Electrostatic or Dynamic

Philefreak - I'm currently suffering from this dilemma as well. I currently have a pair of Martin Logan reQuests and a pair of Talon Khorus sitting in my listening room (despite the fact that I can't afford to keep both pairs). The reQuests and Khorus are both fast and transparent. However, IMHO I've found the Khorus are smoother and more detailed, generate a wider and deeper soundstage, go lower, play louder, and generally sound more full and natural (i.e., lifelike) than the reQuests. Not surprisingly, the Khorus are the speakers I use almost all the time now. Nevertheless, I occassionally find myself craving the crisp, edgy liveliness and incomparably tall soundstage of the electrostatics, so I still play them once in a while and haven't been able to bring myself to sell them yet. Thus, for the time being, I'll have to agree with some of those above that we can't have it all, even though there are some speakers that may cover most of the bases pretty well. So to finally answer your question, I feel many of us who've lived with both speaker designs can never really be fully content with one or the other. Other than dual ownership -- or constantly trading/selling back and forth between dynamic and ES speakers -- perhaps the most sensible approach is to identify the 3-4 sound qualities that are most important to you, and go with the speaker that does the best at providing those qualities. Then, when you find yourself yearning for some other quality, this will serve as a gentle reminder that there's always more to life and music than what's in front of you (not trying to be preachy or philosophical, just rambling). By the way Philefreak, I thought I read on one of your other posts a while back that you were using Khorus. If this is correct, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think they compare to electrostatics.

Why have there been so may Khorus for sale lately at less than half of their retail?

oh ya! I know the feeling y'all. I switch back and forth between Electrostatic and Dynamic speakers and tube and solid-state amps every month or so. I can’t seem to make up my ears. The SS and Dynamic speakers spend the most time in front of me but switching is nice for a change. Such is life in front of the speakers.

Ljgj - your question was already asked and hopefully answered in the thread "Talon Khorus question" posted on 03-12-01.

I must be the only dissenting vote here. I have owned or lived with speakers of all types. These include, but not limited to, Vandersteen, B&W, JBL, Essence, Snell, Crown, ESS, X static, Lynn, Harbeth, Celestion, Duntec, and Fosgate. I currently own Soundlab electrostatics, and have not been tempted in more than eleven years to go back to any other design. They represent the only time in my more than 30 year audio hobby, that I have been satisfied. My posting is not meant to be a challenge, I have followed this post for several days without comment, just wanted to point out that there are those of us that have been on both sides and found complete satisfaction.