If your performance benchmark is MartinLogan's most ambitious floorstanding hybrid electrostatic loudspeakers, it's going to be quite a challenge to achieve that level of accuracy and impact in an in-wall speaker.
Challenge accepted. The Statement 40XW is a triumph of audio engineering. Its performance (and sheer size) rivals the very best of our electrostatic models, with full-on speed and high-frequency accuracy, incredibly detailed midrange, and lifelike deep bass impact. And yet it takes up absolutely no space in your room and vanishes into any decor.
It's an incredible sixteen tweeters, and sixteen mid-range drivers, and eight woofers, arrayed in a line-source design and built directly into your wall, delivering awe-inspiring levels of full-spectrum dynamic output even in the largest listening areas.
The keys to this performance are superior components and innovative design. The multi-driver design allows each driver and tweeter to operate with extreme efficiency. This combination of high-resolution drivers, each working to offset the demands on the others, results in a highly accurate and distortion-free performance, even during the most demanding sonic passages, and even at realistic volume levels. The large line-source design also ensures the same sonic impact over a large area of listening positions. There's no drop-off, as can be the case with smaller, point-source designs.
With each channel featuring a mind-boggling forty drivers, you simply have to hear the Statement 40XW to believe it.
Whether you are designing a new listening room from the ground up or retrofitting a room back to the studs, it's the perfect time to incorporate built-in audio. And if you're planning a larger than average space, it's worth considering a massive line-source loudspeaker that both vanishes into your decor, and puts even the farthest seat in the sweet spot.
The Statement 40XW incorporates a reinforced, sealed, acoustically-inert back box enclosure that isolates and decouples the drivers from the wall surface.
This sealed box enclosure, with its uniform volume and material, eliminates in-wall variables from the acoustic equation, guaranteeing a consistent, accurate performance in any installation. The sealed design also effectively eliminates audio leak-through into adjoining rooms.
It fits comfortably between studs and works with both 1/2- or 5/8-inch wallboard.
The low profile, paintable, micro-perforated grille presents a clean, near-invisible aesthetic. One of the world's most incredible audio performances, from practically invisible loudspeakers!
From extreme home theater to transcendent 2-channel listening, Masterpiece CI achieves the pinnacle of discreet in-wall and in-ceiling loudspeaker design: state-of-the-art Truth in Sound that takes up no floor space. Featuring lightning-fast, low-distortion, Folded Motion XT Obsidian tweeters, handcrafted Vojtko crossover networks, and unidirectional carbon fiber multi-section cone drivers with Nomex® backers, each model of the Masterpiece CI Series delivers astonishing realism. This is a loudspeaker that is a tribute to the acoustic achievements of MartinLogan's original iconic masterpiece, our flagship floorstanding electrostatic speakers.
MartinLogan's signature Folded Motion tweeter is a miracle of audio engineering. Its folded thin-film diaphragm gives it a much larger surface area than traditional dome tweeters of the same size. This "squeezing" design requires significantly less excursion than a dome tweeter, too, revealing controlled dispersion characteristics and vanishingly low distortion. These tiny tweeters mimic the high-frequency detail and response speed of a large electrostatic panel in a small space.
Masterpiece CI Series steps up the game with the Folded Motion XT Obsidian tweeters, which advance thin-film transducer technology even further.
The Folded Motion XT design features a 40% larger radiating surface and 80 x 30-degree controlled dispersion. This innovation increases audible bandwidth without sacrificing details and minimizes distortion to an unprecedented level, even while increasing the efficiency of the tweeter's already lightning-fast response time.
The result is superior realism and alarming specificity. Folded Motion XT takes thin-film transducers to the next level—it's aurally astonishing.
Masterpiece CI features innovation upon innovation.
To deliver more accuracy in the critical midrange, the mid-frequency drivers have had their suspensions (spider and surround) "stiffened." Stiffening the suspension raises the driver's resonant frequency and optimizes its performance to achieve a more natural roll-off, inherently keeping it in an ideal range for mid-frequency reproduction.
Each cone includes a concave dust cap that adds additional strength and rigidity, while further reducing breakup modes.
Masterpiece CI mid-range and bass sections perfectly blend with the extreme accuracy of the high resolution Folded Motion XT tweeters, for a bold, seamless, distortion-free line-source performance throughout large listening areas.
An inverted surround design maximizes clearance behind the grille, helping enhance driver excursion, clarity, and linearity.
One key to replicating the performance of traditional loudspeakers with hidden, built-in speakers is the use of sealed, controlled-volume, back boxes.
Statement 40XW, Monument 7XW, Tribute 5XW, and Icon 3XW, feature baffles of incredibly dense phenolic resin polymer fronted by an aluminum faceplate. This phenolic resin polymer is the same material we use in the Neolith's massive, acoustically-inert cabinet. It offers extraordinary material consistency that naturally minimizes deleterious resonances and vibrations.
Masterpiece CI back boxes fit into standard stud walls. They provide controlled and predictable airspace (volume) within which the specially engineered drivers can perform at their best. The sealed box removes variables, like wall cavity size and construction quality, from the acoustic equation, guaranteeing a consistent, accurate performance, regardless of installation specs.
Also, the hermetically sealed design keeps sound from leaking through walls.
By controlling the sealed space volume and damping characteristics, and maintaining complete control over driver performance, crossover design, and cabinet construction, Masterpiece CI in-wall and in-ceiling speakers achieve an emotionally engaging experience on par with the performance of the world's most exceptional floorstanding speakers. (Our own.)
In designing each crossover topology, we take the drivers themselves into consideration. Carefully selected drivers, engineered for specific performance characteristics, are kept within their optimal frequency range by the custom Vojtko Crossover.
Each crossover is handcrafted using exceptional polypropylene and polyester capacitors, custom wound and large steel laminate low-DCR inductors, and double thick PCBs. This precision-tuned network preserves even the most microscopic sonic nuances while handling the full dynamics of any source. It's a recipe for vanishingly low distortion and seamless driver integration.
The most critical aspect of a Vojtko Crossover design is the final voicing, always conducted in a real-world environment. This uniquely pragmatic approach guarantees that even the most amazing MartinLogan loudspeakers, like the massive Statement 40XW, deliver Truth in Sound in any room, including yours.