Is Apogee in a class by itself among planars?


As a former owner of Apogee Stages, after listening to a number of popular planars, I still feel that Apogee produced an uncanny feeling of live music better than anything else IMHO all these years later. Although they weren't the most detailed, didn't have very well defined bass, and didn't have a very holistic soundstage, there was just something undefineable to me that sounded real (even when listening from the another room), along with unsurpassed vocals, that makes me say "There's something about Apogees." Am I hallucinating? If not, how was this achieved?
rgs92
Kr4...I guess the narrow ribbon dimension is a necessary condition to use a magnetic field across its surface.
Yes, Apogees are in a class by themselves.I don't own a pair but I heard a set and I never forgot it.Nothing I have heard approaches the transient response of the apogees.
It is just plain wrong to say that a ribbon is "very long and narrow". A ribbon can be of probably any dimension. The ribbon bass units on an Apogee are ANYTHING but narrow, and in the shorter models, they are not very long (depending on your definition of long) either.

The same holds true of the Infinity EMIM and EMIT drivers, neither being narrow nor long.

The definition of ribbon is simply a reflection of how the driver operates, as Kal alluded to.
Trelja...How do you create a strong magnetic field across the gap of a wide ribbon? Can you please describe how the magnetics of the Apogee are set up.
I have always argued my bass panel consists of a softly held zig zaging ribbon. It's a bit more complicated than that. Large bar magnets are densely arranged in horizontal rows, and are attached to a metal grid just behind the Mylar/aluminum ribbons.