do planar or electrostatic speakers inherently

Itigap,

Yessss! When I give a SoundLab demo, I like to show off just how good they sound way down at very low volume levels. I think the bass holds so much better than with other speakers at low volume level well because a woofer's suspension system is to a certain extent "sticky", and the stickiness is overwhelmed at normal listening levels but looms dominant at very low output levels. The ultrathin diaphragm of the SoundLabs (still to the best of my knowledge the thinnest in the industry) has no such "stickiness".

When I bought my first pair of SoundLabs, I had to sell just about everything else to afford them. I drove them with a three hundred fifty dollar solid state amp, and while the volume level was limited it was still the best sound I had yet heard in any audio system. I could listen way down at barely audible levels and still enjoy it immensely, and so far I haven't encountered any other speaker with that characteristic. Of course when I eventually got bigger amps they sounded better, but nothing was as huge of a leap as bringing in the SoundLabs that first time.

In case anyone doesn't know I'm a SoundLab dealer folks, so grains of salt all around.

Duke

From my experience, the answer is yes, when you are talking about typical dynamic speakers, but, horn systems and other high efficiency systems also sound very good at lower volumes.

Another low volume phenomenon that is a big advantage of dipoles is that sound is concentrated in the listening area between the speakers and is much more attenuated to the sides. This is because the front and back wave are out of phase and they cancel where they interact at the side of the speaker. So, at any given subjective volume level in the listening area, there is less annoying bleeding of sound to other areas of the house. I was surprised how substantial is this effect, when I switched from Martin Logan electrostatics to a horn-based system.

My Apogees sound pretty much the same anywhere in the room...they do not get louder when you walk up to them to any large degree.

Dave