Полочная акустика — Marten Design OSCAR DUO

The Oscar Duo, a compact two-way speaker for stand or shelf, comes from Marten, the Swedish company based at Flojelbergsgatan 18 in Molndal. Marten presents it as an answer to demand for a reasonably priced speaker carrying its name, and to reach that price the company redesigned the build and commissioned drivers made to its own specification. The Oscar series was developed under chief designer Leif Olofsson.

Key specs that matter

A 1 inch ceramic tweeter works above a 7 inch ceramic woofer. The crossover point is 2500 Hz, reached with a second-order network. Marten quotes a frequency range of 37 Hz to 20,000 Hz within 3 dB and a power rating of 150 W. Nominal impedance is 6 ohm, with a minimum of 3.1 ohm. Each cabinet measures 20 x 40 x 32 cm, and weighs 13 kg net. Buyers can choose Matte Walnut, Piano Black or Piano White.

Engineering and use context

The membranes are made of hard ceramic, a material the maker also refers to as sapphire since it is light yet extremely rigid. A refined electrochemical process gives the cones a high internal damping factor, and the material has a high resonance frequency. The crossover uses copper foil air-core coils, capacitors with silver and gold, and the internal wiring comes from Jorma Design, whose cables are handmade in Sweden. The enclosure is built from 25 mm fibre laminate, and its exterior is kept plain, with an optional magnetic cover that hides the drivers. Cable connection is through one set of WBT Nextgen posts intended for single wiring. Marten also offers its Isolators, which use IsoAcoustics technology to decouple the cabinet, as an upgrade to the standard pucks and cones.

Pairing

Marten designed its own stand for the model, a triple-pillar construction in brushed aluminium finished with Marten pucks and cones. The stand is 28 x 65.75 x 40 cm and weighs 6.5 kg net, and its spikes add 2.5 cm of height. An amplifier for the Duo should cope with the impedance minimum rather than only with the nominal figure. Marten stresses that this stand is, like the drivers, an original design of its own rather than a bought-in part. The single-wire terminals mean that one stereo amplifier with one cable run per channel covers the whole connection.

Alternatives

Within the Marten catalogue the Parker Duo offers another two-way stand-mounted design, taken from the Parker series.