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I have Planar tweters in a couple of speakers, that aside, I really do not have much experience with Planar or Electrostatic speakers.
So what is the word one each? SHould I really be thinking one is better than the other? I like rock and pop, would any of these be good speakers for that?
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timb5881,planars/stats (that I've run Quads, ML's, Apogees, Eros) are about delicacy, transparency, depth, detail, air and naturalness - the antiphesis (sp) of full-on amplified rock or serious/well produced MOR pop - deep resolved bass & timing is not their forte, sorry.
Better to look for a box that offers a glimpse of panel transparency... eg larger active ATC's or Wilsons lashed up to a rather big Krell is one path that will deliver in spades.
YMMV, good luck
I went with electrostatics, since, to me, they have more detail, esp at lower levels (I live in an apartment.) Maggies need to be turned up a bit to open up. I had Quad 63 USA Monitors before, and while they would compress with some of the rock music I like, they excelled with detail at quiet and moderate levels. However, I now have Innersound Eros IIIs, the only hybrid to get the integration between a cone woofer (in a transmission line) and electrostatic panel right. I now have a very physical bass down to the 20s, and dig rock music much more on them then I did on my former Quads (which had their own strengths in other areas, I sure did enjoy the 63s in many ways.) The Innersounds have the best of both worlds, ture electrostatic planar transparency, and REAL bass for us rock/funk/etc fans. The best is to get the Model III version, as it has the arc-proof panels, and of course that's important. My were an earlier version, but I upgraded to the version III panels and a Kaya crossover amp when I had the chance. That may not be possible now.
I also listen to a lot of rock music and I purchased my first pair of planar speakers earlier this year, Magnepan 3.6rs. I couldn't be happier. Many folks suggest that these aren't ideal speakers for rock music. However, I couldn't disagree more. It is true that the bass won't punch you in the gut, but wow, I have never heard a livelier, more natural speaker. They create an outstanding wall of sound that transforms your listening room into a concert hall. I think what I like more than anything is the sense that "you are there", and the maggies deliver this in spades.
While I had 3.6s, though I listen mostly to Jazz, I enjoy "hard" classic rock and 50s rock and the 3.6s create an incredible sense of being there and portraying the stage layout that makes it very convincing -- all whether I had 400w or 1000w in 4 ohms (though there is more bass punch with 1000w !!)
Having owned three different types of electrostats (Audiostatic, Stax, Acoustat) and two different types of Planar magnetic/ribbon designs (Infinity IRS Beta, Apogee) I would have to say that the bigger versions of all of these speakers will rock very hard with the kind of "slam" you can get from big box speakers. The smaller ones will rock but won't have quite the same slam. The Infinity Betas could rock the hardest (because of the huge woofer towers primarily) but were utterly ruthless to bad recordings (they were also somewhat colored sounding).Recommended planar (or hybrid) speakers that can rock down the house and play beautiful chamber music equally well (the power AND the glory):
Apogee Full-Range, Scintilla, Diva, Studio Grand, or Duetta Signature
Soundlab A1, U1
Acoustat 2+2, Spectra 4400 or Spectra 6600
Analysis Audio Omega and Amphytron
Infinity IRS Beta, Gamma and Epsilon, RS 1B, and RS 2B (not as great for classical music)
ML Prodigy (still somewhat limited but quite good anyway), Summitt
Relco DaVinci (line source with dipole woofer array)
Dali Megaline (expensive even used)
Maggie MG 20.1r
I didn't include smaller estats or ribbon models because to play big they really need extra help from subwoofers and these will limit integration and therefore compromise sound quality, IMO. Of those on this list the cheapest used are the Acoustats and perhaps the Apogees. The Apogee Diva is probably the best bang for the buck on the whole list followed closely by the Acoustat Spectra 4400 and 6600 , which are very difficult to find. The reason is the Diva will hang with just about everything on this list in almost all parameters...its that good. That said I acutally prefer the sound overall of my Acoustat Spectra 2200, which in smaller rooms will also rock very hard and are superbly tranparent. The Infinities will rock the hardest but are also, IMO the most colored but still not too badly compared to most box speakers.
as John C has suggested, electrostatics are not for you! :-))Planars IMO include Maggies and Eminent Technology LFT-8s, for instance (but I don't count large arrays of cone drivers as "planars"). Maggies are exclusively electromagnetic planar ... ETs (I believe) are hybrid, with a cone bass driver.
