MartinLogan Motion 35XTi Bookshelf Speaker Review

Motion 35XTi Bookshelf Speaker Introduction

Although MartinLogan is best known for their curved electrostatic panel speakers, one of their best-selling speaker lines is the ‘Motion’ series that uses more conventional loudspeaker cabinets. However, in keeping with their preference for flat-panel transducers, MartinLogan did opt to use AMT tweeters in the Motion series. While AMT tweeters have become more common in recent years, the Motion series had been using them as a design distinction for some years now, and MartinLogan was the first major speaker manufacturer to put AMTs in affordable speakers. MartinLogan very recently redesigned their Motion line, and in for review today we have the Motion 35XTi, which is the larger bookshelf speaker in this product line. This beefy bookshelf speaker is the successor to the Motion 35XT and is MartinLogan’s largest and highest-performing bookshelf speaker. And so, with a pair of Motion 35XTi speakers fresh in hand, let’s see what MartinLogan can do in a bookshelf speaker format for $1.3k/pair….

Appearance

Out of the box, the 35XTi speakers look sharp and clean without being overly-styled. It can be had in a gloss black, matte white, and Red Walnut finishes. We received the matte white. The first aspect of their appearance that strikes me is that the grille actually gives them a pretty nice look. Usually, grilles make a loudspeaker look bland, but the grille for our white 35XTi had very classy styling. The grille fabric uses silver and black threading that gives it a slick, silvery sheen. It is stretched over a curved plastic frame and is mounted above a brushed aluminum plate that has the MartinLogan name etched in it (the plate isn’t really brushed aluminum, but you wouldn’t know that it’s plastic until you touch it). This grille blends very nicely with the rest of the speaker. Removing the grille reveals a satin black front baffle. The coppery AMT tweeter is a nice touch against the black baffle, and the woofer has the same satin black texture as the front baffle. The 35XTi doesn’t do anything special with the speaker shape; it is a box without curvature or beveling, however, the top of the cabinet does have a slight downward tilt going towards the rear. It uses the boxiness to its advantage to pull off a more stately look by stylizing pieces on the enclosure itself. It is a simple yet attractive look that could fit well in almost any decor. It is also the first speaker I have ever reviewed that I think looks nicer with the grille on than grille off.

MartinLogan Revamps Motion Series Loudspeakers @ CEDIA 2019 YouTube Video Overview

Design Overview

The MartinLogan Motion 35XTi is a two-way bookshelf speaker using a 6.5” woofer and an AMT tweeter. Let’s begin our description of the 35XTi by talking about the tweeter. While AMT tweeters are becoming more popular, they haven’t yet overtaken dome tweeters as the most widely used tweeter type, but they do have their advantages. The AMT tweeter on the 35XTi is on the larger side with a 1.2”x2.4” size. This should allow a tremendous amount of dynamic range. AMT stands for “Air Motion Transformer”. As opposed to conventional dome tweeters that oscillate pistonically, AMT tweeters contract and expand the folds of a pleated membrane to produce sound. To explain using an example, imagine the folded surface of a half-closed curtain- then line the interior folds of the curtain with conductive rods on adjacent sides of the folds, and set two powerful magnets on the sides of the curtain. Run some alternating current through the conducting rods and their newfound electromagnetic field will rapidly collapse and expand the folds of the curtain, and, in doing so, squeeze air in and out of the folds thereby creating pressure waves that we experience as sound.

A major advantage in this design is that since the folds of the diaphragm are much deeper than they are wide, the air is ejected out at a much faster speed than the vibration of the diaphragm itself- as much as five times faster. Another advantage is the very light mass of the diaphragm that makes it very easy to move and to change direction since it does not have the momentum of the weight of typical dome tweeters. These elements give AMT tweeters an extended response well into ultrasonic frequency ranges. Also, since AMT tweeters can have a relatively large radiating surface that couples with the air, they have a very wide dynamic range.

MartinLogan 6.5" Aluminum Woofer (left pic); AMT tweeter (right pic)

The bass driver uses an aluminum cone, and MartinLogan correctly points out that aluminum can act as a heatsink for the coil which can help alleviate thermal issues. The 35XTi uses a raised concave dustcap that MartinLogan claims reinforces the rigidity of the cone while reducing breakup modes. I am told by MartinLogan that it's superior to purely concave dustaps that tend to flex in the midpoint and do little to add structure to the cone. The raised dustcap adds structure and rigidity, which reduces radial vibration modes. Looking at the bass driver removed from the cabinet, we see a large ¾” thick magnet with a 4 ¼” diameter mounted in a cast polymer basket. It is certainly among the beefier 6.5” drivers I have seen.

MartinLogan’s literature touts the proprietary Vojtko crossover networks in the new Motion speakers. To quote MartinLogan:

“A Vojtko crossover isn't so much a set of design requirements as it is a philosophy. Vojtko crossovers are designed in such a way that all drivers are kept within their optimal frequency range and balanced with one another. The drivers themselves are as much a part of a Vojtko crossover as are capacitors and resistors.”

To me, that doesn’t sound like anything new, and I don’t see what is proprietary about that. That is pretty much the goal of all crossover designs by any speaker engineer. I wasn’t able to get a good look at the crossover network, but MartinLogan claims it uses polypropylene and low-DF electrolytic capacitors, custom-wound inductors, and thermal and current protection.

Inside view of MartinLogan Motion 35XTi Bookshelf Speaker

The cabinet is made from MDF and uses a hefty 1.2” thick front baffle with 0.7” thick side panels. There is a healthy amount of stuffing inside to damp internal pressure waves. The aforementioned port is mounted in the back and is 7” long with a 2 1/2” diameter. That is a pretty large port for a bookshelf speaker. It is flared on both ends. There are no feet on the enclosure, but the speakers are shipped with some adhesive rubber dome feet that the user has the option of applying if they wish. The 35XTi has some cool-looking 5-way binding posts on the back. They have to be the most stylish binding posts I have yet seen. There are two sets of them so the speaker can be bi-amped or bi-wired. As I have discussed in past reviews, there isn’t really a good reason to do this with conventional home audio speakers. Bi-wiring has zero benefits, and the benefits of bi-amplifying bookshelf speakers such as these are very unlikely to be audible. The inclusion of this kind of option is going to cause more problems through misuse and misunderstanding than it will ever solve. Still, it doesn’t hurt anything so long as the instructions in the owner’s manual are followed, and these binding posts are gnarly, so I’m not going to rag on this too hard.

The overall design suggests a bookshelf speaker with a relatively wide dynamic range. A large AMT tweeter, aluminum woofer with large motor, and large port are all indicators of a system that should be able to stay clean at loud levels. This would all come at the expense of low-frequency extension, however. That is a fine trade-off in my view since I would almost always recommend that subwoofers be used with bookshelf speakers anyway. The bookshelf speakers that do chase after deep bass do so at the expense of sensitivity and dynamic range, but they do have their place and uses. On the other hand, when the use of a subwoofer is assumed, that can greatly open up dynamic range possibilities in a smaller speaker such as a bookshelf speaker. The physical demands of moving air in deep bass is a huge constriction in loudspeaker design for smaller speakers such as bookshelf speakers.

Listening Sessions

In my 24’ by 13’ (approximately) listening room, I set up the speakers with stand-off distances between the back wall and sidewall, and equal distance between speakers and listening position. The speakers were set up to face the listening position directly. Listening distance from the speakers was about 9 feet. Amplification and processing were handled by a Pioneer Elite SC-55. No room correction equalization was used. After some experimentation, subwoofers were used with most content. 

Music Listening

I always start closely listening to speakers with material that places emphasis on a clean vocal recording. The human voice is the very last thing a loudspeaker should get wrong, and for that reason it is the very first thing that I look at. One album that comes highly recommended for this is Shirley Horn’s ‘May the Music Never End.’ This 2003 jazz album was the last recording by Horn which capped a 45-year career as a world-class pianist and vocalist. The artistry by Horn and her instrumentalist backing of piano, trumpet, bass, and percussion is top-notch as would be expected of such experienced players. The production and recording quality is likewise excellent and was justly nominated for a Grammy for a jazz vocal album. It’s an album that is as good as any for high fidelity sound system demo material.

Spinning up ‘May the Music Never End’ on the MartinLogan 35XTi speakers, the first thing that jumps out at me is how lifelike Ms. Horn’s voice seemed. The 35XTi speakers rendered her voice in exquisite detail and impeccable imaging. She was sultry and melodic, and track after track demonstrated her mastery of the torch song. Mrs. Horn’s voice was solidly positioned at a center point between the speakers, and I never heard any smearing or ambiguity in the imaging of her voice or that of any of the instruments. The French horn was given the spotlight during some moments and sounded just as richly reproduced as Ms. Horn’s voice. After trying the speakers with and without subwoofers on some tracks, I felt that these speakers did benefit from subwoofer assistance. Low frequencies sounded potent down to a certain point but they didn’t seem to be reproducing the lowest octave of the double bass as strongly as upper registers. Sometimes when speakers have weakness in deep bass, it can be alleviated by simply moving the speakers closer to the wall. That wasn’t quite the case with the 35XTi speakers, where that placement seemed to boost midbass frequencies without shoring up deep-bass output. To be sure, the 35XTi speakers were very listenable without subs on music like this but bringing in subwoofers certainly do give the presentation greater weight and realism. Thankfully, MartinLogan makes some excellent subwoofers as we found out in our review of their new Dynamo series, and a Dynamo sub/35Ti speaker pairing would be a terrific sound system for music like this. With the addition of subwoofers, the 35XTi speakers can beautifully recreate a vocal jazz recording, as I found out in listening to ‘May the Music Never End.’

For an acoustic recording on a much larger scale, I turned to orchestral music, once again digging into the ‘In Classical Mood’ box set. The disc I chose was titled ‘The Thunder of War’ and it was a collection of classical pieces that shared a theme of war, such as selections from Prokofiev’s ‘Alexander Nevsky,’ Holst’s ‘Mars: Bringer of War,’ and Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’ This is a compilation of tracks pulled from other records, so it uses a variety of performers, but they are all of very high-caliber, such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and the Scottish National Orchestra. Since this disc uses a variety of different tracks, the productions also do vary, and sound engineering is not the same from track to track. Nonetheless, the production quality is all quite good even though differences in recording techniques can be heard. One reason why I selected this orchestral disc is that it was bound to have some bombast given the theme of this music, and that seemed like a good choice to give the 35XTi speakers a workout.

So with the volume cranked high, I launched ‘The Thunder of War’ to hear how the 35Xti speakers handled classical music with a bit more verve. As expected, the 35Ti speakers were untroubled by the spirited listening levels. These are not particularly large bookshelf speakers, and it was impressive to hear most of the sound of a full orchestra belted out with such force from these two small boxes. To be fair, subwoofers were engaged, but nonetheless, above 80 Hz, the 35XTi speakers did a stellar job of reproducing the scale of such epic performances. The instruments all had a natural sound, and I didn’t notice anything amiss with timbre or tonality. The acoustics of the venues were also recreated with verisimilitude, and my humble family room had the sound of a concert hall, at least in my particular listening position. Again, imaging was quite good, with instrumental sections distinctly localizable. The disc closed out with a very lively recording of Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ with a rather grandiose finale complete with cannons and church bells, and those cannon shots still managed to startle me even though I was already listening at an elevated loudness level. That should serve as a testament to the dynamic range capability of the 35XTi speakers.

