Marten · Oscar · Bookshelf

Oscar Duo

Product description
The smallest thing Marten makes, and the model that opened the Oscar line at Munich in 2019 — the attempt to get the house sound into a cabinet that costs a fraction of a Coltrane. Two ceramic drivers, a 25 mm dome and a 178 mm cone, both drawn up for this speaker rather than bought off a shelf: ceramic because it is stiff and light enough to stay pistonic across its band, with a vented copper-sleeve pole piece on the mid-bass to hold distortion down. Reflex-loaded through a wide rear tunnel, in a 25 mm fibreboard box only 20 cm across, which is how a two-way this size reaches 37 Hz. The crossover is deliberately second-order at 2.5 kHz — Marten's argument is that steeper slopes cost dynamics — on copper-foil air-core coils with silver/gold capacitors, Jorma wiring and WBT Nextgen terminals. 86 dB and a 3.1-ohm minimum make it the one in the range that wants a serious amplifier. Stand sold separately.

Performance — where it sits in the catalog

BassTrebleSensitivityEasy loadCone area
Bass reachTreble reachSensitivityEasy loadCone area
Oscar Duo37 Hz20 kHz86 dB6 Ω254 cm²
Median45 Hz25 kHz87 dB6 Ω219 cm²
How to read this chart

Each axis spans the range the 452 bookshelves in the catalog actually cover, so equal distance means equal difference — and for cone area and the two frequencies, which are read as ratios, equal distance means equal ratio. The dashed inner ring is where the scale starts, not zero. Ranked within a class because a bookshelf measured against floorstanders is feeble on every axis for the single reason that it is a bookshelf. Cone area is summed from the drive units — no maker publishes it. Bass and treble reach are quoted to different tolerances and only 56% of the catalog says which, so read those two axes as approximate. The grey outline is the median of this speaker's own class, the 380 passive bookshelves — same type, same side of the active/passive line, which matters because the two halves are not the same product: the median active bookshelf carries 155 cm² of cone against the passive median's 219. Median rather than mean, because a handful of very large cabinets would drag a mean above most of the class it claims to describe.

Units
TypeBookshelf
HiFi ladder position#307 of 452 bookshelf
PowerPassive
Height400 mm
Width200 mm
Depth320 mm
Footprint640 cm²
Space taken25.6 L
Weight13 kg
EnclosureBass reflex, rear port
Drivers1× 25 mm tweeter (ceramic dome), 1× 178 mm mid-bass (ceramic cone)
Crossover frequency2500 Hz
Frequency response37–20000 Hz (±3 dB)
Sensitivity86 dB
Impedance6 Ω (min 3.1 Ω)
Power handling150 W
MAP (USD)$10,500 / pair
Where to buyCheck availability ↗
Manufacturermarten.se ↗
Product pageOpen product page ↗

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