ETs may well be fine for rock & pop (and they are not expensive) ... I'm afraid I have no experience with them. However, cone speakers will give you "punchier" bass than what any Maggie can deliver.
If your budget can stretch to it, a pair of ready-made (they are also supplied as a kit) Siegfried Linkwitz "Orions" will give you bass down to 20hz and all the benefits of dipole sound - ie. no "box" colourations! :-))
Otherwise, Maggies with a sub (or two) will come close.
Regards,
both planars and ESL's tend to be very revealing. Which means you're pretty much at the mercy of the recording engineer of each artist. There's no 'blanket' statement regarding which (if any)speaker is right for you without an audition. ESL's have lighting fast transients and generally are described as being 'light and airy'. Great for a Joan Biaz, maybe not so great for a Hendrix (hey; no flames puh-leez!). My point being if Hendrix were alive today he'd probally be the last one to describe his music as 'light and airy' (although cuts like 'little wing', 'pali gap' et al would definetly qualify).But don't get me wrong, if someone were to drop a set of Sound labs in my lap I'd jam Hendrix day and night; efin'A!Planars IMO tend to be a bit more 'viscous' than ESL's, quick, but not as fast as ESL's.
House thumpin' bass you're not going to get from either one. A hybrid might be in order for you (ET's, Martin Logans etc.)or seperate subwoofer(s) with Magnepans,if that's what you're looking for.
Jazz and classical disc are a 'generally' well recorded medium meaning they're not catered to the mass market and airwaves.'Most' pop and rock tend to have 'compressed' dynamics (specifically pop recordings) sutable for the limited dynamics in airwaves; no problem for some, distasteful to others through certain speakers.
Best advice of course is to audition both. If not possible certain manufacturers have unbeatable trial options.
good luck-GL
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What is your budget?
The reason I asked is because if you have the budget, my recommendation would be a pair of SoundLAB speakers with the new PX technology. If not, I definately agree with others here that Maggies would be your best option. A quote from a customer of mine who posted on a similar thread in audiogon: "07-19-06: JmslawI'm afraid I have to disagree with you. My SL Majestics will rock with the best dynamic speakers in the world! The new Soundlab PX panel technology is way more dynamic than previous iterations."
If your interests are primarily rock and pop I suggest you stick to planars involving conventional drivers. I'm a strong advocate of electrostaic speakers but most have drawbacks -1. Very few are full range so require a bass unit which is not simple to integrate with the E/S panels
2. They can offer difficult loads to amps, some of which just cannot cope
3. Many are truly planar (meaning not curved) so the "sweet spot" is highly focussed and inflexible.IMO the superb transient response and delicacy of E/S panels are more suited to small ensembles and classical music, not pop and rock.
Following Brian's open to all invitation to the Chicago Audio Society in April, I took up his fine offer. I arrived the night before and was treated to long conversations with Dr. West and Richard Schram of Parasound at Brian's home. Dr. West is an intense, yet soft spoken man. I particularly liked commentary on his career: "I've spent my life making sandwich wrap make music."Dr. West spoke of an experiment he conducted recently at a very large auditorium outside of his home in Utah. He put together an array of twenty nine foot tall Pro-Stats like yours. Each channel of ten speakers is a stack five across using the narrower 22 degree panels.
I suspect that system would do splendidly with any type of music!
"I suspect that system would do splendidly with any type of music!"Agree!!!! Fortunately it does seem the idea is passing that a system which is good for one type of music will not suit another. An accurate system will handle all recordings well.
Problem is that accurate E/S units like the Sound Labs, if fed from a good player and amps, reveals all the recording blemishes. Given a clean recording the sound is awesome, but sadly there are fewer in this collection that I previously realised. But there ARE some :-)
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
Hi John,
I still think your Halcros are exaccerbating the problems on recordings by emphsize HF transients...but that is just MO.
