What's unique about the brand
What reviewers are saying
We read all the reviews. Here's what reviewers feel most strongly about:
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Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Products
Lineup comparison
We think it's helpful to understand how their products compare. To learn more about each, scroll to the section above to click through to individual product pages.
LM5
- Positioning: A compact and high-end loudspeaker designed for buyers seeking a refined performance in smaller spaces.
- Description: Uses a carefully engineered cabinet with phenolic laminated wood, a front-firing bass reflex port, and hand-welded passive crossovers, ensuring a clean and controlled sound despite its small size. Compared to the larger LM3 and LM6, its compact design makes it ideal for smaller rooms and lower budget setups while still delivering high-quality sound.
LM3
- Positioning: A mid-tier two-way loudspeaker focused on delivering clear, balanced sound with a simpler design.
- Description: Features an innovative crossover design with high-grade components and a dual down-firing bass-reflex system that enhances energy control and clarity. In contrast to the compact LM5 and the more specialized LM6, its design suits medium-sized rooms.
LM6
- Positioning: A specialized loudspeaker built with a sealed enclosure for enhanced control and versatility in placement.
- Description: Uses a dual-concentric midrange/woofer driver with an Alnico magnet paired with an AMT horn tweeter, all housed in a fully sealed cabinet to achieve precise low-frequency control and tonal coherence. Compared to the open two-way LM3 and the larger LM2, its sealed design makes it suitable for quieter listening environments.
LM2
- Positioning: A premium three-way loudspeaker that aims to deliver near-flagship quality in a slightly more compact format.
- Description: Features a powerful cabinet crafted with 5-axis CNC machinery, phenolic laminated wood, hand-turned bass reflex ports, and a hand-welded passive crossover with high-grade components. When compared to the flagship LM1, it offers similar dynamic performance and sound quality in smaller rooms.
LM1
- Positioning: The flagship loudspeaker renowned for its majestic design and full-range, dynamic performance.
- Description: Features a groundbreaking four-way system with advanced crossovers, massive cabinet construction, and superior components that carefully control and deliver every nuance of the sound spectrum. Compared to the slightly scaled-down LM2 and others in the lineup, its unmatched power and comprehensive performance set it apart for buyers with a high budget and a need for expansive, room-filling sound.
Used
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Similar
Speakers
brands
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
About the brand
The Grand Reference loudspeakers embody and advance the groundbreaking principles initially introduced in IO Design’s Naked speaker concept, pushing technological boundaries and utilizing the highest-quality materials available. Unlike traditional boxed or dipole speaker systems—which inherently produce distortions, compression, and energy loss—IO Design's approach achieves extraordinarily low distortion, minimal interference, and an even distribution of energy across the entire audio spectrum.
The core objective of IO Design is to replicate the immersive energy and emotional impact of a live musical performance within a home environment. Their speakers generate authentic acoustic presence, faithfully capturing dynamics, micro-dynamics, and harmonic nuances, thereby bridging the gap between live sound and home audio reproduction.
IO Design’s meticulous engineering ensures consistent sound pressure at any listening position, maintaining purity, clarity, and naturalness of sound without compromising dynamics or detail. The result is a truly immersive and emotionally compelling listening experience, distinctly superior to conventional speaker designs.
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
The concept itself, we are the first and (as of today the only ones) able to produce huge bass and devastating energy in the room with a dipole/baffleless architecture. Design is a factor, crossover another pillar, vibration control and many other points. Every mm2 in the speaker is discussed to the bone always for improvements. Our aim is a formula 1 car no other point than performance, design and crafting.
What's your approach to customer support?
We have distributors and dealers in some countries already and we are evaluating new ones. Being IO Design dealer/distributor is a mission because you are not selling normal hi-end loudspeakers but truly F1 devices. The network will hopefully grow, in the meanwhile, where we don't have dealers, we manage the customers directly or, even better, we ask the Customer to put his dealer in contact with us to make him safe and easy.
If a Customer needs setup advise, we follow up analyzing also the acoustics if needed. Should any tech issue happen, we would support the dealer with parts and repair advise or we would ship back the units for check and fixing.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
It depends from system to system and ambient to ambient. We always choose the more extreme quality tracks to show the true potential of the speakers because it's way above the current competition. Usually we prefer tracks where bass is very evident because it is a strong point (even if it might seem counter intuitive for a baffleless design). Also high transients, because the energy the speakers pushes in the room is much higher than anything else on the market.
What other products pair best with yours?
Any high quality amplification works, digital, tubes, solid state. The important is that the amp has control and current, watts are not so important, even 40-60 can do but the quality of the amp need to be xcellent to get profit of the shocking realism of IO Design speakers. Ypsilon Electronics is well tested for instance. Tubes also perform well, however they are usually a bit more euphonic on bass and they have more distortion; this is a pity because IO Design speakers are so clean and distortion free... In normal boxed speakers you don't notice, because those speakers are themselves distorting music with the box compressions...
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
Marten uses high quality drivers that are custom to our models often in exotic materials like diamond, beryllium, ceramics and aluminium. Marten is one of very fiev manufactures that is implementing first order crossover filters. This we do in all models in the Mingus and Coltrane range.
What's your approach to customer support?
Initially customers are advised to contact the dealer they bought their speakers from, when support is needed, if they have bought speakers second hand it's recommended to to contact the appointed distributor. Of course customers are also welcome to contact Marten directly via our info email and get support that way. We value customer support highly and help our dealers and distributors to take care of customers if something has happened. Customers should never ever hesitate to contact us or our partners.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
We have many but here are three of our test tracks, St James Infirmary (live edition) Angela Brown, Someday you'll be sorry Harry Connick Jr, V. Panis angelicus (Soprano) Ensemble vocal de Lausanne.
What other products pair best with yours?
We do a lot of testing and development on brands like Halcro, Audiaflight, MSB and CH-precision. But we also know that customers use Gryphon, Goldmund, Soulution and Esoteric among many other brands in their home systems.
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?










































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