MartinLogan Statement 40XW In-Wall Loudspeaker Review

The one aspect that all true high-end speakers have in common is they are free-standing constructs. In-wall, speakers have always been a compromise. MartinLogan is looking to change this with their flagship in-wall speaker system, the Statement 40XW.

You have a problem. It’s not a life-threatening situation yet, but it could turn out to be one. You are an audiophile who can finally afford the speaker of your dreams. The problem is your significant other does not want you to put a pair of six-foot-tall, two-and-a-half-foot-wide speakers into the living room. You have the means to acquire state-of-the-art sound, but you want to make this significant other happy with your choice of a décor friendly speaker.

Enter the MartinLogan Statement 40XW in-wall/on-wall loudspeakers. They check a lot of boxes for your relationship-saving high-end loudspeaker pair. They employ 40 drivers in total, a topic about which there will be plenty of information in this review. They are custom-made by a speaker manufacturer with a pedigree in high-end sound.

They can be mounted IN-WALL, taking up no floor space. And they can be made invisible in the room with their unique paintable grills. Got eggshell white walls? You can have eggshell white speakers built into them that match your décor. Everybody wins! The 40XW can also be placed in an ON-WALL configuration, for those who don’t want to cut holes into their drywall or plaster. One could write an entire review just about placement options for these unique speakers, but we are going to delve into their audio qualities and leave the installation options to your retailer and contractor.

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This portion of the review will be quite different from most loudspeaker reviews. How do we properly test an in-wall loudspeaker when placing the speaker in the wall is impossible? The engineers at Martin-Logan had to solve this same problem when showing the Statement 40XW speakers are various audio shows. They did so by building a custom enclosure around the speaker that replicates the normal installation inside walls anchored by 2x4s. In addition to this, a custom-built frame was crafted by MartinLogan in order to mount the speakers in the proper configuration with the base being about a foot off the floor, and the lowest driver being about 20 inches off the floor.

The speakers arrived on a truck, secured to a heavy pallet, and the overall package was over 1,000 pounds. I had them delivered to my auto dealership rather than my house, just to save the poor driver a lot of extra work. Once we got the pallet into our service department, our mechanics broke down the pallets, leaving two boxes that look a lot like coffins from an 1800s western movie. EACH of those boxes weighed 380 pounds, and my staff loaded them into a Ram 2500 truck for delivery to my home.

Two bottles of bourbon (Knob Creek) were used as bribes to get two of the service department gents to our house to assemble the frames and mount the speakers. It took us about three hours, with the heaviest portion being the speakers in their enclosures which weighed a little over 200 pounds each. Once the frames were properly assembled, the three of us lifted the 40XWs onto the frame and cheered when we fired the speakers up and found they worked perfectly.

The final speaker placement was about three feet from the back wall, and the room itself is a difficult one for speakers. The measurements are 25 x 24 x 9.5 feet with an opening into a much larger kitchen and family area. One part of this test that I like is the fact that they are being tested in an “impossible” room. It is highly likely that most installations of these $50,000 per pair speakers will be in large homes that are a challenge to any speaker system.

Associated equipment is a Marantz 7703 preamp/processor with Audyssey XT-32 room correction software, a pair of Axiom ADA-1500-1 mono amplifiers (325 WPC @ 8 ohms and 650 WPC @ 4 ohms), and a Panasonic DP-UB9000 universal disc player. Subwoofers include MartinLogan’s Dynamo 1600X and Axiom Audio EP-600. Both subwoofers can deliver bass below 20Hz. I started the test using the Axiom subwoofers as they have been in our system for several months, and the price is about the same as the MartinLogan Dynamo 1600X subwoofers. Once we had a couple of weeks with the Axiom subwoofers, we replaced them with the MartinLogan subs. They are working to perfection, and possibly warrant a review on their own in our system. For the purposes of this review, the MartinLogan Dynamo 1600X pair (they are $2,000 each) provided all the bass from 20-80Hz that one could want.

