Sound Lab vs Magnepan 20.7

Stringreen, The newer SL ESLs are not only more reliable, they are also a lot easier to drive and sound better at the same time. They appear to have wider bandwidth and higher efficiency than the Maggies do, whereas a few years ago I would have said the 20.7s were more efficient.

Put another way, most of our MA-2 amplifiers produced used to go to Sound Lab owners. Nowadays you can do with a set of MA-1s what used to take a set of MA-2s... That is a nice improvement!

I do think though that the 20.7 is one of the better deals in loudspeakers...

Based on what I heard this past weekend at T.H.E. Show in Irvine, CA, there I another speaker you might want to consider. I don't know the model name or number, but it's the $20,000 Sanders ESL. You get two panels with a sub in each (175Hz x/o freq), a crossover, and power amps for the panels and woofers. They sounded really, really good---highly transparent, seemingly completely uncolored, great coherence and timing, and providing life-size images. The dealer used recordings featuring a stand-up bass, pipe organ, vocals, drumset, and varied stringed instruments. The timbre of every single one was spot on, and the dynamics were startling. The really quick "snap" of the bassists fingers pulling off a string, the string buzzing as it slammed back against the neck , the tone and resonance of the body of the bass changing as the note died away. I want to hear them again with my own source material, so I have to look up the dealer and pay him a visit.

Bdp24,
Thanks for the heads up. I've been a fan of Sanders since he and Gayle started Martin Logan.
The issue is the transparency lost through the crossover in the bass/mid bass region. I'm not saying that this has that problem, but that IS the universal issue when trying to blend a conventional driver with the electrostatic panel. With my pair of SL's that I had a decade ago the bass was wonderful and perfectly blended with the whole spectrum.
After going back and forth on this for a long time, I'm convinced that I'm simply trying to go for fewer dollars spent.
Boy, this is a lot of money.
Larry

Yep, the mating of an ESL panel and a cone woofer is definitely the Achilles heal of hybrids. Sanders uses a transmission line loading of the woofer, which is a good sign. I didn't hear a problem in the transition area, but show conditions don't allow for extended listening. I myself use Open Baffle Dipole woofers (GR Research/Rythmik) with my planars, really the best choice with panels. The 175Kz x/o of the Sanders allows for substituting subs of your own choosing if you wish. While $20,000 isn't chicken feed, it's a lot less than Wilsons/Vandersteen 7's/etc., and includes Sanders' power amps.

Not intentionally trying to go off topic, but given the OP's comment about transparency, as an ESL owner, I was wondering if someone can talk about experiencing loss of transparency with ESLs due to their use of transformers.