Marantz 940

The Marantz 940 was the flagship floor-standing speaker of the company’s Model 9xx series. In Japan it sold at ¥175,000, which was a serious sum for a speaker system in its day. It is a four-way, four-driver design. The spec sheet shows a tall, slim tower (381 mm wide, 1162 mm high, 305 mm deep) with a 12-inch woofer, a 5-inch midrange, a 1.5-inch tweeter, and a 1-inch super tweeter, crossing over at 750 Hz, 2300 Hz, and 5000 Hz. Rated impedance is 8 Ω, sensitivity 90 dB/W/m, and maximum input 150 W. Frequency response is given as 30 Hz to 22 kHz ±3 dB.

The driver engineering is where the 940 gets interesting. The woofer uses a so-called “Horley cone,” a unit specially ordered from Horley Co. Marantz claimed it delivered sharp, transient-accurate bass. The 5-inch midrange, called a “squawker” in period descriptions, is sealed in its own internal back chamber inside the enclosure. That keeps the woofer’s backwave from interfering with it. For the tweeter and super tweeter, Marantz developed a diaphragm it called the LPF (Light Weight Linear Polyestel Film) dome. It was described as extremely thin, light, and easy to form, with good linearity and low distortion. These are purpose-built drivers, not an off-the-shelf parts bin.

The cabinet is a tall-boy floor-standing design. It has an assembly structure for rigidity and is reinforced to keep resonances under control. One unusual feature is on the front baffle, which has ports that are cut and normally sealed with urethane foam filler. The listener can adjust low-frequency playback to suit the room. The cabinet also has a unique bridge at the foot that works as a kind of integrated speaker stand, intended to manage low-frequency room interaction.

Period advertising positions the 940 as the top of the Design Series. HiFI-Stereo (December 1977, p.53) ran a Marantz ad that described the Model 940 as “the ultimate in performance and beauty” and stressed that it was a handcrafted piece of fine wooden furniture. Another ad campaign ran in HiFI-Stereo (April 1978, p.140), Audio (May 1978, p.122), High-Fidelity (March 1978, p.144), and High-Fidelity (June 1978, p.142). It hammered on instrument separation - “Drums - Cellos - Trumpets instead of DrumCselloTsrumpets” - and credited the 5-inch midrange cone driver for blending precisely with both woofer and tweeter. It also credited the tight low-frequency response for uncolored sound.

Documentation gaps remain. No production years have been confirmed, no cabinet wood type is recorded, and no weight is listed. The crossover components and input terminals are similarly undocumented. What survives is a coherent engineering story and a consistent period marketing message: the 940 was Marantz’s statement floor-stander, built around purpose-designed drivers in a thoughtfully braced cabinet with user-tunable bass ports. For a speaker that was almost certainly expensive and low-volume, that’s not a bad record.