In the ultra-high-end sector, no one cares about the law of diminishing returns. It is solely a question of what is technically feasible – not within the bounds of reason, but in absolute terms. The Marten Coltrane Supreme Extreme is the ultimate embodiment of this philosophy: producing each pair of speakers consumes 800 man-hours and 400 square meters of carbon fiber matting. Drivers featuring ceramic and diamond diaphragms – meticulously fine-tuned by coils and capacitors from Mundorf and Duelund – are to be expected as a matter of course in this price range. What is surprising, however, is the purist nature at the very core of these highly complex behemoths: driven by an obsession with flawless time-domain performance, designer Leif Mårten Olofsson deliberately sets himself a difficult task by using exclusively first-order filters in the crossover. Consequently, the incredibly elaborate construction – and above all, the drivers, some of which are extremely costly – are an absolute technical necessity. In the listening room, this effort pays off spectacularly: it is astonishing to hear the coherence and spatial precision achieved by a speaker whose driver diaphragms span several square meters. It is fascinating to witness how these visually imposing towers – the moment the play button is pressed – seem to completely dissolve, along with the listening room itself, replaced by a strikingly convincing sonic image of the musical performance.
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