New guy here

[colinwoods84]

I am so glad to have found this site! First of all, I hope its ok for me to be here since I do not own any martin logan speakers. I do plan on purchasing some so I hope I can get some advice here. Ill start by saying that I went into this home theatre place where I went to school in wisconsin and they had martin logan speakers and I was blown away by the sound. The only thing is I dont know much about them. I tried asking and learning but the sales staff was kind of a pain in the ass cause I guess they assumed I did not have any money. On a side not that ****ed me off cause they were also an Apple dealer where I spent lots of money purchasing computers and products from them

Any who, My reason for being here is to try and figure out what exactly I am going to need. Like I said I was blown away by the sound and want to get Electro Static running through my home. Any advice and points in the right direction will be greatly appreciated. Hope to hear from some of you soon.

Colin

 

[Rich]

Hey Colin,

Spend some time and browse through a lot of the old posts on this site. There is a lot of information to be gained here, but it takes a little bit of digging. If there are specific topics you want to learn more about, try to use the search feature to find threads discussing them. Also browse through the member's systems section to get an idea of what is possible and what types of speakers and equipment people on the site are using.

Be thinking about what you are looking for as far as size, performance, and price, new vs. used, etc. and also what types of associated components you will use in your system. Are you starting from scratch, or do you already have some components in place? Are you on a tight budget, or going all out? What size room are you planning on having the speakers in? Are you planning just a stereo setup, or home theater surround sound as well? What is your initial budget for speakers, amp/preamp, source, cables?

Once you have a good idea of what is available, what your budget and room/equipment constraints are, and what direction you want to go, then you will probably have a slew of very specific questions to ask. That is where we can be most helpful to you.

 

[colinwoods84]

those are great questions I need to be asking myself. The biggest problem is, right now im in the navy and am stationed in Pensacola and will be leaving here in a few months to go to Virginia. I dont exactly know where im going to be living just yet so that whole room size is unknown. I will probably be starting from scratch seeing as how my current set up is somewhat childsplay if you will. My biggest problem is I really do not know much on what i need or what the demands of ML speakers are. I know that I would like to stay with onkyo for receivers since I have had no problem there. As far as cabling, pre amps and other aspects like that I am in the dark. I feel as though I should know more especially since I work with electronics all day here in the navy as an electronics tech but I could probably fix the damn thing before I even knew what it did. I am also starting to think that I should probably wait on the purchase till I get out of the navy. I have about 3 more years on this contract and I think thats enough and I once settled I will will be ready for my purchase. But i will use that time to keep reading on posting here to make sure when its time the purchase is just right. thanks for the reply, hope to hear from you again.

Colin

 

[Bernard]

Right off the bat, count on getting something much better than an Onkyo receiver; think separates (pre/power). Martin Logans like LOTS of power.

If you are get posted again by the navy do you really want to ship big speakers every time you move?

 

[colinwoods84]

I am probably going to wait on the speakers until I discharge. I think this is it for me. Once I am done with the navy I am moving back to Chicago where I will stay and probably purchase there. I just thought I would start looking now. I might purchase soon but we will see what happens when I get to Virginia. It would only be a single move from Norfolk to Chicago so I might think about it. If you say no to onkyo, which direction should I be looking.

Colin

 

[Rich]

Colin,

Given where you are at in your life right now, why not start small. Look into a used Martin Logan Clarity speaker, or the newer Purity and Source. These speakers are smaller and therefore easier to place in a smaller room and also to move from one location to another. But they will still give you that awesome electrostatic sound you are looking for.

As far as the Onkyo receiver goes, Martin Logans will not perform their best with any integrated receiver. You really need a separate amplifier to power them properly. If you already owned a receiver you could start with that and upgrade later, but if you were buying I would recommend a separate amp and preamp. Check out Sunfire, Outlaw audio, Emotiva and others for quality, reasonably priced amplifiers. If you buy used, you can get some great amps for a bargain.

The cool thing about the Martin Logan Purity speaker is that it has its own amplifier built in, so you could use whatever preamp you had available or could find cheap and you would be set.

 

[colinwoods84]

awesome sounds like a great idea. Now I just need to convince the wife that upgrading the sounds in our house is more important than children! Any advice on that. J/J Thanks a lot for the advice. The next thing I need to learn is all this pre amp/amp stuff.

 

[Satch]

colinwoods84,

I'd say look for a good deal on a used set of Martin Logan Purity speakers. All you have to do is plug in your CD player or MP3 player and you're cookin' with that good M.L. sound. They have a great little amp built right in. Plug and play! They don't take up a lot of space.

Thanks for your service and welcome to the club.

Satch

 

[Joey_V]

Colin,

You got questions? Call me up, I sent you pm.