Audio Video Show 2025 is larger this year, with the show organizers having added a 25 percent more exhibit space onto the already-extensive floorplan at the PGE Narodowy stadium. The additional space was comprised of large rooms that sounded especially good, probably due to optimal damping and irregular wall and floor layouts.
It was in this slice of the stadium where we found a whole bunch of expensive systems, many of which sounded superb. But as I was walking along, I found myself drawn into the room hosted by Warsaw-based SoundClub, which distributes several high-end brands in Poland. This huge room contained two complete systems, each having half-hour slices of playing time while the other remained silent.
While the all-Göbel system on one side sounded great, it was the system fronted by a pair of Marten speakers on the other that really drew me in. Even with my off-axis entry into the room, I could hear the purity these speakers exuded.
The system was playing music unfamiliar to me, some sort of ethereal instrumental electronic jazz. But it was lovely, so I just sat down and went with it, feeling my shoulders droop as I relaxed into the music. On this rainy Friday, the stadium was fairly quiet, and Martin Dunhoff, global sales manager for both Marten and Jorma cables (Marten is the owner of Jorma Audio), came over and sat down beside me.
“These are the Marten Parker Quintet speakers,” he explained. “We have two lines, the Parker and the Mingus, with the Mingus being more expensive.”
I had never seen a pair of Marten speakers in a finish other than black mixed with some sort of exotic wood. These gloss-white floorstanders didn’t immediately evoke my mental image of an archetypal speaker.
The system was fronted by a Wadax DAC, clock, and power supply, which Dunhoff told me retails for a cool €100,000. The Parker Quintets were driven by a Boulder 2160 stereo power amp. Dunhoff did not have the price handy; but in the US, it sells for $71,000.
I sat and listened some more. The Parker Quintets filled this massive room with ease. The large speaker is a two-and-a-half-way design fitted with three front-mounted woofers, augmented on the rear by four passive radiators. That meant they could move a ton of air. But what was important here—the big takeaway—was the feeling of ease mixed with excellent resolution of detail. That’s not an easy combination to achieve.
It’s worth noting that the Parker Quintet retails for €32,600 per pair when fitted with the standard ceramic tweeter, as show in Warsaw. An upgrade to a diamond tweeter boosts the per-pair price by €16,300 and includes an upgrade to the crossover and internal wiring.
Marten offers a speaker with a similar configuration in its Mingus line, the Mingus Quintet, which retails for €71,700, roughly double the price of the Parker model. Does that make the Parker Quintet a bargain? I guess that depends on how you define a bargain. That’s a huge chunk of change, but the Marten house sound has enthralled me every time I’ve heard it, and getting that sound for half the price is certainly noteworthy.
I received some perspective from Dunhoff on this after hearing the price. “It is a pleasure to demonstrate this system,” he stated. “In Hong Kong, we were showing a top-of-the-line Marten system, and the price for all components was €6,200,000. That was a lot of pressure, explaining that. I feel much more at ease here with a much lower-priced system.”
I guess the concept of a bargain varies wildly, depending on your perspective.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