... if that was the problem, why don't ALL CDs & SACDS sound bright. They do not, only some (but that some is still too many).The ones that are ok can sound chillingly real, and don't interpret that as meaning cool! They sound extremely natural and musical.
I seem to have gone through a cycle. Decades ago I really hated digital as it was harsh and generally unlistenable. A venture into laserdiscs got me on the "improve digital" waggon but it was not until I started to have gear modified with better clocks etc to minimise jitter that the sound quality looked up. CDs then started to sound as good as vinyl so I sold nearly all the vinyl as I was never playing it.
At that stage I agree with Brian, CDs were not nearly as bad as previously thought. But the locally made electrostats started to become unreliable around 12 months ago so I joined the Sound Labs band waggon with a pair of Majestics.
Next step was replacement of the Plinius M16L preamp with a MacIntosh C200 - opened up the spectrum even more, particularly the bottom end. So far so good.
Then came the Halcros. When inserted where I had the Plinius with long speaker leads, they sounded dead. So, the guy who brought the Halcros inserted 30 ft of Furutech interconnect and very short Furutech speaker leads with the Halcros immediately behind the Majestics. Hey presto, it was more a blanket than a veil that was lifted. The sound opened up dramatically.
BUT, the grunge, if on a CD or SACD was also coming through. If not, the musical result was awesome, but close micing in particular did not sound nice. So, my take is GIGO. If the Halcros are emphasising HF transients as you suggest, doesn't this occur on ALL recordings? It doesn't so my logic tells me the problem lies in recordings, not the componentry.
And yes, matching Sound Labs centre speakers (powered by the Plinius SA250) give an excellent sound stage.
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
Hi John,
Think of it as an edge exaggerator. When an amplfier emphasizes the leading edges of notes over the body and decay of the note then the apparent transients and detail seems sharper. If the recording is very natural to begin with then the results can still be very good (if perhaps slightly clinical) and realisitic. If, however; the recording is slightly hot, overcompressed, or just recorded on cheap recording gear, which gives recordings the same sound as cheap electronics.I am not sure what the bulk of your listening material is but if it is classical music then I would suggest that it is not the recordings and it is your electronics. I have about 800 classical recordings, many sound old (because they were recorded in the 50s or 60s so sound a bit like an old tube radio, but very few sound harsh or unlistenable). Same with older Jazz recordings. They should never sound harsh or unlistenable. Newer jazz stuff could sound harsh, depending on how it was mastered.
If you listen mostly to pop/rock then you are primarily hearing the recording with perhaps a bit of the edge exaggerator effect I described above.I have a pair of KR audio Kronzilla monoblocks at the moment on my Acoustats and the sound is incredible good. Not soft, not hard, not warm, not cold...just right. Dynamics are explosive, if you have never heard what SET can do on an estat it is hard to describe. These of course are not ordinary SETs as they have 2 giant tubes per monoblock (42 watts...its enough).
Of course when I put on a heavily compressed and harsh sounding recording that is what I get out. Same is true for some old classical recordings. The sound gets warmer and softer and it is clear that it was made using tube gear (but not modern tube gear). I put on 80s Denon Classical recordings and I get that somewhat thin early digital sound but it is still not too bad (it not great either but the performances are). The best recordings seem to be late 60s through early 70s and newer classical releases (I have a new recording of Stravinsky on Decca that sounds absolutely phenomenal). Jazz from the 1960s on Riverside, Verve, Fontana, Blue Note etc. are often very good (look for Rudy Van Gelder as the engineer/producer). If most of these sound harsh or thin then there is a serious problem with your system.
The other problem is negative feedback. Your speakers will perform their best with an amp that has none. Why? Because your speaker is nearly purely reactive in nature. This means it pushes almost all of the signal fed into it back out to the amplifier. Now the amp must handle this EMF kicked back from the speaker (nearly the whole output from the amp will be kicked back). A low feedback amp is also an option (most tube amps have relatively low or no negative feedback).