The speakers were crossed over to the subwoofers at 80Hz. One might think that a speaker with eight 6.5-inch woofers (equivalent to a pair of 13-inch woofers in each cabinet) per speaker would not need a subwoofer. Martin Logan followed the physics of this many drivers in a cabinet with very little volume and wisely have limited the bass extension in favor of linearity above 80Hz. The Statement 40XW Line Array In/On Wall Speakers are designed to have no compromises in terms of output from 50 to 80Hz up to and beyond 20,000Hz.

To further explore MartinLogan’s devotion to physics, a conversation about the driver size and the effect this size has on dispersion is in order. Sound is reproduced at frequencies that, for most purposes, run from 20Hz to 20,000Hz. When one hears a sound at any given frequency, that sound is made by a sonic sine wave of a certain length. At 20Hz, this wave is over 56 feet long. As we go up in frequency, the length of the wave gets smaller, which is why a 1,000Hz signal sounds higher in pitch than does a 100Hz signal. This is where many speakers start to have problems, but MartinLogan has avoided problems with science.

Here is this science: The diameter of the speaker’s driver, whether it is a woofer, midrange, or tweeter, must be smaller than the wavelength of the frequency being reproduced, or we will get what is known as “beaming.” Beaming means the driver is sending most of the signal out as a beam – if one could see it, this would look like a flashlight. The sound no longer is natural, and the performance is compromised. MartinLogan’s use of the 3.5-inch midrange drivers eliminates this compromise. Even at its upper limit of 2,700Hz, this 3.5-inch driver is reproducing a sine wave over five inches long. Instead of the sound coming out like a flashlight beam, at every frequency, the sound comes out like a lamp sending out an immersive light that fills the room, and not as a flashlight beam. Having sixteen of these drivers allows the 40XW loudspeakers to deliver high levels of clean sound, anywhere in the listening room, with exceptional fidelity across the bandwidth. For all practical purposes, the MartinLogan Statement 40XW speakers have no limits regarding how loud they can play in one’s room without any audible distortion. By design, it will also sonically disappear into the room. This is a remarkable achievement for an in-wall or on-wall speaker, and further detail will be discussed in the music discs we auditioned through these fantastic loudspeakers.

MartinLogan has spent considerable time engineering the 40XW loudspeakers to be without limits from 80Hz and higher. Based on the science, they should be spectacular performers on any type of music material. Let’s find out how they sound with some difficult movies and music tracks. We are going to do the entirety of this review in 2.2 channel mode: just the main speakers and a pair of
subwoofers.

Star Wars: Rogue One

“Rogue One” may be my all-time favorite Star Wars movie (spoiler alert). At the end of the movie, when the crew with Princess Leia barely escapes with the Death Star plans, one realizes that this scene is where the amazing story from 1977 all began. The sonic wonders in “Rogue One” are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

We open with the John Williams score playing while a small ship enters the atmosphere, and it’s immediately clear that the MartinLogan 40XW loudspeakers are something special. Krennic (the bad guy wearing the white cape) is here to take the Erso family into custody in order to have Erso the Father finish the main weapon in the Death Star. The score is menacing in the background while the blasts of various guns and bombs envelop the room and we are suddenly in the performance.

The dialogue, even in two-channel mode, is crystal clear. Subtle sonics like the sound of wind through grass come through with delicacy, something lesser speakers will totally miss.

When we get to the Rebel Alliance headquarters, there is a brief scene in a cave-turned-X-Wing storage area. The echoes and ambience in this scene are one of many instances where the quality of the 40XW’s drivers and crossover network let you know that these are serious performers. There are images of sound that would make one think that there are surround speakers playing, remarkable for two stereo speakers.

The first time one of those massive star destroyers comes out of hyperspace is a “push you back in your seat” experience. Most speakers play this scene loudly. The Martin Logans make you jump back a bit. It was so much fun that I had to rewind and experience it again.

