Martin-Logan's New Powered Home Theater Subwoofers Go To Eleven
By Chris Boylan
At CEDIA Expo in Denver this month,
Martin-Logan showed off their new improved Descent i ($2995) and Depth i ($1995) subwoofers. How are they better? Now they go up to 11. Seriously! Perhaps from one late-night movie-watching design session too many, they took inspiration from "Spinal Tap" and added an extra notch to their level controls.
Both subs include top-mounted controls for level, crossover and 4-way phase adjustment. This makes it super-easy to calibrate the sub for the room - no more reaching around and peering behind the sub to adjust level and crossover, or flip the phase. In a nice touch, the controls hide away beneath an elegant metal panel on each model. The Descent i even includes a cool blue light that illuminates the stylized ML logo on the control panel cover (gotta be worth the extra $1,000 on its own).
Martin-Logan's Depth i and Descent i pack a prodigious amount of low end goodness into fairly small and very stylish packages.
But that's not all that's enhanced in these new models. The Descent i and Depth i feature:
- Simultaneous LFE and 2-Channel Connection
- Top Mounted Control Interface
- Rigid, Low-Mass Aluminum Element Woofers
- Triple Servo Monitoring and Control Sensors
- BalancedForce™ Woofer Alignment
- TriLinear™ Woofer Configuration
- Sealed Cabinet Enclosure
- 25 and 50Hz Level Controls (Descent i)
- 25Hz Level Control (Depth i)
- Three Proprietary Amplifiers Deliver System Peak of 2100 Watts (Descent i)
- 900 Watts Peak Proprietary Vojtko™ Amplifier (Depth i)
- Precision Low-Pass Filters
In addition to going to eleven, the subwoofer's controls allow 4-way phase adjustment, variable low-end boost and independent adjustable crossover frequencies for speaker-level and line-level inputs.
Simultaneous support for both speaker-level and line-level inputs (with independent crossover controls) allows you to configure the subwoofers one way for purist two-channel music listening and differently for multi-channel home theater use.
Neither one a slouch in the low bass department, the frequency response is rated at 18-120 Hz ± 3 dB for the Descent i and 20-120 Hz ± 3 dB for the Depth i.
Also on display at the Martin-Logan booth was their new Stage ($2,795) hybrid dynamic/electrostatic speaker which can be stand- or wall-mounted as a center channel speaker, or it can also do duty as a main or surround channel in a 5.1 or 7.1 channel matched system.
