an aftermarket upgraded car stereo with a big amp sitting under my car seat and had a Dual turntable, Onkyo integrated amp, Nakamichi tape deck and Boston Acoustics speakers. I knew a bunch of kids with decent stereos in their dorm rooms.

However I don't see that anymore at all. Neither of my children has a stereo or cares about having one. They both wanted to hear how my stereo sounded exactly ONCE, and they've never asked to hear it again.

They care more about having an X-Box One, PS4 VR, or Nintendo Switch. They care about computers, smart phones etc...

 

[amey01]

There is a difference between the growing trend of brick and mortar establishments closing and an industry dying.

Having all the local HiFi centers close down does not mean that you can not get anything you want on the Internet.

Yep, retail is dying. It's happening the world over. That is a different matter.

 

[JonFo]

...
Maybe in the future, yes. But I really can't see the day where a serious buyer of an EMM DAC, an ARC amplifier and a pair of Dynaudio Consequence will think to themselves "what the heck, an Apple Homepod will do". Really?
...

Of course not, that's not what I meant. The point is that the type of tech used in the HomePod to perform self-adaptation to the environment will migrate to the 'high-end'. We already see that in products like the BeoLab 90 that are vertically integrated and dynamically adapt to their room.

A simpler initial step for ML might be something like this:

Anchored by a System Controller box, a family of active speakers and subwoofers with a digital link (e.g. Meridian Speakerlink) that link back to the controller. The controller performs all crossover duties for all speakers as well as per speaker and global room correction. If using more than one sub (highly recommended), it performs an automatic MutiSub Optimization and applies it prior to the global room correction.

So models like the new Mastepiece Series would have a version with no on-board DSP or passive crossover at all, just amps for the woofers and panel and a SpeakerLink back to the Controller. Same for the PB210 and PB212, no on-board DSP, just amps and Speakerlink.

A customer could drop a pair of Expressions and 2 PB212's into a room, and the App for the System controller would guide them in optimizing physical locations based on real-time analysis of in-room performance. Then it would use that detailed info about locations as well as results from ARC runs to perform the multi-layered optimizations.
That would deliver in-room performance an order of magnitude better than the random process used by most owners today.

The System controller could be either expandable or by default a 5.1/7.1 config for use in HT's as well. Maybe even support USB input and one could have a nice 2Ch system with no need for a pre-amp.

We all know the speaker to room interface is one of the most critical to get right for best results, and yet the one rarely addressed well. The slow evolution towards use of PBK in the new series indicates it's going in this direction, just not fast enough for me ;-)

 

[RCHeliGuy]

I like that idea. Encode an expert speaker placement system on a chip.

Maybe use Augmented Reality glasses that show you where to move a speaker relative to a "sweet spot" where a microphone is located and then adjust toe in and tilt.

Ideally it would allow you to optimize for frequency response and phase and if the two are in contradiction create an optimized equalization curve for each channel where the phase information is the most exact.

That should create the optimum stereo imaging.

 

[twich54]

along similar lines ..............

https://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/loudspeakers.html

 

[timm]

I like that idea. Encode an expert speaker placement system on a chip.

Maybe use Augmented Reality glasses that show you where to move a speaker relative to a "sweet spot" where a microphone is located and then adjust toe in and tilt.

Ideally it would allow you to optimize for frequency response and phase and if the two are in contradiction create an optimized equalization curve for each channel where the phase information is the most exact.

That should create the optimum stereo imaging.

It'd be perfect if I could only get that clock on the vcr to stop blinking 12:00.