There are numerous battle scenes, of course, and with each, the 40XWs made me not care that there weren’t any surround speakers nor a center channel. The sheer wall of sound was unlike anything we have experienced in this very difficult room.
No review of this disc would be complete without mention of what it is like when the Death Star fires its main weapon system, even though it was not operating at 100 percent. It is one continuous wall of foreboding that the MartinLogan plays without a hint of compression. It’s enough to make one to be terrified of the Death Star. Again.

Dune (2021)

“Dune” starts off with a narrative to set up the story (which takes place 8,000 years from now) about the planet Arrakis, rich in spices, but under constant rule from outsiders. The House Atreides and its family make up the central characters of “Dune,” and the music track that accompanies the narrative is chilling and mood setting. The 40XWs deliver again on that “wall of music and movie effects” in a way that lesser speakers lack.

Jason Momoa’s gravelly voice is normally larger than life, but he has several scenes in which he talks very quietly, which is a challenge for a speaker. Even at barely a whisper, he is clearly heard. The 40XW pair is again up to the task of reproducing microdynamics. The work done by the MartinLogan team, in regard to the crossover network, pays major dividends.

The arrival of an armada and the ruling class of Arrakis is a vast scene with the music anchored by bagpipes. It is an unusual choice and one which requires the ability to move a lot of air. The machines involved are huge, and a proper system will need to move a lot of air to achieve credibility. The MartinLogans have no problem, they just smile and keep delivering. The scene switches to the new royalty taking off in futuristic helicopters. Instead of rotors, these machines have wings that move much in the way a large dragonfly’s wings would move. Each movement is a distinct “thwack” sound across a wide frequency band, and again, there is nothing from the speakers but authoritative power. These speakers are major-league fun, and we haven’t even gotten to the infamous Dune worms yet!

The worm scene is something special. There is a huge spice mining machine that is scraping the most valuable substance in the galaxy from the surface. By huge, it would probably take up four city blocks. As three of the helicopters carrying Paul Atreides and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) near the ship, a worm is spotted, heading to the mining vessel. The spice is so valuable that the workers will stay on the mining machine until the latest possible moment.

The mining vessel is to be lifted into the air to safety, but the huge machine that attaches to the vessel fails, and the helicopters decide to rescue the 21 workers on the mining vessel.

It is a close escape, and the sonics around it are astounding. The worm itself is so big that it engulfs the four-city block-size vessel with ease, sucking it into the desert. Our heroes barely escape, and the entire room feels like it might cave in, too. If the question is “why do I need 40 drivers per speaker,” the answer is “Dune.”

The MartinLogan Statement 40XWs started to separate themselves from other speakers in our hard-to-handle theater room. The soundstage that was transferred to this disc is remarkable, and the 40XWs managed to throw a huge symphonic extravaganza. The soloist was front and center for the entirety of both concertos, and his agile movements were easily discerned, from the softest note to the most aggressive works. The man was truly a master, and I was not believing how wonderfully adept these large towers were at presenting a solo artist. Of course, there is a lot going on behind Heifetz, and the 40XWs delivered all the power of a live orchestra far better than any speaker we’ve ever had in this room.

The massed strings and woodwinds from this disc were well placed behind and well to the left and right of Mr. Heifetz, and the listener was treated to a massively wide and deep rendering by these speakers. Crescendos were done without a hint of strain, and the instruments all had a substantial dose of being the real thing. The MartinLogan speakers made me want to listen to music in our dedicated theater room instead of our dedicated two-channel listening room. This has never happened in 27 years in our home and left me looking forward to more music.

The speakers also showed off another talent, multi-volume versatility. We had company over and wanted more background music while we chatted over drinks. Everyone was surprised to learn that these huge speakers were delivering such clarity at lower volume levels. For my own listening, with realistic jazz band level volume, the Martin Logan Statement 40XWs make jazz do what it is supposed to do, let one relish the moments of music, and forget the outside world.

What price does one place on a device that can make one feel as if he or she has been transported to Sweden in December 1976 to be present at one of the most famous jazz recordings in history? The MartinLogan Statement 40XW loudspeakers did just that. It was after finishing this disc that I realized I was going to hate to have to send these adept music makers back to the manufacturer. Forget all the individual performers on this disc, and enjoy ALL their collaboration!

