Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?

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sashua

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Hello all,
I am new to the forum here and I have my first question. I am curious as to if it would be possible to construct an ESL panel that is cylindrical. I have seen many designs for a curved panel but none that go the whole enchilada and curve into a cylinder. The major benefit, as I see it, would be an omnidirectional dispersion pattern. I am unaware, however, if this design is mechanically impossible or if there are any major negatives that would make it impractical to construct such a beast.

Can anyone chime in here with advice?

Thanks in advance!
Russ

WerTicus

Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #1 on: 31 May 2004, 07:20 am »
this question should be in the lab... and i dont know the answer :)

welcome to ac!

JLM

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Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #2 on: 31 May 2004, 11:06 am »
The Ohm design used a cylinder.

A tall cylinder, like any simple tall array, produces the same signal along it's entire length and so it cannot image vertically.

If the panel vibrates to produce sound seems like it would require an elastic material for a uniform cylinder to work as the cylinder's geometrically inherent strength would resist the vibrations.  Such a material would seem to be fraught with distortion possibilities.

Rob Babcock

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Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #3 on: 31 May 2004, 11:54 am »
Short of "Star Trek," I don't see how such a device could be made to work in practical terms.  It would seem that the amount of material would be finite & quantifiable, but the cylinder would have to expand and contract.  Since the mass would be the same, the material would have to stretch, meaning that with each "pulse" or cycle, the thickness of the diaphram would change, probably with amplitude or frequency.  I can't imagine how the response would be linear.

Moreover, I'm not sure why you'd want an omnidirectiona tranducer.  Theories vary, but it's certain that you'd get a lot of "room sound" for a very low practical signal to noise.  The current trend seems to be greater directivity, not less, in order to mitigate the effect of the room on the sound.  Companies like Legacy & VMPS has invested a lot of R&D into just such avenues, trying to remove the room from the equation as much as possible.

The Ohm speakers were pretty well reviewed, and the Mirage Omni's have their followers, but neither coud do exactly what you describe.  And look at the famous B(l)ose 901's- they try to use the walls pool table style to add to the sound, and they're just friggin' dreadful!  :lol:

JLM

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Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #4 on: 31 May 2004, 08:19 pm »
But now that I think of it Gallo had a cylindrical tweeter and has one now again.  And both are supposed to sound very good.

doug s.

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Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #5 on: 1 Jun 2004, 04:09 am »
elac also uses a cylindrical tweeter.  they offer one as an add-on super-tweeter to set on top of conventional speakers...

doug s.

azryan

Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #6 on: 3 Jun 2004, 11:29 pm »
There's a lot of disadvantages to a 'stat panel in the first place.

Curving it like M-L does is just a way to kinda/sorta correct the inherent beaming over much of it's range, It's half-assed IMO -having to add woofers AND tweeter to fill out their center speakers.

A cylinder 'stat.... I don't know if it'd work of not? Doesn't seem like it would, but probably possible to make. I doubt anyone will try to make one though.
If anything it could be made out of several curved panel sections joined together so I guess it 'could' be done.

Personally monopole is the only way to go IMO any way.

The best non monopoles I've heard were the SUPER costly MBL's which while not cylinder 'stat panels, they output somewhat like that.

In MBL's own demo room they treated all the walls because of the 'splatter' of output which was already desribed by someone else, and while they were outstanding speakers in many ways... their omni directional output was NOT one of the reasons.

It worked fine for imaging will ALL that room treatment AND sitting dead center, but any off center and it was just like a big cloud of great sound.

Goodbye all imaging really.

Those cylinder tweeters on the Gallos are nice but then you're only making that 'splatter' output on the highs.
The rest is monopole.

The highs are airier from getting splattered and you can still get great imaging and the 'fake' omni/di/bipole depth from the splattered highs so it works well enough.

A matter of taste IMO and what you think is 'right'.

JoshK

Electrostatic Speakers - Is a cylindrical design possible?
« Reply #7 on: 3 Jun 2004, 11:42 pm »
I would tend to agree with Ryan on this matter.