Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition Floorstanding Speaker Review An amazing ability to separate each of the instruments and vocals in the soundscape. Review by Tom Lyle

 

November 2022

Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition Floorstanding Speaker Review
An amazing ability to separate each of the instruments and vocals in the soundscape.
Review By
Tom Lyle

 

 

  Marten
speakers are designed and built in Sweden. Leif Marten Olofsson founded the
company in 1998. Marten is now run by Leif Marten and his brothers, Jorgen and
Lars Olofsson. Marten designs and manufactures five lines of speakers, all named
to earn points from me; that is, they are named after American jazz musicians –
Coltrane, Mingus, Parker, and Oscar. The fifth series is the Heritage Series,
which has the sub-series Bird, Getz, Miles, and Duke.

The Marten Parker Trio is a floor-standing
speaker situated in the middle of the Parker series offerings. On its front
baffle, it has two 7.5-inch ceramic bass/midrange drivers and a 1-inch
“pure” ceramic tweeter, which in this model has been upgraded to
diamond. Besides having a diamond tweeter, the upgrade to Marten’s Parker Trio
Diamond Edition floorstander also has upgraded crossover components, improved
speaker terminals, and Marten’s Jorma Statement internal wiring.

 

 

On the Parker Trio Diamond’s rear panel are two
large aluminum passive radiators measuring 9-inches each. When I first set up
the speakers in my listening room, I mistakenly thought these were active
drivers, which I thought was a crazy idea, as this would likely make the bass
frequencies dominate the speaker’s sound. Passive radiators, on the other hand,
seemed like a great idea. Of course, Marten agrees and writes on their website,
“Passive radiators give the control and dynamics needed for the Parker
Trio. A speaker of this class demands the ultimate in bass response.”

These are rather large speakers, standing more than 3.5-feet
tall and weighing about 90 pounds each. The front baffle is only about 9″
wide, but the speaker gets wider as it gets deeper, and at their 14″ depth,
they are about 11″ wide. Looking at one of the speakers from the side, they
are a parallelogram, tilting the speaker back for time alignment. The tapered
cabinet is made from what Marten calls M-board, explaining that this provides a
resonance-free enclosure.

 

 

Leif Olofsson designed the speaker’s ceramic drivers, which
are said to have a long linear excursion and utilize a Neodynium magnet system.
Jorma Design copper internal wiring is made by hand in Sweden. The Parker Trio’s
Diamond Edition’s upgraded crossover was developed using a “multi-diverse
crossover technique.”

After unboxing, I attached to the bottom of the speakers the
outrigger system Marten designed to further reduce resonance by completely
isolating the speaker’s cabinet from the floor. In collaboration with the
Canadian company IsoAcoustics, they developed Marten Isolators. Besides looking
good, these high-gloss silver cylindrical footers lift the speakers another
couple of inches off the floor. On their website, Marten says when the cabinet
is wholly isolated, it reduces both resonance and distortion, “leaving the
soundstage free.” More sonic benefits, according to Marten, are “a
more dynamic bass with increased power and control, a natural openness and
clarity.”

 

 

System
I auditioned the Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition speakers
in my main system. This two-channel audio system is in a dedicated, acoustically
treated listening room with acoustic panels on all four walls surrounding my
listening seat. Two dedicated power lines run to the circuit box in our
basement, and there are two Virtual Dynamics cryogenically treated duplex
20-Ampere outlets on the wall behind the equipment racks.

I connected the speakers to my reference Pass Laboratories
X250.8 power amplifier using Kimber’s Carbon 18 XL speaker cable. It was a
rather long 4-meter run because the equipment racks were not located between the
speakers but to the side of the left speaker. I used a two-chassis Pass Labs
XP-22 linestage or a tube-powered Nagra Classic Preamp connected to the power
amp with a Kimber Carbon 8 interconnect with balanced XLR terminations.

The analog front-end of this system consists of a Tri-Planar 6
tonearm mounted on the armboard of a Basis Audio V. The power cord of the
turntable’s AC synchronous motor is connected to an AC regenerator power supply
capable of producing a clean 60 Hz sine wave. This 60 Hz wave rotates the
turntable’s platter at a precise 33.3 rpm. When listening to 45 rpm records, I
must switch the power supply’s output to 81 Hz. A Top Wing Suzaku Red Sparrow
low-output moving coil phono cartridge is attached to the headshell of the
Tri-Planar arm, which is hardwired with silver cable and is terminated with
Cardas unbalanced RCAs. It is connected to a Pass Labs XP-27 two-chassis phono
preamplifier, and its balanced XLR output is connected to the linestage with a
Kimber Carbon 8 interconnect terminated with XLRs.