If the amp has no feedback then this energy is dissipated in the output stage. If it has a lot of negative feedback (like the Halcro) then a goodly percentage of that kicked back energy will enter the feedback loop and be re-amplified!! This is called IIM distortion and with a highly reactive speaker and a high negative feedback amplifier you have the worst possible combination for it. Your Halcro will only NOT have a problem with this if the speaker is purely resistive (eg. an Apogee), the opposite of what you own now which is basically a big capacitor.
There is a reason why the reviews mention that the Halcro cannot drive difficult loads well and it is not just low impedance but highly reactive loads as well.
I don't tell you it can't for sure work but I suspect there are many other combinations that will work better and cost less money.
Hi morricab,You said of John's speakers (which I think are electrostatics?):
"Your speakers will perform their best with an amp that has none (negative feedback). Why? Because your speaker is nearly PURELY REACTIVE in nature. This means it pushes almost all of the signal fed into it back out to the amplifier."
Does it therefore follow that a speaker which is almost entirely RESISTIVE - like Maggies - won't feed much back-EMF to the amp?
Regards,
Inductance represents energy storage in a magnetic field.Maggies are not very inductive and mostly resistive, considered as passive loads, but they are on Mylar panels in a listening room. The panels are light but have some mass. The air in the room also has mass, and the room defines acoustic boundaries which cause resonant modes. The speaker frame also has mass and some compliance, so there are at least three sets of resonances at work: the magnetic fields around the speaker wires, the panel and frame resonances, and the room air resonances.
All three represent stored energy that creates back-emf. The back-emf is greatly delayed in time from the original audio signal, and greatly filtered, but does present the amplifier with a tricky load.
This is why tube amps are ultimately unsuitable for Maggies, no matter how big they are. They simply cannot control this stew of resonances.
When you say "Maggies need the lowest output impedance obtainable" ... I presume you mean "need an amplifier with the lowest output impedance obtainable"?And when you say "the panels are light but have some mass. The air in the room also has mass ... boundaries which cause resonant modes"
... as the same room resonant modes are also presented to a cone speaker, shirley the issue with Maggies is that the driver dimensions are large, so it couples with the air much more significantly than a cone speaker does? This "drag", if you like, I could see would be a source of back-EMF?
Regards,
I suppose that the drivers themselves won't put much back but it is not true of the crossovers which have reactive elements in them. Still the effect would likely be significantly less than most moving coil speakers or an electrostat, which is basically one big capacitor.
will have inductance and therefore generate back-EMF but what about Maggies driven actively?Am I correct in assuming they would generate little back-EMF due to:
* the almost purely resistive nature of the Maggie drivers, and
* the absence of inductors?I'm also interested in your opinion of the following ... a dealer friend of mine who also developed a successful line of speakers here in Oz - so one would have to assume he knows something about speakers!! :-)) - claims that attaching a 4' length of speaker cable to the '+ve' binding post on a speaker helps absorb back-EMF?
I've never been able to understand why this might be so, given this 4' length of cable simply lies there on the floor with nothing connected to the other end ... can you see any logic in his claim?
Regards,
No I don't really understand that either and would think that maybe it could even introduce RFI (acting as an antennae). Its not that the cable acts really like a resistor because no signal would travel down it as it is open. Hmmm...Maggies driven actively would be mostly resistive in nature, as would apogees. I would imagine that there is not so much back EMF in this case since the "voice coil" is largely non-inductive.
.
Problem is that accurate E/S units like the Sound Labs, if fed from a good player and amps, reveals all the recording blemishes. Given a clean recording the sound is awesome, but sadly there are fewer in this collection that I previously realised. But there ARE some :-)John, you should know that to get good sound you need tubes (valves). :-)
Actually a truly excellent system makes everything enjoyable, ruthlessly revealing the shortcomings of recordings yet forgivingly so. So it seems your journey isn't over (is it ever?). :-)
"John, you should know that to get good sound you need tubes (valves). :-)"Stop stirring Brian.