In a recent review, one album that I found was a superb demo for high-fidelity sound was by the chamber choir Cappella SF led my choirmaster Ragnar Bohlin. The performance, as well as the sound quality, was outstanding, so I made a point of acquiring more recordings by this group. They haven’t put out a whole lot of records, but one of them is the recently released ‘Mass Transmission’ where the Cappella SF cover works by the modern composer Mason Bates, who is known for combining electronic instrumental elements with traditional orchestral instrumentation. The tracks on this album are far more experimental than the other performances I have heard from the Cappella SF. As far as chorale albums go, this is an eclectic one, but the artistry is unquestionably world-class as was the production quality from the venerable Delos label. This was not traditional chorale music but it was riveting nonetheless. The 35XTi speakers delivered a very lucid and clear presentation of the Cappella SF choir. The soundstage was broad with the singers spread out over a wide arc in front of the listening position yet imaging was still precise for individual sound sources. There is some especially evocative imaging throughout the second half of the album when some studio-added trickery allowed the sound engineer to have some fun with some stereo effects filters. The choir’s singing was quite lovely and ethereal, but, of course, that is mostly a matter of the original performance and also the sound engineering rather than the reproduction side of audio. However, the speakers were able to convey this intended sound and did nothing to inhibit the performance that I could detect. It sounded authentic. The 35XTi speakers made the choir sound like a collection of voices rather than a blob of vocal sound. The voices were unified when they needed to be and individually delineated when necessitated by the recording. Such gorgeous music given such a crystal clear rendition was very much an aural delight. Every music lover should check out the album ‘Mass Transmission,’ and when they do, they ought to listen to it a high-fidelity sound system on the level of the 35XTi speakers.

 

For something that would press the speakers quite a bit harder, I turned to one of the most raucous genres of music that I know of, namely, hard Drum’N’Bass. Drum’N’Bass music is an electronic music that uses breakbeats with a very high tempo, lots of heavy bass, and all kinds of bizarre synth sounds. The disc I selected came with a 2007 issue of Resident magazine which was a short-lived Austrian publication that was involved with this abrasive style of music. The disc is a mix of various genre tracks DJ’d by Drum’N’Bass veterans Black Sun Empire. I probably should have saved this disc for a subwoofer review on account of the tremendous bass usage, but it is such a loud album that I think it also works well for pushing any kind of speaker hard and not ever letting up. At the volume levels that I intended to listen to, I moved my listening position back much further than usual, in a small effort to preserve my hearing. This was, after all, a test of how much the speakers could endure, not a test for my ears. Of course, I used subwoofers for this album since I did not think these speakers would be able to tackle the deeper bass of some of these tracks. The 35XTi speakers did not break a sweat playing this album at a high loudness level. They have an astonishing punch for their size and did not lose clarity even when driven really hard, much louder than most people would probably ever push them. The choice to give up extension for dynamic range pays off here, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that they are so capable, but nonetheless, staying clean at these loudness levels isn’t something that most similarly-sized and similarly-priced bookshelf speakers would be able to handle. I don’t normally advise that bookshelf speakers be used as party speakers, but in this case, I will make an exception (under the condition that they are used with subwoofers). When paired with a decent sub, they can rock hard, but then the problem becomes one of finding a sub that can actually keep up with them at high loudness levels. At the very least, I would be looking at high-powered 12” subs if not 15”s, and multiples at that. These speakers can take the abuse, but can your subs?

