I live in a hi-fi desert (Arkansas) and recently went on a road trip to evaluate loudspeakers. I evaluated the GoldenEar Triton 3+ and the MartinLogan Motion40, which sounded great, but didn’t make the final cut.
The two that made the cut were the MartinLogan ElectroMotion ESL and the Magnepan 1.7i. Both were amazing in their own rights, but were being pushed by different systems in different rooms of the dealer. The Maggies have a slight lead right now.
My first question is for the gear heads. The MartinLogan is a 6-ohm speaker, so how does the Sprout100 handle that?
Second question, does anyone have any real world experience running either of these speakers with the Sprout100? What pros and cons would you have on them?
I’ll initially be using these speakers in the music room that I converted from a medium size bedroom. These speakers will replace Klipsch RB-51 II Bookshelfs that fill the room and rest of the house with sound quite nicely.
I just ordered Maggie LRS speakers from Magnepan and have a Sprout100 as well. I think the Sprout will power them, but not anywhere near where I would want, so I am purchasing either a Stellar stereo amp (300watts @ 4ohm) or an Emotiva XPA-2 Gen3 (550 watts @ 4ohms) to power them. I think the Sprout will work, but not efficiently.
As an aside, I do not care for Martin Logan electro’s, but am currently running Martin Logan Motion 35XT’s with my sprout and a sub. ML AMT speakers are really sweet.
I was able to audition several speakers and decided on the Magnepan .7 speakers. The Sprout100 sounded great with them, but at 100 wpc it didn’t quite push them enough for my taste. After doing some research and discussion on a Magnepan users Facebook page, I added a Schiit Vidar to the mix, and am now using the Sprout100 as the world’s coolest preamp. The system sounds amazing. More additions to come.