If I want a "throttled" input which makes so-so recordings tolerable then I can use a different player. No doubt a dose of second degree harmonics from tubes might do a similar job. However I'm not about to go down that reverse path. Not much point in paying out heaps for Sound Labs speakers if they are to fed with a compromised input.
So, I'll live with a restricted base of recordings to enjoy the awesome sound from the good ones. Irritating I have to do that but time to face reality - it is a less than perfect recording world out there :-( But, thank heaven, there are Tony Faulkners who DO know what they are doing and do not place microphones in ridiculous positions too close to the instruments.
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
Please explain your point.
.... that many audiophiles counteract what they do not like in the sound of their system with measures that reduce the fidelity. e.g. If the harshness is disliked speakers are chosen with drooping top ends. It might ameliorate the problems with recordings which suffer harshness because of microphones being too close, but it also dampens down the fidelity of well recorded CDs, LPs, SACDS etc.My feeling is that some tube amps (note I said some, not all) soften the musical result to achieve what Brian described - makes all recordings listenable. A good amp is a good amp whether it be SS or tube and from that point of view there is nothing to choose between them. To claim tube amps solve problems is peddling snake oil as much as to say SS amps are necessary for clean transient reproduction.
I'm not a fan of tube amps for different reasons - SS is more reliable, less messing around with continual biasing (appreciating the better tube amps can do this automatically) and less heat involved. It also concerns me that tubes age and significant sound differences can be heard with different breeds of tubes. But that is just my take.
I'm not trying to rubbish all tube amps, it is just they are not for me and I reject the notion put forward by Brian (whether his tongue was in cheek or not) that a tube amp would make all my CDs listenable. I am presenbtly listening to an order of Chandos CDs which just arrived and every one of them is superb both sonically and artistically with no change of componentry needed or desired.
So please do not misinterpret. I'm not trying to offend tube amp owners, just reacting to a suggestion posted above. Does this explain?
John
Do not criticise the idiots in this world - we need them as they make the rest of us look so much better :-)
I gotta to agree with you here, the only extra thing a very good tube amplifier will add to the mix is much higher maintenance. A very good SS amplifier will provide you much the sound same quality for a lot less maintenance. Whilst the Atmaspheres are good amplfiiers, I am reasonably confident that it a'int gonna turn soar's ear into a silk purse.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
John, perhaps you are associating euphonic, lush sounding tube gear with my remarks. I assure you that is not the case! While you visited me very briefly in May, I was using the Atma-Sphere tube electronics, which are not at all "tubey" in that sense. I suggest that a system that gets it right, whether tube, solid state, or a combination, lays bare the flaws in recordings, but not annoyingly so. I also suggest that recordings often are actually much better than we give them credit for, that system resonances, noise, and distortion can cause them to sound objectionable. For example, a recording that seems bright may in fact not be, and I'm not referring to or recommending gear that rolls off the top end to make it sound acceptable. I want all the music and less "hifi" sound. An example of a system years ago that was very revealing yet forgiving at the same time was the Levinson HQD system.
I tend to agree with you Brian. I had Silvaweld OTLs on my Acoustats and the sound was absolutely superb (but the room became a Sauna). Eventually, I couldn't live with the heat.In learning about IIM distortion, first proposed by Otala in the late 70s, I think the combination of the Halcros with a highly reactive speaker like a soundlab is a bad idea. IIM distortion is when the Back EMF of a speaker is reamplified by the partnering amp. This can happen if he feedback is high and thus giving a pathway for the back EMF to circle back around to the input as part of the normal feedback signal. Only now, its not a normal feedback signal anymore as it is blended with this back EMF.
This is for sure happening with the Halcro/majestic combination as the Halcro uses tons of feedback and the Majestic is basically a big capacitor that will kick nearly everything back to the amp.
This has been kind of my suspicions for some time. I read an article by a past engineer for McIntosh a couple of years ago and he felt the same way.On the other hand I read so much from inmates loving tubes I was afraid I might be short changing myself. Unluckily I don't have the budget to change for experimentation sake alone.
And lastly, the addition of distortion (good or bad) seems counter productive to me.
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