Just got off the phone with ML on the Motif wall positioning issue...

[Gavin]

I just got off the phone with ML, asking them about the Motif. I have been waiting to buy some Logans, ever since I replaced my Scenarios with Magnepans. I am preparing to move, and it will be into an apartment...too small for floorstanding Logans or Maggies.

The rep told me that the Motifs do indeed come with pivoting brackets, to best aim the sound directly at the listening position when wall mounted, which is not demonstrated in the promotional picture on the MartinLogan website.

So, the comments that those of you have made about the promotional photo being for promotion only...

it appears to be just that!, at least for those of us that would sit down and actually use the speakers for the intended purpose, and not get up and walk around.

:musicnote:

 

[Huey]

Simple..one phone call, and then "peace of mind"

 

[JonFo]

Of course the speaker has a pivoting bracket, which can be used to angle the L/R speakers inwards towards the listener.

However, this yields a very small sweet spot, limited by the horizontal dispersion of a flat 10" wide ESL in the critical mid-range frequencies.

For years ML has been telling us that we need their patented 30 degree horizontal curved panel to provide good dispersion to seated listeners.
For years, they've been telling us the flat vertical (but curved horizontally) ESL panel is good, because it doesn't engage ceiling or floor reflections.
Is all the above suddenly all wrong?

Of course not, they were and are right, the correct config for an ESL is flat vertically, curved horizontally.

Now, plenty of other ESL and planar speaker vendors (and their purchasers) make do with perfectly flat panels for both L/R and Centers. See Magnepan, Final, Innersound, etc.

If you want narrow listening windows, any of those options would do. But one of the attractions of ML is their speakers typically have wider listening windows due to good dispersion (as does Soundlab, albeit using arrays of small ESL cells arranged in a curvilinear fashion). Both Sounlab and ML are recognized leaders in ESL reproduction in part due to this dispersion characteristic.

Back to the Motif, I stand by my (informed) opinion that the vertical L/R mounting of them as depicted will yield sub-optimal results.

Instead, I would recommend a pair of Scripti's as the L/R. Which at $2K a pair (new) is half the cost of two Motif's. So doing what's shown in the picture would cost $6K and sound bad, or you can get Scripti's + Motif = $4K.

 

[akm3]

One benefit I GUESS for a single listener is you could potentially aim them so the left ear can only hear the left speaker, and the right ear only the right - if you don't move your head 1/4" either way

/edit: In the sweet spot I mean, obviously the sound beam isn't THAT focused.