New 13A's Arrived Early!

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ttocs

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Can it really be this easy??

The new speakers arrived just before lunch so I took the time to hookup. They are on the rounded (plastic?) feet they come shipped with on a wood floor. Old speakers are Vistas.

I expected weak, harsh, weird sounding, etc. But I got the opposite! Immediately, they beat the pants off the Vistas in every way! Thanks to those of you who helped in answering my questions and concerns re 13A vs 11A.

Right now the 24/7 break-in marathon has begun. I had to get back to work so they are running unattended, but I made sure the system was on long enough to provide the assurance that all was well. The Krell amp warmed up slower than normal, which means these speakers are friendlier than the Vistas. Martin Logan told me that they would be very efficient. I'm used to the Krell getting warm quickly, even at the break-in volume currently employed.

I gotta say, these things are instantly more dynamic, and exhibit way more detail than I'm used to. They simply sound "easy", very easy to listen to. And this is with only less than a half hour of play.

Sorry if I sound like I'm gushing, but I really am initially pleased. Photos after I do some house keeping with the wires. More to come . . . .

Hours of break-in: Ongoing . . . .
Note: I've only been playing music peaking at or above 90dB, not using pink noise.
0-25 hours: Some freqs are much more pronounced (Santana's long sustained guitar notes:Moonflower album) and zing right out at you and consequently way too loud. Bass is a little sloppy.

At 40 hours things are way smoother with respect to certain frequencies being much louder and piercing. Bass is more apparent and is now evident of being in need of correction. I'm pretty amazed at how low the bass gets, no subwoofer needed or wanted for my music listening.

50 hours: Even smoother sounding. Elevated listening volume can go as high as you dare and still sound great (still need to calibrate the bass). I prefer, however, to listen at more moderate levels and this is where the 13A demonstrates some authority over the Vista's 9" panel and 8" single woofer. At moderate volume, there is plenty of musical detail and bass. Very natural sounding. Exactly what I've been wanting.

53 hours: Calibrated the bass with PBK. Bass is more accurate sounding, a bit punchier, less boomy, maybe a bit quicker seeming.

65 hours: Not as much of an incremental difference, but there is still improvement. I use a couple Santana albums as the go-to for sounds that were shrill with not many hours on the break-in. Lotus album, Incident At Neshabur at 8:20 there's a couple peak volume guitar notes that "zing" right out at you, now they are not shrill, or harsh, or so over the top loud, they sound appropriate for what I've been used to since first listening to this album when it was released 45 years ago. The album is overly bright, not well recorded. The same kind of zingers which presented badly during less break-in hours are on Moonflower: Dance Sister Dance during the guitar solo at around 3-1/2 minutes, then again during a long sustain note at 5:10 which peaks louder at 5:22, these sound great now. There are more of these "singing" notes in Europa, especially during the last minute, these sound perfect now.

90 hours: Well the squirrels are back again . . . oops, sorry, that's a commercial. Getting close to needing to calibrate the bass again. I currently have them too close to the wall on purpose to see how they would do, I'll move them away if the next calibration doesn't sound quite right. There is about 12" between the rear woofer and the wall. I expected an issue with the panel being too close and causing back-wave reflected disturbance, but so far it's not been apparent - not saying it's not there, just not apparent enough to notice. My Vistas needed every tweak I could give them to sound good. These Expressions seem less like their ancestors and more like "regular" speakers, . . . maybe an overstatement but since I'm used to ML's that's what it seems like.

Sounding fuller in the midrange than the Vistas, which I hoped, and frankly expected, would be the case.

I've been listening to classical (thanks Peter), Tom Waits (great standup bass and piano), Andreas Vollenwieder (but this sounds good on a lot of systems, fantastic now), Eno, SRV, Allman Brothers, Santana (of course!), Art Of Noise, Sade, No Doubt, Ella (do I really need the last name??), Chic Corea, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles, and everything seems appropriate for these speakers. Even some recordings which are overly bright sound smoother. Classical works better on these than my Vistas, very happy about that. The dynamics seem much better than expected as well. I feel like I'm seeing a new vista (pun intended) musically speaking.