Movie Watching

One movie that is streaming on Netflix that looked as if it could have an interesting sound mix was their recent release ‘Velvet Buzzsaw,’ which stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo and is directed by Dan Gilroy. Gyellenhaal and Russo also starred in Gilroy’s ‘Nightcrawler,’ which was one of my favorites from the last decade, so I had high expectations for ‘Velvet Buzzsaw.’ ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ is set in the Los Angeles art world and concerns the cursed art of a recently deceased man which seems to cause misfortune to the people around it. I set the system to a 2.1 mode so that the 35XTi speakers would have to handle everything that the center and surrounds would have received. That should make a good test for dialog intelligibility as well as all of the other elements used for a motion picture soundmix. I found ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ to be an enjoyable dark comedy, and the 35XTi speakers did a great job in recreating the sound of this odd movie. The dialogue was crystal clear, and the music, which was a mix of pop, orchestral, and electronic tracks, was as lucid as any of the on-screen imagery. The movie does get into moments of eerie and bizarre uses of sound in some dream-like set pieces, and one such moment was where our protagonist is trapped in a room with floating pendant loudspeakers surrounding him that repeated his critiques in a hellish manner. The 35XTi speaker imaged this scene well, with dialogue emitting from specific locations simultaneously all over a room yet the bits of speech were intelligible if one tried to follow them. A wider surround sound system may have imparted this effect better, but the 35XTi pair did an admirable job of tracking individual sound sources of a wide swath in front of the listening position. ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ was a fun and eccentric movie, and the 35XTi speakers are a great choice for those who don’t want to miss a word of the witty dialogue and who also like the music score to sound full and engaging.

I had not seen the 2015 sci-fi epic ‘Jupiter Ascending’ but figured it would make for a good demo for a capable loudspeaker system, as would any big-budget film from the Wachowskis. I kept the system in 2.1 mode, down-mixing everything but deep bass to the 35XTi speakers and I cranked up the volume to see how much of a big-screen sound these could deliver. ‘Jupiter Ascending’ has a lot going on, both visually and aurally. There is a variety of action scenes that take place in outer space, Chicago, a cornfield, and a city in the atmosphere of Jupiter, and they involve all kinds of bizarre science-fiction gadgets, vehicles, and weapons. The soundmix has a lot to balance throughout the movie with this abundance of effects sounds, dialogue, and Micheal Giacchino’s epic orchestral score that brings in choral elements. The 35XTi speakers were able to tie together all the aural pieces and never gave way to confusion even in complicated action scenes. Dialogue remained intelligible even when spoken by any of the many human-hybrid creatures with their heavily-processed speech. Giacchino’s score gave ‘Jupiter Ascending’ a big-screen sound that the 35XTi’s reproduced quite well. It is an epic score that took advantage of the 35XTi’s wide dynamic range. The speakers were very capable of reproducing the large scale of this film’s canvas and the many colors of its sonic palette. While I found ‘Jupiter Ascending’ to be a rather scattershot film dramatically, I still enjoyed the exotic art and sound design, and I liked its cosmos-wide scale. A good sound system is going to help viewers appreciate a cinematic experience like this, and the 35XTi speakers are up to the task on this mark. 

MartinLogan Motion 35XTi Bookshelf Speaker Conclusion

The MartinLogan Motion 35XTi was measured in free-air at a height of 7.5 feet at a 1-meter distance from the microphone, and the measurements were gated at an 11-millisecond delay. In this time window, some resolution is lost below 250 Hz and accuracy is completely lost below 110 Hz. Measurements have been smoothed at a 1/12 octave resolution.

 

The above graph shows the direct-axis frequency response and other curves that describe the speakers’ amplitude response in a number of ways. For more information about the meaning of these curves, please refer to our article Understanding Loudspeaker Measurements Part 1. The most prominent feature of these responses is the elevated region from 800 Hz to about 2 kHz. If it weren’t for that bumped-up region, the 35XTi speakers would have a pretty flat response. The question is, how does that affect the sound? That is an upper midrange region, and I would guess that its effect would be to emphasize the harmonics of vocals and many instruments. This is a heavily-used frequency region, and a plateau like this is sure to color the sound. In my listening to these speakers, I didn’t notice anything particularly unusual in this region, but that could have been due to the recordings I was listening to which may not have highlighted this trait. It might not be obvious listening to the speaker’s sound by itself, but against a totally neutral response, it would be audible. One aspect about it that could hide the audibility is the shape; it is like a high-Q shelf filter, and the abruptness of the Q of this resonance keeps it tightly contained to this frequency band. If I had to guess, I would say this is a deliberate voicing of this speaker.  MartinLogan says that a flat response is not ideal for real-world use. Such a voicing will essentially accentuate any lead instruments, especially vocals and human voices. This might make these speakers a good choice for those who have trouble with dialogue intelligibility. The problem is if there is already an excess of energy in this range within the recording, that could end up making that recording sound ‘shouty’ in vocals and give some ‘glare’ to instrumentals. 