An EMM Labs DA2 digital-to-analog converter is at the heart of the
system’s digital front-end. The primary source is a computer-based music server,
with its USB output connected to the USB input of the EMM DA2 converter with a
Wireworld Platinum Starlight 7 USB cable. I use the open-source Foobar 2000 or
JRiver Media Center software to play files stored on hard drives connected to
the computer. I also have subscriptions to TIDAL and Qobuz streaming services. I
use an OPPO UDP-203 Blu-ray/universal disc player to spin the occasional 5″
silver disc, its digital output connected to the coax input of the EMM Labs DAC
with an Accusound Digital Link cable. The OPPO’s analog outputs are connected to
the linestage using Kimber Carbon 8 interconnects terminated with RCAs.

 

 

Substantial
The Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition floorstanding
loudspeaker is a very substantial five-driver, 90-pound high-end audio speaker.
I could play these speakers as loudly as I wanted, and I never heard a hint of
strain, as my ears would have given out long before the speakers. Even though
250 Wpc is plenty of power, I often felt the Martens could handle much more.

Locating the “perfect” spot in my listening room to
position the Parker Trio Diamond Edition was not difficult at all. Because my
room is acoustically treated and used for no other purpose than listening to
music, I could get away with having a space that most would consider small for a
speaker of this size. The review pair of the Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition
speakers ended up about three feet from the room’s front wall. Because of the
setup of my non-rectangular listening space, the right speaker was closer to the
side wall than ideal, but judicious toe-in resulted in a very well-defined
center image.

 

 

Beloved
When listening to my beloved 1988 LP pressing of Nick Cave and
The Bad Seeds Tender Prey album, the speakers projected into the room a
lifelike image of Nick Cave’s lead vocals on most of the tracks. I said “on
most of the tracks” because this album was recorded at more than a few
studios worldwide. Despite this, it is a fine recording, but hardly one that
could be considered “audiophile.” Despite this, the Martens reproduced
the vocals in what I could imagine the producers and engineers intended: The
sound of a man singing into a microphone!

 

 

The Martens also made it clear that the sound quality of Nick
Cave’s vocals on Tender Prey varied from track to track. On some of the
tracks, Cave’s vocals sounded wonderful. On “Slowly Goes The Night” on
the LP’s second side, Nick Cave’s vocals sounded as if they were meant to
replicate the sound of a nightclub singer. They were somewhat bass-heavy and
breathy, as if he was singing with his mouth pressed against a hand-held
microphone (but without any extraneous sounds because it is doubtful he was
singing into a hand-held mic). Regardless, I could close my eyes and could
easily imagine him singing in front of his band. The Marten Parker Trio Diamond
Editions were able to separate each of the instruments and vocals in their
places in a soundstage drawn to scale, Nick Cave in front and the five musicians
spread out behind him on the club’s dimly lit stage. At one point, I thought
that I smelled cigarette smoke.

 

Famed
Later in the review period, I listened to Shostakovich’s Violin
Concerto with Hugo Wolf conducting the Oslo Philharmonic with famed
violinist Hilary Hahn as the soloist, released in 2002 from a DSD file from an
SACD. I don’t remember who ripped the disc for me to enable me to play it on my
music server, but I don’t go long between listening sessions of this masterpiece
of 20th-century music. The SACD was originally paired with Mendelssohn’s violin
concerto, and although I respect the composer’s abilities, I’m not much of a fan
of this much older composer.

 

 

Although it is a violin concerto, it is not only structured
like a four-movement symphony; it also is scored for a relatively large
orchestra. Besides the solo violin, it features three flutes and a piccolo, two
oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon,
four horns, tuba, timpani, tambourine, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, two harps,
and the usual violin, viola, cello, and bass sections. Phew.

Yes, Hillary Hahn’s violin was very likely spot mic’d and was
upfront sounding, but the sound quality of this high-resolution recording kicked
butt. The Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition reproduced this concerto as if this
pair of speakers was custom-built for the job.

The concerto’s first movement begins as a dark, gloomy sea of
instruments, occasionally echoing the theme that the solo violin would
eventually pick up on. When Shostakovich composed this concerto, I wonder if he
was still aggravated about being censored by the government since he wrote this
rather bleak-sounding section about the same time as that event.

