Are planar speakers less prone to room interaction


Ok, here's my situation: my listening room is nigh untreatable, due to room issues and wife factors. The room itself is 30' x 15', with windows on one side and it opens up into the kitchen halfway down the other wall. The back wall partially lofts into a 18' x 15' bedroom. The ceilling is 14' high.

Just due to volume and the insanely varied surfaces and general asymmetry of the room, I'm not sure what I can do to contain the room interactions that I have to deal with. I have some home-built acoustic panels high up in the adjoining kitchen to contain the standing waves that would develop there, and that helped but I'm not sure the wife will let me put up any more of the things.

My question: are planar speakers less prone to room interaction? It seems like they would be, simply due to the dispersion pattern. I've always coveted Martin Logans (and used to own and love a pair of Maggies) so I'm certainly open to the idea.

Second question: how do electrostats do in large rooms?
hudsonhawk
Room interaction is much greater for panels due to the forward and rear radiation. They are also more challenged to create the higher SPL's needed in large spaces..

Your best bet would be a narrowly focused Appolito type design such as a Dunlavy SC V or similar...these will limit the room interaction somewhat at the expense of a smaller sweetspot.

However, I would add that in general a wide dispersion speaker tends to sound the most "natural". Although a speaker that also radiates to the rear can actually over excite the room (this can simulate typical reverberant concert halls, school halls, churches and typical venues where you get a lot of ambient reflected energy - so classical concert hall goers will often favor panels foor the exciting ambient sound field. Listeners who crave accuracy tend to favour near-fields or Dunlavy designs)
Hudson - actually, insanely varied surfaces and room irregularities are a good thing with audio reproduction as they tend to disperse sound waves. That being said - windows are not. You want to treat the windows with Marigo Labs window dots, which work extremely well and have a huge WAF compared to draperies heavy enough to do any good. You should be better off with the electrostats ( M-L) than the Maggies, because the 'stators have a much narrower dispersion pattern than the planars with the ribbons. Be advised that both require a fair amount of room behind the speakers to sound their best. Have FUN!
Dipoles interact with the room differently from monopoles, and have different setup requirements for good performance. Briefly, dipole bass is smoother in-room than monopole bass, but you don't want the reflected backwave energy arriving at the listening position too soon. I suggest about 5 feet between the speakers and the wall behind them.

Also, with a hybrid electrostat, the line-source-approximating panel will have different radiation characteristics than the point-source-approximating woofer. The sound pressure level will literally fall off more rapidly with distance from the woofer than from the panel (anechoically, 6 dB falloff per doubling of distance for a point source vs 3 dB per doubling of distance for a line source). In a long room like you have with hybrid electrostats at one end, the relative balance between woofer and panel will change by about 4 dB as you go from a fairly close listening position back to the far end of the room.

I used to have a room somewhat similar to yours (mine was 31 feet long by 13 feet wide by 9 feet tall), and large fullrange electrostats worked well in it. That 4 dB variation with distance is what I measured in that room with a hybrid electrostat. I think that big Maggies would be a better choice for your room than a hybrid electrostat.

In my experience, loudspeakers with fairly uniform, preferably not-too-wide radiation patterns are a good choice for problematic rooms. Some dipoles fit this description, as do some monopoles.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer