Planars/ Electrostats benefits over box speakers?

" I feel you have to spend 6 figures for a box speaker to get the sound I get from $8k stats. It costs alot of money to get that cabinet out of the way. And alot of technology.
Cerrot (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)"

6 figures? Vandersteen can get the box out of the way. You can even get into 6 figure territory if you start 2 decimal places to the right where the pennies are accounted for.

I apologize in advance if this is not a concern for you but it's worth noting that most planers,electrostats, etc.... Do not blend in very well with room decor but if you don't have a significant other to be concerned with or have a dedicated room you can happily ignore this comment

"" I feel you have to spend 6 figures for a box speaker to get the sound I get from $8k stats. It costs alot of money to get that cabinet out of the way. And alot of technology.
Cerrot (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)"

You can get it it in a small to moderate sized room with a piar of smaller used OHM Walshes sometimes for well under $1000. Those that use later revisions of the OHm Walsh CLS driver are best, mk/series II, III or current X000 series.

The first genration OHM CLS drivers used in original OHM Walsh models from teh early to mid 80s sound similar but are not nearly as refined sounding as good modern speakers, ES or otherwise. Those can still be had in all sizes for all sized rooms still on teh used market all for under $1000 usually.

I got my first panel speakers in November 2013, Magneplanar 1.7s. The first
thing I noticed is how *noisy* all my previous speakers had been--noisy with
cabinet vibrations and enclosure turbulence. The Maggies put out a much
cleaner sound without all the drama of trying to contain and manage the
backwave. Even though my previous main speakers were constructed to
recduce cabinet noise as much as possible (curvilinear enclosure, extensive
chambering and bracing, no parallel cabinet surfaces whatsoever), the
Maggies that replaced them made me realize that I'd been listening through
a pile of low-level noise all that time.

This makes perfect sense; a driver is putting out the same amount of sound
to the front as to the rear. The front waves fill the listening room; with a box
speaker, the rear waves are all supposed to be inaudibly contained in a
relatively small box, the speaker enclosure.

Furthermore, with box enclosures, the rear waves of the big drivers bounce
off the back of the enclosure and affect the forward motion of the very same
drivers. With panel speakers you get *none* of that: the rear wave dissipates
into the room at large. The panel frame does not have to tame and contain
the back waves.

Panel speakers are line sources; as was pointed out previously, line sources
only lose 3dB per doubling of the listening distance vs. 6dB for point
sources.

Panel speakers have advantages in coherence, as all frequencies emanate
from the same plane, and the rise time of all frequencis is within a tighter
range.

Panel speakers have large radiating surfaces, which means diaphragm
motion is very small, which reduces the artifacts of inertia, such as overshoot
and ringing.

Being dipolar, panel speakers have a figure-8 radiating pattern, with self-
canceling voids to the sides. This significantly reduces the sidewall bounce
so typical of dynamic speakers.

I have also found the dipolar radiation pattern to be an advantage in bass
control. While deep bass may need a subwoofer, the bass in the 100-200 Hz
range is much cleaner and easy to manage, thanks to the self-canceling rear
wave. You just don't get that annoying upper bass "hump" so
typical of floorstanding speakers, and less need for corner bass traps to
manage it.

Mapman - do you hear the calluses on a guitar players fingers running up a steel string, the turning of sheet music or creaking of Bella Dovadivich's chair on those $1,000 walsh speakers? Buddy Guy exhaling on Done Got Old?If you can, boy have I wasted money!