[Rclark]

 
 For me, it was having box speakers of some type my whole life, and reading about these electrostatic or planar types, and they always seemed so exotic to me. I would look at these large panels and just wonder what they were like. And I'd read impressions and they always read... amazingly.. Seductive sound, big sound, coherent, super fast mylar, all that surface area to produce sound with, as opposed to a tiny little tweeter and little 5 or 6" drivers... Directional sound so much less room interaction. A wall of sound, big, like real life. Unique and cool looking. The best and most natural bass ever... That appealed to me especially, as I was getting into jazz.

And they were right. Man, I don't want to say perfect speaker... Because I haven't heard all that's available out there (but funny how everything boxed now has a planar tweeter, and now planar mids too  )...but man they sure don't do much wrong.

In fact, if I had to have one complaint... it would be that for certain types of music they won't give you that punched in the chest midbass or really loud low bass. Luckily I have a sub that provides both seamlessly, the Epik Legend. I guess in that sense I've achieved Nirvana with my system.

Well, can't say that until I get some diffusers in here...

All I hear is music, there is no box vibration, that little give away  , just close your eyes and there is a band in front of you, dimensional and alive.
 

[SteveFord]

I'm with RClark on this one.
I got them 20 years ago and that was the end of enclosures for the Ford household.
I do have some old Fishers and JBLs but they're busy collecting cobwebs.
In  all honesty, I only like electrostatic headphones.  The sound of conventional ones just aren't all the appealing to me.

There is one small point I differ on: the giant ones will do that bass trick in spades. 
You just need an imposing amount of surface area and a little mad scientist-type power behind you. 

[BruceSB]

Here is a little story about hearing "the box".
I have a pair of acoustat spectra 22, full range electrostats.
A number of years ago I was buying a new preamp and was at the dealers having a listen.
The speakers were top of the range proacs, so they were pretty good speakers.
As I listened something was wrong.
I just could not put my finger on it.
When the dealer came back I remarked to him about it and he said, "Bruce you are hearing the box".
That is the issue with planars.
There is no box to listen to!!!
Reality is we want to listen to the music not the box!
Planers are great and they stretch wider than just maggies or electrostats!
As for me, I cannot understand why people would consider anything other than planars.
But then I am biased!!!
Happy (planar) listening.
Bruce

[SteveFord]

That's the brilliant part: if the box is the problem get rid of the box and turn the room itself into the box.
Does anyone know who came up with the first planar speaker?  I tried doing some research but I never got a real answer.

[medium jim]

That's the brilliant part: if the box is the problem get rid of the box and turn the room itself into the box.
Does anyone know who came up with the first planar speaker?  I tried doing some research but I never got a real answer.

Without researching I have to guess Bob Carver made the first....

The beauty of Planars/Magnepan's for me is their life size soundstage and the fact that they can disappear into nothing and that includes the walls if you really have them positioned right.  This is not to say that they are the most revealing, coherent speakers that I have experienced that also have insane clarity, speed and the best damn mids and highs out there.

Jim

[SteveFord]

Bob's old but not THAT old!
Swiped from Wikipedia:

Arthur Janszen was granted U.S. Patent 2,631,196 in 1953 for an electrostatic loudspeaker. The developers of the Tri-Ergon sound-on-film sound film system had developed a primitive design of electrostatic loudspeaker as early as 1919. Mr. Janszen's company, JansZen still makes an evolved version of his original design.[3] The KLH Nine was designed in the mid-1950s by Arthur A. Janszen, and thousands were sold after the design was brought over to KLH in 1959 and put into regular production

[medium jim]

Bob's old but not THAT old!
Swiped from Wikipedia:

Arthur Janszen was granted U.S. Patent 2,631,196 in 1953 for an electrostatic loudspeaker. The developers of the Tri-Ergon sound-on-film sound film system had developed a primitive design of electrostatic loudspeaker as early as 1919. Mr. Janszen's company, JansZen still makes an evolved version of his original design.[3] The KLH Nine was designed in the mid-1950s by Arthur A. Janszen, and thousands were sold after the design was brought over to KLH in 1959 and put into regular production

Bob is going what!  Like I said, I didn't research it....it is amazing that it was that early...sometimes old is new...

Jim

[SteveFord]

This is off topic but it did get me curious as to when the first Class D amplifier hit the scene.
I was thinking 1930s but it looks like 1950s was the start:
http://amesp02.tamu.edu/~sanchez/ECEN%20607%20Class%20D.pdf

It's funny how most of the technological breakthroughs in audio or motorcycles or whatever have actually been around forever, they're just refinements and reintroductions. 
Electric start, water cooling, multiple cylinders, all of the Japanese technological breakthroughs  - the British and Italians did it all back in the 1920s.
Back to why you love your planars...

[jimdgoulding]

Well, it's been awhile for me.  I previously owned Acoustat Three's and drove them with a set of Kenwood LO7 monoblocks back when I had a barn for a listening room.  Yep, me, my dog, a pot bellied stove and a wine rack,  A mostly empty wine rack,  Now, what I remember is a top to bottom coherence that was pleasing and a generous porportion to imagery.  And, sound you could love,  I did, anyway.  I had only an analog front end (digital wasn't a reality then) with a Counterpoint SA5 tube pre.  Used Fulton cables if you can remember those. 

[josh358]

For me, it was when a friend got a pair of KLH-9's. That would have been the mid 70's. I had a pair of AR-11's and they were reasonable for the day, but they didn't make a real image and I was blown away by the ability of the 9's to create what HP would start calling a soundstage. I tried and tried to get my 11's to do the same thing. Needless to say, the 9's were also much cleaner and more detailed. So when I had my first real job, I saved up $700 and bought a slightly used pair of Tympani 1-D's, solely on the basis of reviews -- I'd never heard the things. And fell in love with them. That would have been 1980 or so.