The Statement 40XWs were more than up for this task, and now we get the chance to let the pair of Dynamo 1600X subwoofers strut their stuff, too. The world-famous (even my 80-something parents know this track) helicopter rendition was delivered with a wide and deep feel, and every blade “thwack” was delivered with a palpable wave in one’s chest.

When the Groupie walks into Pink’s apartment and starts with her vapid ramblings (she doesn’t know she is revenge sex for Pink’s wife having an affair), she starts from outside the right wall of the room and ends up outside the left side. The width of the sound stage with these speakers is nothing short of fantastic.

The micro dynamics of these huge transducers are something most would not expect based on their sheer size. At the beginning of “Goodbye Blue Sky,” there are birds chirping, a distant plane, and a little boy pointing out to Mum that very plane is up in the sky. Even with this soft presentation from the disc, the 40XWs portray a massive sound stage, with the plane overhead, the birds chirping around the room, but the boy is solid center.

By the time we get to “Run Like Hell,” an almost melancholy feeling is present. This is due to both the concept that Pink has had a sad life, but also that the performance is almost over. “The Wall” is an emotionally engaging performance, and over the 40-plus years in its tenure, I have never enjoyed it more than on these speakers. Calling them “Statement” is not hype.

The MartinLogan Statement 40XW In/On-Wall Loudspeaker is a no-compromise speaker for the audiophile who loves music and movies but has no space for traditional speakers.

Carlo Lo Raso is the Co-Editor-in-Chief at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. Our home happens to be the halfway point between his home in Ohio and his native Toronto in Canada. He has been to our home at least 20 times for visits, and we always spend considerable time in our dedicated, two-channel, high-end listening room. These speakers were not tested in that room. They were tested in the family-friendly, large, hard-to-get-decent-sound-in theater room. It is 4,800 cubic feet and opens to a kitchen/breakfast area that is 7,000 cubic feet.

Carlo does NOT like this theater room for music, and neither do I. On a call recently, he asked how the review was coming along. My response was: “Carlo, the MartinLogans with the subwoofers make the theater room sound like the high-end listening room.” There was a moment of silence, and Carlo then responded: “Damn, that’s saying a LOT! I wish I could be there to hear this!”

This room was used to test these line-array speakers because I wanted to put them into as difficult an environment as possible to explore their capabilities. The prospective purchaser of a pair of MartinLogan Statement 40XWs is likely going to have a large home with lots of open spaces. Speakers will be challenged in this environment, and this entire review was built on that premise.

MartinLogan has succeeded at EVERY level with the Statement 40XWs. They are the product of solid engineering with credible science backing the design. They are then fine-tuned by the same folks that bring us their renowned electrostatic loudspeakers. They make great music, dialogue, explosions, and everything else we want to experience in our home entertainment systems.

I am going to hate to see them go back. They are a monumental achievement.

Let’s Look at a Measurement and Talk About Your Room (AKA Linear is our friend):

This next section is dedicated to those who are not necessarily audiophiles, but rather are movie and music lovers who have both the means and desire to have an EXCEPTIONAL home entertainment system but don’t quite understand all the audiophile terms that are thrown at them.

The above measurement shows what we call an in-room response curve. This response curve is a picture that shows how well a speaker will reproduce every source of sound, from deep bass like kick drums, movie explosions, and string bass to male vocals, female vocals, and all the way up to instruments like trumpets, clarinets, and those little triangle things at the back of the orchestra.

The graph you see here shows a response curve in our room that is +/-4dB from 25Hz up to about 14,000Hz. This is the range where all your music lives. Most speakers that are measured outdoors, where there are no walls or ceilings to reflect sound, have a response curve that is +/-3dB. Outdoors will always show the flattest curve, which is what we want to see in this graph. In the simplest of terms, this means that we were able to get this response curve to be very close to an outdoor measurement in our theater room.

