Effects Of Power Cords On Electrostatic Speakers

@terry9 @ghdprentice Now you’ve both got me with more systems to check out and understand. (I spent last evening until now checking out systems & You Tube videos discussing these systems.) I can see why I’ll need to make a trip to listen to the Planars, which I’ll probably have to do at the end of the month. Now "coherence"? What do you mean by the term? Seamless integration with the various drivers across the audio spectrum? relative dispersion of the drivers? or does it refer to traits within a driver itself? And also, I’m still researching what specs I might look at to identify the dynamic range of a driver.

Any experience attaching horns to a planar? Or are there any systems out there that do so (besides Joseph Crowe’s)? Any suggestions on things to keep in mind were I to go down the path of putting a horn onto a Planar? I don’t know if I can afford a Planar that would cover all bass, so I’ve been focusing on a tight, high BL driver that would carry it up to, say, 160-320Hz, with the Planars taking over from there and up, so one concern I have (naturally) is how they might blend together for tonality purposes around the crossover point. 

Very good points.

By 'coherence' I mean that all frequencies have the same character, which is hard to get when treble comes from a beryllium tweeter and bass comes from a paper cone, but easy to get when they all come from the same membrane. To get that in the HT I went to 6 MMW's, 2 DWM's, and 1 Quad 2905 (centre), with Bryston amps. These Magnepans are all based on the older planar-magnetic technology rather than the quasi-ribbons or ribbons, which may have been a mistake - but I knew that I loved that sound, and in the HT it's a wonderful, engaging, immersive, coherent sound.

Magnepan DWM goes down to a usable 37Hz in my room, so the big 20.7 or 30.7 should do that too - recall that they use the same bass technology as the DWM. I haven't heard the 20.7 or 30.7, so check that the ribbons integrate well with the planar-magnetic panels.

And of course, your room is its own study, so YMMV with the bass response. It's an ongoing journey, but you're starting at a very good place.

I would crossover to cones at a lower frequency. Actually, I cross over at 50 Hz with an 18Db / octave electronic crossover, so the cones are silent for anything north of 100 Hz.

The DWM’s don’t cost much and you can plant a swarm of them around your chair. I just needed two in the HT and two in the 2-channel room. Most of the bass came from them rather than the isobaric sub when I played "Power and Glory", which was recorded direct to disk in the stone cathedral in LA, from M&K records.

I've often wondered how horns would work - an excellent question. Do tell me when you find out.

I found that the most important thing is shielding on the power cables for electrostats. A minimum 14-gauge cable, though.