Напольная акустика — Marten Design OSCAR TRIO

The Oscar Trio is a floor-standing loudspeaker from Marten, the Swedish company based in Molndal, and it was the launch model of the Oscar series. Marten presents the line as a new era of design in which the familiar character of the brand is delivered through new build technology. Chief designer Leif Olofsson created custom technology for the series so that the speakers could meet demand for a reasonably priced Marten without giving up consistent performance.

Key specs that matter

Marten defines the Trio as a two-way design. A single 1 inch ceramic tweeter works above two 7 inch ceramic woofers, and the crossover point lies at 2500 Hz. The quoted frequency range is 27 Hz to 20,000 Hz within 3 dB and the power rating is 250 W. Sensitivity is 89 dB at 1 m with 2.83 V, and the impedance is 6 ohm nominal with a minimum of 3.1 ohm. The cabinet is 20 cm wide, 109 cm tall and 40 cm deep, and each speaker weighs 30 kg. Three finishes are listed - Piano White, Piano Black and Matte Walnut.

Engineering and use context

The drivers were designed specifically for the Oscar series and use membranes of hard ceramic, which Marten also calls sapphire, a material that is light yet very stiff. A refined electrochemical process gives these membranes a high internal damping factor, and their high material resonance frequency keeps distortion low. For the low-pass section Marten chose a second-order filter, a slope it prefers over steeper designs. The network is assembled with air-core inductors of copper foil, capacitors using silver and gold and Supreme resistors. The enclosure is made of 25 mm fibreboard with a deliberately plain exterior, and a magnetic cover can be added to hide the drivers.

Pairing

Inside, Jorma cables handmade in Sweden run with separate positive and negative conductors for better shielding and use high-grade copper. Outside, the Trio has WBT Nextgen posts designed for single wiring, so one cable run per channel is all the speaker accepts. The Trio stands on brushed aluminium feet fitted with Marten pucks and cones made from a high-tech engineering thermoplastic, and the Marten Isolators, based on IsoAcoustics technology, are available as an upgrade to separate the cabinet from the floor. An amplifier should be judged by its behaviour at the impedance minimum as well as at the nominal load.

Alternatives

Marten also builds the Parker Trio, a 2.5-way floorstander whose two 7.5 inch ceramic bass-midrange units work with a pair of rear 9 inch aluminium passive radiators.