My friend still has and uses his 9's and I'd still have my 1-D's if my current listening room weren't too small for them.

[ptmconsulting]

I always associated planers with Magnepan. They soounded really pretty on classical music, but never thrilled me on jazz or rock. They just never had they dynamic swing that a box speaker gave me.

Then I heard Martin Logans. They had more clarity and more pop than a Maggie, but still sounded disjointed to my ears. Never quite integrating properly. I've heard various other planers and always seemed to find some kind of fault that never made me commit.

Now I've bought Apogee Duetta Sig's and my complaints are over. They are efortless with an appropriate sized (mad scientist powered) amp. They are seamless, being entirely ribbon. They have so much more dynamic than other panel speakers, and with the addition of a sub, give me most (but not all) of that bass kick I want. They image and detail in spades, and have a huge deep and wide soundstage after appropriate room placement and treatment. Yes, they are fussy to place properly, but once achieved they are bliss.

[jhm731]

Thought you planar lovers would enjoy this recent comment about 20.7s by TAS reviewer R.Greene:

"They are trying to integrate two drivers which cannot be integrated well. There is no way to integrate a wide mid panel and a narrow ribbon tweeter set off to the side.

They ought to know this but they seem to think that they can get away with it. Seems maybe they can.

The only way to combine a ribbon with a big wide driver would be to divide the big wide driver in two and put the ribbon in the middle. It would not be perfect but it would have some chance. A little chance. Off to the side has no chance at all.

I have had enough of thinking about bad speaker ideas. I think I shall go listen to some music. - REG"

FYI - REG's speaker of choice are Harbeth 40. Here's a picture of his listening room:

[medium jim]

Let's all wish "Reg" all the best!

Jim

[Emil]

PTM

Maybe the lack of dynamics that you heard were do to lower powered amps as compared to the brute thats driving your Apogees now.
I've experienced a huge difference in dynamics when I went form a 200 watt integrated to my current McCormack DNA225 ( 400 watts into 4 ohms). Im toying with the idea of trying a 1k watter digital amp out of curiosity

[Emil]

Not exactly how I pictured the listening room of reviewer for a major audio magazine.

[Rclark]

Harbeth. Not knocking what the guy said, just his speakers. For how much they charge for those, they are fugly. Unrefined 70's style box, on a footstool.

Usually with a high priced speaker they put some effort into making it not look like puke. Usually, but not always. I'm never one to complain about aesthetics of gear but in this case Harbeth's baffle me.

[josh358]

Thought you planar lovers would enjoy this recent comment about 20.7s by TAS reviewer R.Greene:

"They are trying to integrate two drivers which cannot be integrated well. There is no way to integrate a wide mid panel and a narrow ribbon tweeter set off to the side.

They ought to know this but they seem to think that they can get away with it. Seems maybe they can.

The only way to combine a ribbon with a big wide driver would be to divide the big wide driver in two and put the ribbon in the middle. It would not be perfect but it would have some chance. A little chance. Off to the side has no chance at all.

I have had enough of thinking about bad speaker ideas. I think I shall go listen to some music. - REG"

I'm curious, where did he say this? The problem I have with it is that they do separate the drivers and it works great. Would a coaxial design be better? Sure, in principle, but in practice, there are practical tradeoffs such as cost. The same is true of most loudspeakers, planar and not -- there are sonic penalties to separating the drivers or making their arrangement asymmetrical, but while most MTM arrangements have become popular in recent years, most speakers still aren't coaxial -- at a minimum, it increases driver cost so forces the manufacturer to use cheaper drivers at a given price point, so the tradeoff may not be worth it. Not that I don't think a coaxial Maggie would be cool, I just don't think it's necessarily the right trade at a given price point.

I know they're aware of coaxial concepts because when I asked Wendell about a triple coaxial ribbon, he said they'd considered it decades ago, but that it was too expensive. So I don't think this isn't a case of bad design, but rather good design to a practical price point. After all, you can get coaxial Wisdom planars, but they're in the high two figure range -- much more expensive than the Magnepan line. I also asked Wendell about the separation between the midrange and tweeter, and he said that while of course it's best for the drivers to be as close as possible it was a structural necessity so the speakers could withstand shipping.

All of which is to say that it's easier for us to speculate about what would be nice than it is to design a practical product to a price point.

I guess I should add that Magnepan has done some very clever engineering in both the 1.7 and 3.7 to overcome these limitations. They are not just a matter of side-by-side drivers as one might think. Both use .5-way technology, electrical in the case of the 1.7 (going by Peter Gunn's schematic) and acoustical in the 3.7 (judging by a picture I saw with the grille cloths off). (I don't know what's under the hood of the 20.7's.) There is more to the design than meets the eye, the very opposite of the "bad speaker ideas" to which Reg refers. I don't think anyone equals them in their use of clever engineering to optimize price/performance ratio.

(Also, in the planar magnetic/quasi ribbon models, the tweeter is off to the side rather than in the center because that's where the diaphragm moves least, so it reduces IM. This is in Jim Winey's original patent.)

[rpmartins]

Have you ever heard Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny´s "Beyond the Missouri Sky" through your planars?
The bass is huge 
If anyone doesn´t know this kind of speaker and starts with this album, probably will think they are the most bass powerful on earth 

I recommend buying this album because:
a) it´s wonderful 
b) to ear what I thought Magnepan aren´t capable of.

[jhm731]

I'm curious, where did he say this?

It came form his Yahoo forum:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/42273

[josh358]

Thanks. Seems someone was complaining about the old ribbon tweeter brightness issue. Which always leads me to wonder whether they've never heard of tweeter resistors.