Neil Gader has posted a review of the Marten Heritage Getz loudspeakers ($20,000/pair) at AVGuide. Some of his observations:
The overall character of the Getz is a cooler and drier one, somewhat consistent with my experience with ceramic drivers. Consistent, too, is the speaker’s speed, detail, and coherence. It doesn’t reveal any spurious box resonances. Tonally the presence range emerges with just a shade of added forwardness which lightly outlines the edges of images, violin for example. With drivers of lesser quality this might have been more of an issue, but the Getz inverted tweeter never sacrifices its intrinsic sweetness and bloom for “manufactured” details.
There is to my ear a narrow dip in upper-bass energy that enables the vivid midrange and treble octaves to come forward a step—a choice that sharpens articulation. Speaker placement—a little more backwall reinforcement, in particular—does ameliorate some of this effect (as it did in my room), but with a baritone vocalist like Sinatra singing “Angel Eyes” from Only The Lonely, there’s a little less weight and chest resonance on each note. On orchestral recordings, the slight attenuation of dynamic thrust in the “power” range validates my view that Marten sought this specific voicing—not an unflattering one, but one more weighted towards finesse and midrange fluency.
In overall bass response, the Marten performed vigorously in my room down to a rock-stable 40Hz with plenty of useable energy below that. The speaker was also striking for its consistent sense of pace and coherence as the music dropped into the bass region. When I listened to “1A” performed by the trio of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and fiddle player Mark O’Connor, there was no driver discontinuity or isolation—an anomaly that’s easy to hear with this disc. Speaking of which, the musicianship on this CD is a kaleidoscope of soaring high-speed maneuvers and bravura techniques, like a musical relay race with the baton getting passed every so often. What is especially instructive to listen for are the timbral and resonant differences that occur as the players play solo and together. On this track Edgar Meyer draws a heavy bow across the lowest notes of his acoustic bass and the result is a wonderfully rich, growling image that should tickle the soles of your feet. The Marten did well to preserve much of this element, although I still felt the transition to the bottom string of the acoustic bass lacked some of the full resonant energy I expected.
You can read the full review here.