 

 

This movement of the concerto starts very quietly. Still, by
the time it reached its climax, the Marten once again displayed its ability to
play loudly, as these muscular-sounding speakers had a low-frequency response
that was exceptionally convincing and well-integrated into the speaker’s sound.

The Marten speakers let me hear all the instruments in the
decently sized orchestra with an exact amount of lifelike detail, with an
extraordinary ability to separate the instruments and the orchestra’s sections
into discrete areas of a large, drawn-to-scale soundstage. Of course, many of
the positive traits I heard were due to the good musical signals the speakers
were being fed. The Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition’s ability to
transparently interpret this signal made it easy for me to imagine that my
system had become a sonic time machine.

Hillary Hahn’s violin was mic’ed closely, which allowed me to
revel in her perfect intonation and emotional reading of this concerto. I could
picture a cloud of rosin rising from her station, her sound opening like a
blooming flower. The sound of her playing this very Shostakovich-like score
enveloped me. The orchestra supporting her was spread wall-to-wall, with horns
and percussion positioned behind the speakers.

Probably the most well-known section of this concerto is its
third movement, the Passacaglia. In this upbeat, bass-heavy section,
Hillary gets to swagger and again prove why she is such a well-known violinist.
It reinstates the melody of the concerto and lets her show off a bit, and
demonstrates her ability in the following cadenza. It led into the last movement
without pause and should remind some of the faster portions of Shostakovich’s Tenth
Symphony. Like many other of his compositions, this concerto has a
triumphant feel, but it’s been said that it is also reflective of the composer’s
mood, so he didn’t want it to end too festively.

No speakers I know of can realistically replicate a lifelike
sound of a full orchestra with a soloist playing at a concert hall with a
50-foot proscenium. But some speakers can sonically reproduce the gestalt
of a full orchestra playing in a concert hall, and the Marten Parker Trio
Diamond Edition is one of them.

Kudos must go to this speaker’s glistening Diamond tweeter. It
contributed mightily to the crispest, tightest trebles I’ve ever heard. It
contributed mightily to the exemplary sound of the speaker’s highest
frequencies. The Violin Concerto gave me the impression that the high
frequencies reached an infinite level.

 

 

Assessment
If I had to, I could separately assess the quality of a
speaker’s bass, midrange, treble, etc., as if it was a checklist of its various
attributes, such as soundstage, imaging, etc., just as if I were using the
“Ratings” portion of this review as a checklist. But when enjoying
music through these speakers, especially when I wasn’t wearing my reviewer’s
ears, the sound of these speakers were as one. Sure, I was blown away by the
speakers’ tight, pitch-specific, gut-shaking bass response when spinning
Kraftwerk’s latest studio release, Remixes.

I was impressed like never before when listening to this
Marten speaker’s ultra-transparency to the source, and a you-are-there lifelike
midrange. It happened once again when listening to the Vienna Philharmonic’s
string section during my late-night listening session to the 1961 Decca
recording of Dvorak’s symphony From The New World conducted by Istvn
Kertsz (often called his Ninth Symphony). There were many times during
my listening sessions when I was convinced the soundstage and imaging prowess of
the Parker Trio Diamond Edition was unmatched by any speaker anywhere near its
price.

I was also blown away when listening to the 2014 release by
the Swedish progressive-rock band Opeth, Pale Communion. The Martens left
me breathless with their effects and keyboards, and of course, Mellotron as they
swirled around the speakers and me as this band weaved their complex rock hymns
consisting of jazz and classical influences, metal, and Swedish pop and folk.

 

 

Conclusions
The price of the Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition
floorstanding speakers demands that they be treated as an investment just as
much as an intelligent decision for anyone who can afford these $38,995
speakers. If one does decide to purchase these Marten speakers, I hope one also
donates to their favorite charity that helps others who aren’t as well-off. If
one doesn’t have a favorite charity, please let me know, and I will suggest one.
That said, I would not attempt to talk anyone out of purchasing these speakers.

No
speakers are perfect, but it is evident that Marten has made some brilliant
decisions when designing and building their Marten Parker Trio Diamond Edition
speakers. I also think they made design decisions that I can only describe as
mystical since I can’t objectively explain why these speakers made me feel so
good when listening to them. The music from these speakers expanded my mind and
seemed to benefit my mental health. I highly recommend the Marten Parker Trio
Diamond Edition Speakers.