MARTEN Mingus Quintet 2 Statement Edition
Floorstanding loudspeakers
Perhaps Marten should consider licensing the phrase that Kiss, one of the most iconic rock bands of all time, uses to open their live shows - You Wanted the Best, You Got the Best. I have been following the company since the turn of the millennium, and during that time it has grown from one of many brands into a respectable player in the industry. Especially in the last five years I’ve noticed a significant progress in how their house sound has developed. I was more than impressed by how their Mingus Septet sounded in 2023, and I am not less impressed how its smaller sibling Mingus Quintet 2 sounds in 2025.
Funkce a forma
The Mingus Quintet 2 is one of the most stunning speakers out there. It is rather compact for a full-range 3-way floorstander with 24Hz to 100,000Hz of specified frequency response; it is 1.1m tall with the footprint of 28x38cm, and weighs reasonable 64kg, so you do not need two or three people to move it around. The cabinets are built from thick fibre composite boards that are damped internally and finished in 7 layers of piano gloss. Top and bottom panels are available in wood (Walnut, Oak, Zebrano) or piano gloss accents (Plum, Grey, Red, Gold), as well as you can have the speakers completely in black lacquer. The Mingus Quintet 2 is decoupled from the floor via mirror polished stainless steel outriggers equipped with isolators, built for Marten by IsoAcoustics (Marten’s take on Gaia). The feet height defines the gap for the bass reflex port. The fit and finish are flawless and feel very premium, you wanted the best, you got the best, remember.
The three 7” woofers of the Mingus Quintet 2 are signature Marten’s Cell Bass aluminium honeycomb drivers with hidden surround and long excursion. The midrange driver and tweeter are flush-mounted in a mirror-polished faceplate. The midrange uses 5” ceramic membrane for its rigid linearity and high internal damping factor and therefore negligible distortion; the 0.75” tweeter is pure diamond. All drivers are built to specs by Accuton and they sound totally un-Accuton as you’ll read. Marten’s designers have done terrific job in aligning acoustic centres of all the drivers (they are all on a single line at the baffle surface level) and building a simplistic 1st order crossover network around them with watchmaker precision. In its standard version, the Mingus Quintet 2 uses high-end crossover parts and Jorma cabling throughout (Jorma is now part of Marten). The cables end in WBT NextGen speaker terminals that facilitate single-wiring only.
The Mingus Quintet 2 are specified as 6-ohm speakers with 3.4 Ohm minimum, so they should be easy to drive provided that you use adequate power for they are less sensitive at 88dB.
For the Statement Edition that I reviewed, the parts are said to be even higher end and so is cabling where the Jorma Statement is employed. I cannot comment on the sonic differences between the two version of the Quintet, but I know what a single crossover part upgrade can do for sound. Until the Statement Edition option exists, don’t even think about it and go for it.
Nízké frekvence
Good bass is like good foundations of a house. The building itself can be very nice, but the foundations decide whether it will survive all weathers. And it was Brian Bromberg’s bass in the cover version of The Beatles’ Come Together that made me realize what was so special about the Mingus Quintet 2: the bass featured a very unique combination of weight, timbre, and warmth, with amazing speed, textural detail, and articulation. It was that type of exquisitely voiced completeness that be there the softest deviation it would throw the speakers out of the balance. At the same time, the Marten’s bass was deep and luxurious, like a car riding on well-dialled suspension. Now, I do not how Marten did it, considering that these speakers sit on four IsoAcoustics soft feet and the bass is supported by large reflex port firing towards the floor between them. My experience tells me that elastic decoupling smears the sound (always) and bass-reflex baffles are inferior to the closed ones. The Mingus Quintet 2 busts my myth and is the proof that the result may be excellent if you know what you are doing. The pluck on the bass through it was like a gunshot - dynamic, punchy, and non-negotiable. Need to say that the pair of the Mingus Quintet 2 were driven by the new Gryphon Antileon Revelation stereo power amplifier that provides tons of authority and stability for the speakers to work as they are supposed to.
On top of that, the Mingus Quintet 2’s bass profile is adjustable. The dented knob above the speaker terminals switches between four built-in parallel RLC networks with 0.8-1.0 dB between the steps. It affects the response between 50-140Hz with the centre frequency at around 80-100 Hz (see the picture in the gallery below this review). It has consequences – extra parts mean extra costs and higher complexity of the crossover topology. On the other hand, such a flexibility also means that the Mingus Quintet 2 will be easy to set up in most rooms, so the probability of incompatibility is dramatically reduced. Other manufacturers use e.g. foam bass-reflex port plugs which also attenuate bass if necessary but mess up with the phase behaviour and voicing of a speaker. Marten’s solution is more expensive but keeps the purity of music intact.