 

The above graphs depict the speaker’s lateral responses out to 100 degrees in five-degree increments. More information about how to interpret these graphs can be read in this article: Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II. One thing we can see more clearly from this graph is that the 800-2000 Hz resonance seems to be composed of two different components: one that is angle dependent and another that isn’t. We can see that the crossover frequency occurs right around 2 kHz, and that the crossover circuit is not perfectly blending the woofer and tweeter. It results in a dip that is pretty mild out to 20-degrees, but does turn into a bit more significant of a dip outside of a 20 degree angle. The fullest and most neutral sound from the 35XTi will occur on-axis. One thing we can see is that the AMT tweeter is pretty well-behaved. Some of the AMT tweeters that we have come across in other loudspeakers proved to be a bit erratic, but this is one of the better AMTs that we have seen.

 

The above polar map graphs show the same information that the preceding graphs do but depict it in a way that can offer new insight regarding these speakers’ behavior. Instead of using individual raised lines to illustrate amplitude, these polar maps use color to portray amplitude and this allows the use of a purely angle/frequency axis perspective. The advantage of these graphs is they can let us see broader trends of the speaker’s behavior more easily. For more information about the meaning of these graphs, we again refer the reader to Understanding Loudspeaker Review Measurements Part II. In this graph, we get a better look at the crossover issue. If it weren’t for that crossover incongruity, the 35XTis would have very nice directivity control. Again, the tweeter seems to be doing its job well. And also, again, we can see that the most even response occurs within 20 degrees of the on-axis angle.

 

The above graph shows the 35XTi speaker’s response behavior along its vertical axis where zero degrees is directly in front of the tweeter, negative degree values are below the tweeter, and positive degree values are above the tweeter.  It should be said here that the vertical response isn’t nearly as critical as the horizontal response, so an imperfect vertical dispersion is much less of a problem. As always in non-coaxial two-way speakers, we see a slight null occur off-axis. This null is quite a bit less severe than in many other loudspeakers of this type. What is far more significant is how much the tweeter narrows in dispersion on the vertical axis. Above 5 kHz, the off-axis dispersion rapidly collapses. As is so often the case, this speaker is best listened to with the listener’s ears roughly level with the tweeter. The response keeps a pretty even keel out to 10 degrees, so there is a little bit of vertical angle in which the sound should stay consistent.

 

The above graphs show the MartinLogan 35XTi speaker’s low-frequency responses that I captured using groundplane measurements (where the speaker and microphone are on the ground in a wide-open area). MartinLogan specifies this speaker with a 50Hz-25kHz response with a +/-3dB window. By my measurements, that does not seem to be the case. I would say that the 35XTi is down by 10dB at 50 Hz and that its +/-3dB window starts a bit above 60 Hz. This speaker is not cut out for deep bass, and that is just fine with me. This is what subwoofers are for. I don’t normally expect bookshelf speakers to tackle deep bass, and there are significant compromises that must be made when they attempt that. We do see a slight amount of extra energy produced by the port, but it shouldn’t be enough to color the sound much. MartinLogan’s overly-optimistic extension rating for the 35XTi notwithstanding, this is not a bad low-frequency response. Boundary reinforcement might be able to extend the bass to get usable output to below 60 Hz, so users who don’t have a subwoofer handy can experiment with placement near room surfaces to increase the bass response.

