Most loudspeaker designers avoid first-order crossovers. They are hard to get right, and the payoff is timing. In the May 2026 issue of Stereophile, Jim Austin explains why Marten goes to the trouble anyway: "Only designers who think timing matters—a lot—go to the extra trouble." The Marten Mingus Septet Statement Edition ($199,000/pair) made the cover, under the line "Statement Edition delivers the music right on time."
Built around time
The Septet is the flagship of Marten's Mingus series. It's a four-way design with five active drivers on a flat, vertical baffle and two passive radiators on the back. The drivers are a diamond tweeter, a beryllium upper midrange, a ceramic lower midrange and aluminum-honeycomb woofers. Every crossover is first-order. The Statement Edition adds Jorma Statement internal cabling and higher-grade crossover parts.
The music, on time
Austin's first impression was "rich, full, detailed, with no hint of brightness." Piano, one of his hardest tests, "sounded natural and lifelike."
He put on Making Music, the ECM album by Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, John McLaughlin and Jan Garbarek. "Did these speakers ever love this album!" he writes. "Hussain's voice and Chaurasia's flutes simply hung there in space. All these sounds filled the space between the speakers and my front wall in a most natural, relaxed, intoxicating way." Then: "As the sound relaxed, so did this listener."
Top two or three
Austin credits the timing for much of what he heard, but not all of it. "Timing, though, is just part of an uncommonly ambitious and thoughtful design, executed at a very high level." His verdict: "What I am sure of is that I've just heard some of the best sound I've heard in my listening room, or even elsewhere, as in, top two or three."
He calls the pair one of a small handful of speakers he has found "to be free of meaningful faults—that recover so much music and deliver it in such a pleasurable way that I could happily live with them forever."
Download Jim Austin's full Stereophile review (PDF), explore Marten at Rhythm, or find a Marten dealer to hear the Mingus Septet Statement Edition for yourself.
