Oscar Duo

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.