Planars/ Electrostats benefits over box speakers?

Jim, you've received lots of good comments, but one thing that hasn't been addressed which should be considered before embarking on one of these paths is amplification.

Maggies present fairly benign impedance characteristics to the amplifier, even though their impedance magnitude is in most cases nominally 4 ohms. However, they need a lot of power. If you still have and are planning to keep the Rogue Sphinx I recall that you were using not long ago, its 155 watt capability into 4 ohms (per Stereophile measurements) might be marginal (or worse) with a Maggie, depending on listening volume, room size, the dynamic range of the music, etc.

Martin-Logans, on the other hand, do NOT present benign impedance characteristics. As with many electrostatics and electrostatic hybrids, their impedance decreases to very low values in the upper treble region, typically reaching 1 ohm or even less at 20 kHz. With impedance phase angles that are significantly capacitive at many frequencies, which is much more challenging for an amplifier than the Maggie's mostly resistive impedance.

The impedance characteristics of an M-L will result in sonics that are particularly sensitive to the output impedance and other characteristics of the amplifier that is being used. The negligibly small output impedance of most solid state amplifiers (including the Sphinx) will interact with their decreasing impedance at high frequencies in a manner that will give greater emphasis to the upper treble, and perhaps the lower treble as well, in comparison with tube amps. And the tonal balance which will result with tube amps will tend to differ among different tube amps, due to their differing output impedances. And some amps will simply not be able to handle the very low impedance at high frequencies with any kind of good results.

In the absence of an audition, or specific and credible inputs from others, I would not assume that the Sphinx would be happy dealing with a Martin-Logan.

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al

07-05-15: Cerrot
When my system isn't knocking my sox off, I check the phase and sure enough, house keeper cleaned the buttons on the remote again. ts like a speaker is wired backwards (lol). Sucks the life out of the presentation.

Presumably the switch on your remote just affects absolute phase, aka polarity, which ZD correctly referred to just above. If changing that setting results in major changes as you described above, and not just on those few recordings which have been engineered with "purist" techniques (i.e., just two or three mics, and minimal post processing), then what is most likely occurring is that your preamp itself sounds different in the two settings.

Keep in mind that when you change that setting you are not only changing the polarity with which the recording is played back, you are also changing the circuit configuration within the preamp.

BTW, although I haven't read through a lot of this thread, I second all of the comments in ZD's most recent post. I would just add to it that for a speaker to be time and phase coherent (or simply time coherent, which automatically implies phase coherence as well), in addition to the drivers moving in the same direction at any given time the crossover (if there is one) has to be first order (i.e., 6 db/octave). Among box-type speakers which have a crossover, only those made by Vandersteen, Thiel, and Green Mountain Audio, and perhaps a small handful of others, meet those criteria.

Regards,
-- Al