It is not unusual for even a high-quality speaker to have an in-room response curve to vary by +/-12dB across from the far left of the curve to the far right. This is the point where the science guys like to toss around a lot of techno talk to impress themselves. Let’s put this into plain language so that you can get a feeling for the importance of a flat curve. Here are some basic facts about

sound:

Let’s put the above information into two musical instruments, a kick drum, and a piano. Let’s say we are dealing with a large kick drum that has as its fundamental frequency a 50Hz sound wave. That 50Hz means it is vibrating 50 times per second. Middle C on the piano is about 262Hz. This is why middle C on the piano sounds higher than the fundamental 50Hz kick drum, it’s vibrating 262 times per second vs. 50 times per second.

With a response curve like the MartinLogan speakers have in our room, the kick drum and middle C on the piano will both be played as the engineer who made the recording intended. This will sound good to our ears.

Now, what happens if we had a speaker that couldn’t have the type of response curve that the MartinLogan’s had in our room, but were rather +/-12dB? Let’s say that we had the volume adjusted so that we would expect an 80dB level of sound reaching our ears on a theoretically perfect speaker. If one has a speaker that is +10dB (90dB) at 50Hz and -10dB at 262Hz (70dB), the piano’s middle C will sound one-fourth as loud as the kick drum. This will sound bad to our ears.

The term one often hears about a response curve such as the one we were able to get with the MartinLogan Statement 40XWs (plus two MartinLogan Dynamo 1600X subwoofers) is linear. LINEAR is the goal we want to achieve because we want each and every instrument, vocal, and movie effect to be EXACTLY as loud in our room as the sound engineer intended.

We were able to achieve this level of LINEAR response from the 40XWs (plus the MartinLogan Dynamo 1600X subwoofers) in our room using nothing more than a six-year-old Marantz pre-amp with somewhat dated room correction software and with no additional room treatments. I took no special care in the placement of the speakers when they were installed. Now one could say, “But you can use your room correction to flatten the response curve of any speaker in a room. What’s so different here?” What’s different here is these are massive line-array speakers designed to be installed in a wall. You can’t just move them around, wherever you want, to get the best sound in your room. The engineers at MartinLogan designed these speakers to have almost limitless dynamics. Lesser speakers would not be able to take advantage of room correction in the same way the 40XWs can because they just don’t have the horsepower to do so. I purposefully made this as difficult a test of these speakers as I possibly could.

The reason for this was my goal was to find out just how capable these speakers are. If you have read this far, you are interested in results. You might not be that science person, but that doesn’t mean you don’t care about music. Here are my thoughts about someone who is considering the installation of an expensive audio system that won’t be visible in the room. That is what the Statement 40XWs represent, and they live up to the promise of delivering state-of-the-art, immersive sound into the most difficult home environment one can imagine.

In over 40 years of being an audiophile, industry professional, and audio perfectionist, I have NEVER heard speakers that can be non-intrusive physically as the MartinLogan 40XWs while still delivering state-of-the-art sound. The amount of engineering effort and talent that went into making these amazing transducers is well beyond anything I have ever experienced. When offered the chance to do this review, I knew it would be difficult to do. I decided to do this review for one reason: You.

You want to know why you should commit to speakers that you will not typically be able to hear before you purchase them. I spent three months with the 40XWs, putting them through countless torture sessions.

Your MartinLogan dealer has a product, and the expertise, to take these speakers and transform your living space into a concert venue and movie theater. This dealer also will be able to guide you to all the electronics you will need to deliver an even higher level of performance than we were able to achieve here. This includes the surround processor and amplification necessary. The 40XWs will, with the help of the dealer and installer, give to you a system that will deliver beautiful sounds for a lifetime. These speakers will sound accurate, musical, and powerful today, tomorrow, and 25 years from now.

I cannot possibly give a higher recommendation for a room transforming system than a properly installed system anchored by the Martin Logan Statement 40XW loudspeakers. You don’t have to be an audiophile to do this. In fact, if you know nothing other than you want the best sound possible from an invisible system, meet with a MartinLogan dealer and let the performance begin.