About 110 hours: I found something to indicate there is still some taming of the shrew needed, which I fully expect to be the case for a bit. Grand Funk Railroad: Closer To Home, when the singer sings "I'm get-TING closer to my home". It's the TING that is piercing through above all else. It's not distorted, just very sharp sounding.
 
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Can it really be this easy??

Sorry if I sound like I'm gushing, but I really am initially pleased. Photos after I do some house keeping with the wires. More to come . . . .


I'm truly envious and delighted for you - I'm still working on my 13As. Peter
 
I recently heard the 11a's at a show so the 13a must be brilliant. I have been completely blown away by the latest new ML line.
 
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Unfortunately I'm running a deficit on the 24/7 break-in thing. Did some re-routing of wires yesterday, and racing got in the way today so it's not 24 hours a day. I don't count non-music usage as break-in hours.

Everything is better than I've heard from anything I've ever owned! There is no fatigue. Period. Frankly I have to pay attention to the volume level due to the extreme lack of fatigue causing elements. The SPL meter gets used often to see where things stand.

One thing I was hoping for, and got with these speakers, is being able to listen at lower volume levels and get very full sound. Very pleasing indeed.
 
It's just about the one year anniversary and thought I'd share some things.

My admiration for these speakers continues without abatement! Very happy also with the tube monos.

A couple months ago I began thinking that I'd like to fill-in at the very low end with subwoofers. Then, this week, I finally got around to using ARC again for only the third time and this pretty much stopped me thinking about subs (last time I ran ARC was in July so the speakers have many more hours on them and they're positioned differently now). Then I also finally got around to popping in the KT120 tubes I bought in December. Once the bias was adjusted as recommended - same level as used for the KT88's - I like the KT120's better overall. However, I did need to adjust the bass settings on the speakers because the tops are now a bit more laid back vs the bottom end with the new tubes.

After about close to 30 hours of usage this week on the KT120's I figured it was time to try to dial-in the bass a little. In preparation for this I contacted ML to get more info on just what happens when using the Mid Bass Level switch, and also the Bass Level dial. I was told the Mid Bass switch add or subtracts 2dB from the range of about 140Hz-300Hz. They also sent me a graph showing how the Bass Level dial alters the bass "below 75Hz". This helps greatly to understand what happens with this control and what freqs are affected overall and how far the rolloff extends.

So tonight after fiddling around with things I ended up with -1dB Bass, and -2 Mid Bass. This allows the panel to exhibit more prominence vs the bass. I know I'll be adjusting some more, but initially this is a good start and I'll need much more variation of music to find the limits.

Yes, I could run a Dirac calibration but I'm not really a fan of doing this for two channel. It's been years since I ran Dirac for two channel so maybe I might do it again soon, but who knows? For now I'm still getting adjusted to the great amount of bass which was discovered this week after running ARC so I'll need to break-in my ears some more.

For anyone interested, here is the graph for the Bass Level control.
MartinLogan MasterpieceSeries Bass Control Response.jpg
 
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I use DIY cables for XLR interconnects and speakers.

22AWG shielded wire and Switchcraft XLR's for the interconnects.

14AWG star quad speaker wire twisted together and spades soldered at each end. Long story testing a bunch of $$$ and $$$$ against my $$$ cables 7 years ago, this is what led me to making my own since then.
 
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After the ARC calibration almost a week ago and living with that for a day, then changing tubes from KT88 to KT120 and thinking it was sounding a bit treble shy (bass heavy), I adjusted the bass settings on the speakers to -2 on the Mid Bass switch, and -1 on the Bass Level dial. I tried other variations but this seemed best at the time. After maybe about 8 hours I realized too much bass was sucked out, so I've gone back to Zero Mid Bass, and Zero Bass on the speaker settings. So now the treble is much stronger so the panels aren't "laid back" sounding anymore, and in fact might be brighter sounding compared to the KT88 tubes.

The source I get the tubes from burns them in at full voltage for 24 hours before shipping. I put 30 hours on them before I changed the speaker settings, then after another 8 hours I changed the settings back to zero. Now the tubes have another 10 hours on them, so the total is around 70 hours.

So the questions are:
Do tubes "brighten" during break-in?
Can they get stronger during break-in?
 

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