 

The above graphs show the electrical behavior of the MartinLogan 35XTi speakers. MartinLogan characterizes these as 4-ohm speakers, and I find that to be a very conservative rating. They could easily have specified these to have a 6-ohm nominal load, and I would not have argued. The minima occur at 180 Hz at just a hair under 5 ohms, but that is with a not-terrible phase angle. Most amplifiers, even cheap ones, should be able to drive these speakers just fine. This might be a tough load for a cheap amp to push at a high drive level for a long time, but other than that, it’s not something to worry about (not that anyone is going to use a $1,300 speaker set with an entry-level amplifier). Port tuning looks to be a bit above 60 Hz. I measured the 35XTi speaker’s sensitivity at 88.2 dB for 2.83v at 1 meter which is lower than MartinLogan’s spec of 92 dB for 2.83v at 1 meter. That is a fairly significant difference, but 88.2 is still a bit above average for bookshelf speakers in this class.

Conclusion

Before bringing this review to a close, I will quickly go over the strengths and weaknesses of the product under review, and, as per my tradition, I will start with the weaknesses. From my perspective, the most significant drawback of the Motion 35XTi speakers is their elevated upper midrange response. Personally, I would have hoped for a more linear response from a speaker of this price point. This isn’t to say it is such a notable flaw since, in my listening, I didn’t even really catch it. I do think it would be apparent with certain content, so it is more than just an academic complaint, and, as I said before, will not sound like a totally neutral sound source. On most content, however, I don’t think it would be a big deal or that many listeners would object. In fact, as was said before, it could be advantageous for listeners who have historically had a problem with dialogue intelligibility. In my view, it is a flaw but not a major one.

One other aspect about the35XTi that could be seen as a disadvantage (although I do not regard it as such) is that they don’t really try for deeper bass and so should be used with a subwoofer for many types of content. That is the trade-off for their dynamic range, and you can’t really have a wide dynamic range along with deep bass extension in a bookshelf speaker form. The enclosure size does not allow for it, so some kind of compromise is inevitable. In this respect, MartinLogan chose to give up deep bass in favor of a wider dynamic range, and I think this was a wise decision.

That brings us to the discussion of the 35XTi’s strengths, the first of which is how powerful-sounding they are. They can reach blazing loud levels without losing composure. If I had a more powerful amplifier, I think I could have pushed them even harder than I did. If you need bookshelf speakers that can rock hard, these are a great choice. What’s more, despite my grousing about an imperfect frequency response, I found these speakers to sound very good, and I think most buyers would agree. In my listening, I thought they sounded relatively balanced, and not particularly aggressive. It may be that what gets me is when the response is higher at 3 kHz or above which can make a speaker sound sibilant and aggressive, but these don’t have that quality. I did find vocals to be detailed, and that may have been a consequence of the boosted upper midrange, and if so, it isn’t such a bad thing. Again, this could be recording-dependent. The sound quality overall was very good. Some people might take a look at the response chart and dismiss these out-of-hand for not having a ruler-flat response, but I would encourage them to actually give the 35XTi speakers an audition before making such a hasty decision.

Outside of their performance is their very easy-going appearance. The 35XTi speakers actually look very nice with the grille on, something I haven’t said of many speakers, and are, in fact, the first speaker I prefer with the grille, aesthetically speaking. They have a simple yet high-end look that could fit in with almost any decor. They will also not be picky about amplification since the electrical load is not very demanding, and most amplifiers should be up to task for these speakers.

In the end, I enjoyed my time with the 35XTi speakers, and I think that most buyers will like them as much as I have. They are good with music, so much so that picky audiophiles could enjoy them, but I think they shine in applications that call for a wide dynamic range like concerts and big movies. They are a great choice for those who want bookshelf speakers that can hit loud levels without problems and will also be using subwoofers. They look nice, they sound good, and they can handle larger rooms than many bookshelf speakers in their class. A couple of these plus a Dynamo 1600X sub would make for a hard-hitting system that won’t eat up a lot of space or be an eyesore.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Imaging
Dynamic Range
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value