MartinLogan has unleashed two new speakers that deliver exceptional sound, style and value for money. The US-based, hi-tech speaker specialist has refined its innovative hybrid electrostatic technology to deliver sonic clarity at prices far lower than expected for speakers of their type and quality.

Source and Purity are floorstanding speakers that are almost identical in appearance. Both combine high-performance electrostatic panels with more conventional coned bass drivers, delivering a sonic experience that melds the unique speed and clarity of electrostatic technology with genuinely deep bass.

The main difference between the two models is that the Purity is a ‘fully active’ design – in other words, each speaker has 200 watts of power amplification built in, to drive the speaker across its entire frequency range. It’s an amp and speaker in one, which means you can plug in things like iPods, TVs and computers and get top-quality, high-end hi-fi sound without the need for any other components.

MartinLogan Source

If you’re simply looking for a speaker to place in a regular hi-fi system – in other words, to attach to a separate amplifier of your own choosing, in the traditional manner – then the Source is a terrific choice. Because of its hybrid electrostatic design, it’ll do things with your music that no other speaker at the price can replicate.

However, the fully active Purity brings with it additional flexibility that, for some users, will be a godsend. Here are some of the performance advantages:

• The Purity is effectively a power amp and speaker in one. This means that no external power amplification is required.

• The power amp in each speaker has been specifically designed for the purpose, ensuring an excellent match with the speaker.

• Because it’s built in, the power amp section is naturally very close to the loudspeaker, which in itself can bring performance benefits.

• Because the Purity is equipped with a line-level input, it can be connected directly to any line-level source component with its own volume-level control, such as a portable media player (iPods and the like), flat-screen televisions, computers or CD players with output controls, without the need for an amplifier in-between.

MartinLogan Purity

Of course, the fully active Purity can still be incorporated into a traditional, multi-component hi-fi system if required, by attaching the speakers to a separate preamp, or to the preamp section of an integrated amp or receiver. If you wish, you can bypass the internal amplification and connect the Purity up to an external power amp at speaker-level via the supplied binding posts, just like a regular speaker. And if you want to use the Purity in a multichannel home cinema system, rather than a two-channel set-up, that works perfectly too.

Distributed in the UK by Absolute Sounds, the Source is £1599 per pair, and the Purity is £2090 per pair.