In Reply to: That's virtually impossible..Something had to be wrong with either posted by Michael Samra on September 7, 2016 at 04:10:33:
The low frequency distortion of an ESL comes from a couple things. First, for it to get LF at all, being a dipole, it has to either use resonance or some kind of EQ to compensate for the inherent back-cancellation rolloff..... most ESLs use both, the diaphragm resonance is set to a value that gives bass while still keeping stiff enough suspension for allowing for good behaviour at higher freqeuqncies. The original QUAD used a higher step-up ratio to allow for bass EQ, which means the diaphragm has to move further, which pushes it further into nonlinearity. The solution is to make it bigger or change to a cone driver at LF, which some designs do.The second factor in an ESL is the step-up transformer core, which likes to saturate when fed from high level low frequency, like all transformers do. Just the nature of the beast. Voice coils and magnets have difficulties, too, but they aren't usually being pushed as hard to get output as ESLs.
While the ESL principle can have very low distortion at midband and HF, it doesn't do so well at VLF. Not really many (maybe any?) dipoles do, they are at a disadvantage down very low because front and back cancel. Doesn't meant they can't sound good though.
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Edits: 09/09/16
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- RE: That's virtually impossible..Something had to be wrong with either - bwaslo 17:26:23 09/09/16 (0)