But it all worked in the end.Įlectrostatic panels are dipolar they emit sound forward and backward.
I found the spring-loaded speaker terminals annoying, making for a difficult connection with bare wire and a less-than-secure-feeling connection with banana plugs. The power supply charges the conductive transparent diaphragm inside the electrostatic panel. There’s one big difference between the EM-ESL and most other speakers: Each one has a power supply that has to be plugged into the wall. The $119 SWT-1 wireless kit converts the Dynamo 1000 to wireless for those who can’t or don’t want to run a line-level cable from their receiver to their sub. When I saw the Dynamo 1000 next to the EM-ESLs, my first thought was that the tiny sub might need the EM-ESLs’ help in the bass more than they need its help. The $999 Dynamo 1000 is a compact cube containing a 12-inch woofer driven by a 500-watt amp. Yet just to be sure I’d get enough bottom, MartinLogan also sent along a Dynamo 1000 subwoofer to help out. The EM-ESL puts out decent bass on its own, with rated response down to 42 Hz. The EM-FX2, designed primarily for wall-mounting, has a 6.5-inch woofer that fires straight out and two tweeters that fire at 45° angles to the woofer in order to create more diffuse, natural-sounding surround effects.
The EM-C2 combines one tweeter with dual 5.25-inch woofers.
#MARTIN LOGAN MOTION FX SURROUND SPEAKER REVIEW SERIES#
To expand your pair of EM-ESLs into a 5.1 or 7.1 system, MartinLogan offers the $799 EM-C2 center speaker and the $649 each EM-FX2 surround speaker, both of which incorporate a larger version of the Folded Motion tweeter originally used on the company’s Motion series speakers. You can use the EM-ESL as a stereo pair, of course. Snazzy new spring-loaded terminals allow connection of bare speaker wires or banana plugs. A port on the bottom reinforces the bass. Below 500 Hz, a fiber-cone woofer takes over. The core of the design is a transparent electrostatic panel that reproduces midrange and treble. With the exterior presenting no easy reason to dismiss the EM-ESL, we’re left to actually having to listen to the thing and see if it’s any good.Īlthough the EM-ESL looks exotic, it’s actually a fairly basic two-way speaker. Nope - it uses a real electrostatic panel and a decent-looking 8-inch woofer. So what’s wrong with it? Nothing you can see from the surface. Yeah, that’s still expensive, but in the context of the company’s other electrostatic speakers, the EM-ESL looks like a bargain. The EM-ESL, though, costs just $2,195 per pair. Even though the company recently launched a line of affordable conventional speakers, I still think of MartinLogan as a maker of large electrostatic speakers costing many thousands of dollars. “But is it a real MartinLogan?” I wondered to myself as I read the press release for the ElectroMotion ESL tower speaker that had come through my e-mail.
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