tube amps and electrostatics

"Frogman: Georgelofi, thanks for the link and I am glad that you found what works for you."

Like I said, I even liked the sound of tubes into ESL's, but when you hear the extension and dynamic presence that's missing with tubes once you've heard a "good" solid state BJT (bi-polar not mosfet) output stage amp into them with lots of watts and current, you will think hard about what's missing, but then maybe you like that subdued rolled off top end.

It's not what works for me, it's fact, and electronic maths made up of Ohm's and Kirchoffs Laws, there is no voodoo involved.

Stated by one of the masters of ESL's design Roger Sanders that I quoted from the white paper I gave the link to. Here again in case you didn't fully read it.
http://sanderssoundsystems.com/technical-white-papers/172-tubes-vs-transistors

Cheers George

OK, George, you win; clearly, I don't know what live music sounds like.

****It's not what works for me, it's fact, and electronic maths made up of Ohm's and Kirchoffs Laws, there is no voodoo involved.****

I will go back to sticking pins into my tube sockets now.

Interesting (appropriate?) moniker, BTW ;-)

I have never heard quad esls have a dynamic low end like is possible with good full range dynamic speakers. I always figured that to be their inherent achilles heel, as is the case with planars generally. Have not compared with a good beefy SS amp though. I would expect some difference there I suppose, the question would be how much and what happens to all the rest.

I have heard some very good results with bass dynamics using es headphones, like Stax, so I have to think such things on a larger speaker scale are possible, at least in some rooms with some amps.

I tend to like tube amplification best though I would say with my Stax electret (not es) phones, FWIW. Of course, those use the custom Stax transformer box to help get things right.

Maybe there is a similar transformer device possible for use with large es speakers to help address the electrical issues?

Did not realize es speakers had those electronic properties. Sounds like you almost need some kind of extended bi or multi-amping to really get best results, more so than with most any other kind of speaker perhaps? OR maybe a Stax-like transformer box designed to solvethe problem, if such a thing exists?

I read the key to driving ES speakers effectively is high voltage. That is an attribute of Class D Icepower amps I believe.

Has anyone tried a high voltage Class D amp with ES speakers? I'm thinking it might be a good match.

As a SoundLab dealer, I have had the opportunity to hear many of their full range electrostatic speakers driven by many different amps, both tube and SS. While out of the price range of many, I have found that Ayre MX-R SS amps do a superb job, every bit as good as the best tube amps I have heard.

And what you would have also heard was a more defined and extended treble because those quads and these (ML's Acustats and other els's) go below 1ohm in the treble and start that impedance dip at 10khz.
Tubes I aggree with these speakers still sound good but they are definately subdued in the treble compared to a GOOD s/s amp that is BJT output and that can do current into low impedances. Like you found with the ML2 which can almost keep doubling it's current down to 1ohm for each halving of impedance.

This is not entirely true. Quads and Soundlabs have a higher impedance at 20KHz. In the case of the ESL57 and ESL63, the 20KHz impedance is high enough that even our small M-60 (60-watt OTL) can drive the speaker easily with no loss of HF performance.

In the case of ML, later Quads and Sanders ESLs, because the manufacturer is wanting to open up their market to more transistor amps, the impedance is quite low at 20KHz (some MLs are only 0.5 ohm).

In cases like these, you do as Tomcy6 mentions- you get a set of ZEROs (http://www.zeroimpedance .com) which allow you to easily drive ML or whatever! We have several customers doing just that with our older MA-1s (12-tube version) that only make 100 watts/channel, and they have no problem whatsoever making high frequencies on the speaker, with proper response to 20KHz and beyond.