Hello Tbone, I feel your pain, I tried and tried to get a pair of CLS's to work for me but no matter what I tried I could only get a ghost of an image. It was there but nothing felt like it had any substance. Finally ended up with a pair of Soundlabs. If you haven't heard these things in awhile you owe it to your self to hear a pair set up right. All the transparency of the ML's but with real bodies and instruments in real space, and real world bass. I cannot listen to ML's for any length of time anymore. Wonder why they had a static display at the last C.E.S.? Not trying to be a prude but if you don't want to give up the electrostat sound give the Soundlabs a shot.
Martin Logans are too damn transparent!
I have a pair of Aerius i and they are pretty much as transparent as the other Martin Logan's. Theres just "less" of the sound in LF and in dyanamic capability. But I've been trying all sorts of electronics with it and I'm not throughly satisfied. I know I love the speakers so their staying. I want a system that sounds detailed airy, precise yet able to sound all the sound on a a referance recording or chesky records cd, yet decently good with most recordings (most of the overly bright pop recordings). I was thinking of getting a Conrad-Johnson Premier 11a amp and Premier 14 preamp with either a Audio Research Cd2 or Classe CDP-1. Any other suggestions of what other people have used to achieve a succesfull system with Martin Logans?