Čistota rozlišení
With Malia’s Magnetic Lines, the Mingus Quintet 2 erased the room’s walls. Boris Blank knows how to mix magnetizing electronic pieces and the Marten speakers conjured up an immersive experience as if I was sitting in the middle of expanding sonic soundscape, in sort of pseudo-Dolby Atmos. On top of that, the sound was exquisitely smooth and free-flowing. The tweeter is so seamlessly integrated that the speakers sounded as if there were not tweeters at all. Never had I such an effortless experience with a diamond tweeter, another personal myth busted. The drivers have unusually high crossover points, 370Hz and 4000Hz, which may contribute to the transitions between the bands be so non-existent. With eyes closed, the Mingus Quintet 2 did not sound like one-way speakers either – they sounded like no speakers at all or large electrostatic panels, yet with complete low octaves and much more adrenaline. It is something that is not available from large speakers, the smaller ones usually disappear more successfully in a listening space. Recently I have reviewed Tidal Piano 2, that are 2-way speakers using similar drivers. They also are of similar size and similar price, and they have similar voicing too. I liked them very much, but the Mingus Quintet 2 Statement Edition were more complete, more alive, and their character did not change with volume. I auditioned them in approximately 50sqm large room and they filled it with ease. And they sounded special when pushed really hard, and not less special when played in the late-night listening mode. The sound was composed, supple and authoritative at all times, with effortless projection into the room and truly captivating three-dimensional soundstage.
Tonální věrnost
The midrange of the Mingus Quintet 2 Statement Edition was dressed in the shades of gold, red, and copper. Not literally, of course, because the midrange driver is ceramic, but the richness of the sound evoked warmer colours. Indeed, there was a slight shift towards the higher temperature, as if Marten were sending invisible heat rays into the room along with the sound. Usually, the presence of spectral warmth results into a frequency response imbalance or audible distortion. Nothing like that was happening here; the speakers remained transparent in every situation, and I got not only fantastic articulation and tonal perfection from the vocals, but I could also see beyond those vocals into the depths of recording studios and how various voices interacted with walls and with each other (for example, in a cappella pieces), or how the sound remained trapped in vocal booths with no reverberation at all. Speakers that are transparent like these will satisfy even the pickiest detail hunters, yet the detail is so unforced that music is always put first, not the other way round. The Marten Mingus Quintet 2 will instantly cure anyone of streaming nervosa – put down your tablet, forget about searching for anything and skipping from song to song, and just listen for hours, uninterrupted. Close your eyes and sink into music.
Prostorovost
"With every upgrade I listen a lot, not only for what can be improved, but what should remain to keep the sonic character true”, says Leif Olofsson, the Chief Designer of Marten. Last year, when I was totally immersed in my TAD Revolution One project, the larger Marten Mingus Septet was one of my voicing etalons. After completing the TAD project, my reviewing job has become much harder as it is so easy to hear all imperfections and shortcomings of commercially available speakers, independently of their asking price. How can I be impressed? Well, the Marten Mingus Quintet 2 Statement Edition blown me away. Although they share the same voicing philosophy with my resident speakers for the aforementioned reasons, they are better. But they are also much more expensive, even though their basic version is absurdly cheap (71k€) by today's high-end audio standard. The improved Statement Edition, for which you pay 12.2k€ extra, may seem like a big financial upcharge, but I don't know of any speaker in this category that can compete with the Mingus Quintet 2 Statement version. What's more, if I put them behind an imaginary veil and judge them with my eyes closed based solely on their performance, they would be hard to beat regardless of price. If they were part of the Got Talent contest, the Marten Mingus Quintet 2 Statement Edition would be my Golden Buzzer.
Připojené komponenty
- Sources: Audionet ART G3 CD transport, Grimm Audio MU2 streamer/DAC/preamp
- Amplifiers: Gryphon Antileon Revelation stereo koncový zesilovač
- Interconnects and speaker cables: Gryphon Audio Vanta speaker, Audionet IC
- Power conditioning: Gryphon Audio Powerzone 3, Gryphon Audio Vanta
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