Marten Heritage Getz Loudspeaker (TAS 208)

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

The Marten Getz loudspeaker is a three-way dynamic-driver floorstander. Its debut marks the completion of the four-model Heritage Series from the company that hails from the land of ABBA, Volvo, and Ingrid Bergman. Marten, known for bestowing the names of famous jazz icons on its products, positions the Getz between the larger Bird and smaller Miles 3. At 45.7” tall, the Getz time-aligns its drivers with a gentle, backward leaning rake and is finished in a mirror-like piano black. Contrasting sharply against the gleaming baffle is the array of crisp, white, inverted-dome drivers—a combination that gives the Marten a white-tie look, as if it’s preparing to take the stage at Carnegie. The transducers are sourced from Germany’s Accuton and they will likely be familiar to Kharma and Lumen White devotees. They employ ceramic membranes formed from aluminum oxides. (Note that they bear absolutely no relation to fine china, porcelain, or anything else one might find on the dining room table!) These diaphragms are as thin as a human hair, featherlight and unencumbered by dust caps or phase plugs. They are known for extremely high rigidity and are as fragile as eggshells. Unlike typical cone diaphragms, they will not deform when subjected to an errant finger touch; they will shatter. Hence the wire-mesh covers protecting them, which obviate the need for a grille cloth. The midrange drivers add resonance damping via laser-drilled holes in the ceramic cone. Introduced for the Getz is a new 9” aluminum passive radiator which Marten considers a sonically satisfying middle ground between the tuned, open port of a bass reflex enclosure and the fully sealed enclosure of an acoustic suspension design.

The crossover is second-order (12dB/octave slopes at 400Hz and 2.9kHz), built from premium components that include Teflon-ring-core coils (for bigger values than 3.0mH), polypropylene capacitors from Mcap and MIT, and non-inductive resistors from Mundorf. Sensitivity is 87dB with a nominal impedance of 6 ohms but dropping no lower than 4 ohms. Internal wiring is Jorma Design throughout. Twin pairs of high-quality WBT binding posts are standard.

Cabinet construction was flawless to the hand and the eye. Built of specially selected, 23mm thick, veneered MDF, the enclosure has heavily braced non-parallel sides that make it all but immune to a knuckle-rap resonance test. The supplied pointed footers are mounted on heavy brackets that extend beyond the side panels of the speaker, giving the Getz a wider more stable stance.

I began my listening evaluations using high-powered solid-state amplification. It was impressive in all the predictable ways—superb low bass slam and control, rock-solid dynamics. But the treble also sounded a bit constrained. However, Marten’s U.S. distributor Dan Meinwald suggested I hear the Getz driven with tube amplification and made the superb EAR 834 integrated amp available. Meinwald obviously knows a thing or two about his products. Not overly powerful at 50Wpc, the EAR nonetheless drove the Martens well in my smallish room. Clearly the Marten Getz favors tubes or at least Tim de Paravicini tubes. The speaker loosened up and played more freely when driven by the EAR 864, and there was more bloom and air than with the solid-state amps I had on hand.

Now I Getz It

Sonically the Getz actually startled me at times. But not in the way its looming piano-black countenance might imply. Yes, it had loads of output, but there are plenty of other loudspeakers of this specification that can out-slam it in bass extension or macro dynamics, if that’s your goal. The Getz, in my view, has a different set of priorities. And early on it became clear that paramount on that list is a midrange purity, pace, speed, and transparency. The Getz plainly relishes the smaller gestures that reside deep in a recording. The tip off for me came early on when I cued up the title track to Linda Ronstadt’s Simple Dreams [Asylum]. Those familiar with the tune know it’s a quiet, contemplative song—so intimate that I tend to turn the volume down and sink into the moment. Even so, newly minted low-level details kept vying for my attention. I could hear the soft rising whoosh of the analog board faders coming up in front of incoming tracks. I could also make out the rightward flare of the reverb off the Ronstadt vocal. Switching to Rutter’s Requiem I could single out and follow the timbres and distinctive vibratos of each singer in the chorus. The Getz permitted me to hear just a little deeper into the mix during Lyle Lovett and Ricki Lee Jones’ vocal duet of “North Dakota.” Examples like these underscored the fabulous inner life of a recording—moments bubbling up with the micro-dynamic and transient spontaneity of the live musical encounter. It’s the kind of resolution manifested in a large-format photographic image, where you can come closer and closer to the image without encountering any resolution-inhibiting grain.