Marten story about the company and it all started…
In his early teens, Leif Mårten Olofsson began devoting his spare time to designing speakers in the family garage. He created numerous versions of his speakers over the years while studying and graduating as an electronic engineer. But it wasn’t until the mid 90s, when he first discovered Accuton tweeters with their pure ceramic cones, that he realised that he could make something truly special.
The rigid pure ceramic cones produced a cleaner, totally transparent sound. He heard more detail in recordings than ever before, accompanied by greater natural dynamics and extreme speed. Out of all the products he’d tested over the years, these were the absolute best.
Leif tried various combinations with bass units from different manufacturers, but the Accuton tweeters were so fast compared to the much slower bass units. Leif didn’t want to lower the speed as he knew this would diminish the realistic dynamics. He tried using a crossover filter design to allow for the slower bass units, but the sound from his creations was not yet reaching the purity he desired.
The solution to Leif’s problem arose when he fitted new bass units with cones in pure ceramic.
It was a eureka moment and the first Marten loudspeaker was born. It was a 2-way, floor standing model with one bass unit and one tweeter. Leif christened it Mingus. The next model was a bigger 2,5-way floor stander, that he called Miles. Now in it’s fifth version, Miles is still available today.
After Mingus and Miles, came Monk. This was a breakthrough speaker for Marten. It got sensational reviews in the leading Scandinavian hi-fi magazines, putting the company in the spotlight and helping it grow.
The Marten design philosophy is to produce loud speakers that reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the original performance captured in a recording – all the fantastic musical moments that music fans cherished on CD and vinyl.
Marten´s creations follow in the tradition of Swedish functionalism. The speaker’s function is given priority over its form. You’ll find no unnecessarily showy elements on a Marten loudspeaker. Every little detail is there for a reason – to offer a fantastic musical experience to the listener. Practicality is also a big design consideration. It’s always been very important to Marten that the speakers can be enjoyed in a normal living space, not in a special constructed listening environment.
At the start of the 2000s, Marten began the development of its first three-way model – a true flagship model called Coltrane that had its international debut in 2003. In Coltrane, the pure ceramic tweeter was replaced with the only thing substantially better – pure diamond. The cabinet was made of a carbon fibre composite, an extremely hard and rigid high tech material. The cabinet materials were selected after extensive testing because it was found to produce fantastic results when combined with the extremely stiff and rigid cones of the diamond and ceramic drivers.
The Coltrane made the Marten name famous all over the world. Then it was time to revisited past Marten models with what new experiences brought. These remodelled classics became the Heritage series.
In 2006, Marten introduced their most powerful speaker system to date, the Coltrane Supreme. Together with four other audio manufacturers from Sweden, this joint venture was an impressive Swedish Statement. It was a ‘cost is no object’ super system that got the whole the world talking and made the Marten name even bigger.
In 2007 Marten had a complete brand overhaul to be more suitable for its new successful designs. The name changed from Mårten Design to the shorter and more concise ‘Marten’.
Since Marten continued to have great success with the Coltrane models, it was a big surprise to many when the Django XL model was introduced in 2012. It was a big, full range, 3-way, 3-woofer floor stander for a surprisingly low price.
In 2012 Marten began investigating how to utilise a brand new tweeter in a pure ceramic cone material called the CELL. This started the huge technical development process that would lead to the arrival of the Coltrane Supreme 2 in 2014.
A joint venture with Accuton, Coltrane Supreme 2 saw the CELL concept brought to life with a first order crossover design. The CELL drivers all had identical acoustic centres, a technique that delivered perfect time and phase coherence. And during the speaker’s development Marten also produced recordings in their own studio to get the truest reference possible for their work. When the recordings were played back in this same studio through the Coltrane Supreme 2, there was no difference in sound quality to that of the original live performance. Some of these recordings were published in the CD Supreme Sessions 1.
In 2015, the Coltrane 3 was developed using the same superior CELL drivers and first order crossover technique as the Coltrane Supreme 2. The result was a stunning 3-way model that offers an incredible listening experience in a more lounge-friendly form.
The three brothers: Jörgen Olofsson – CEO, Leif Olofsson – Chief Designer & Founder
and Lars Olofsson – Art Director
Today, Marten has reached the goal of being one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-end loudspeakers. Through its outstanding research, testing and the use of pure ceramic and pure diamond cones, the Marten brand is now represented in around 30 countries.
The Marten creative process is driven by a passion to recreate timeless music from the greatest recordings and the world’s most skilful musicians. And it’s a passion that gives great satisfaction, because by sharing the creations with the customers, they too can have amazing listening experiences in their homes. It’s a driving force unique to Marten.