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Thanks Phil, Bob has made a mistake in not keeping a pair on hand for demonstrating. steve
He's not the only one to do that. I have a buddy who builds speakers and sells them online. Until recently, he rarely was set up to demo.Bob needs a lot of word of mouth promotion as he hasn't been to shows, or participated in forums. If his speakers are good, especially at a price point, he will do fine, but he's losing sales now. steve
I asked Bob a question about flat panel electrostatics having a narrow sweet spot and this is what Bob told me https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=399617840226296&id=161639017357514&comment_id=407429846111762¬if_t=feed_comment
The reply is correct but I suspect it didn’t answer the question you had in mind. Technically, all speakers have an infinitely small sweet spot but you hardly notice it with wide dispersion speakers. Flat panels, on the other hand, project a planar wave front which becomes increasingly directional for wavelengths shorter than the panel’s width—giving a sweet spot that’s so pronounced you have to hear it to appreciate just how much. Wide flat panels give amzingly precise imaging at their focus but the highs fall off a cliff as you move out of the sweet spot --- wonderful for solo listening not so much for entertaining guests. I may be wrong about the Essence panels but from the posted photos they look to be physically segmented and I would guess they are electrically segmented as well. If electrically segmented, the higher frequencies would be emitted from the narrow vertical section only, while lower frequencies would be emitted from the wider sections-- such that the highs spread out to give a wider sweet spot than you could get with an un-segmented panel of same width. My own 10.5” wide DIY wire-stator ESL panels are physically segmented into eleven discrete 12-wire groups which are then electrically segmented as six discrete groups (a center group + 5 paired groups on either side). My panels can be electrically switched for narrow or wide dispersion modes via feeding the wire groups discreetly thru a resistor/capacitor delay line (as Quad with their ESL63). In the narrow dispersion mode all wire groups receive the same audio signals at the same time; causing the diaphragm to project a planar wave front that doesn’t spread out. In the wide dispersion mode, the delay line is switched into the signal path such that the center wire group receives a full-frequency signal and adjacent wire-groups receive sequentially delayed signals having progressively less treble; causing the diaphragm to move from the center-outward to project a cylindrical wave front that spreads out to a much wider sweet spot. If you have an opportunity, you might ask Bob if the Essence panels are electrically segmented.