The most placement forgiving planar speaker?


I am considering going to a flat or planar speaker. Maggies, Martin Logan, I.S., Quad...

I have been told most are very touchy as for room placement. Which of these are more forgiving and cast a wider sweet spot?

Or...Is this a silly idea to begin with (all be very touchy) and I should go with a large speaker with a ribbon element like a vmps.

Thanks,

Ken
drken
In the 3-5k used range you are definitely looking at Maggie 3.6s and perhaps Soundlab M-2s, or maybe M-3s. Soundlabs and Maggies are both great; they are different than each other, but great. One other possiblity would be a pair of Wayne Picquet's Quad 57s (which would probably fit in your budget even "new", ie with his refurbs) - they are outstanding, but won't have quite the low end or the large imaging of the full range planars (Wayne would tell you to solve those requirements by stacking two pair of 57s).

Back on the room, Duke is one of my all-time favorite hifi dealers (really, truly, seriously), but I don't share his opinion that you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. I know that Duke knows the difference between deep boomy/muddy bass and deep accurate bass and I have to assume that he meant deep acccurate bass.

Duke said:

"First of all, you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. Think of a high quality car stereo system, or as an extreme example headphones. The ears register pressure even if the room dimensions are too short to support a wavelength."

- headphones are like a system in an optimized room - the drivers and the room acoustics are both known in advance and are designed to have the intended dimensions, absorbptions, and reflections

- the trick is not to just get deep bass, but a frequency response that doesn't emphasize some frequencies at the expense of others; if you want deep bass, just push your speakers up against a wall or in the corners - the bass will get deeper and the rest of the sound will get muddier - because room size and relfections do matter.

Duke acknowledges this:

"Now with a speaker whose reverberant field response is tonally incorrect, the more "room sound" you get the worse the tonal balance."

But he then goes on to say:

"But what if the reverberant sound isn't detrimental to the tonal balance? In that case, the size of the room is much less important."

And that was original my point - you won't know if the reverberant sound is or isn't detrimental to the tonal balance until you hear the speaker in your room - there are too many variables to know without listening to the speakers in the room. If you try to put Soundlabs or Maggies in a small (short) room, you are asking for frequency response issues - starting with the low end and continuing right up the through the midrange and beyond.

If you like spending x on your speakers and selling them for 60% of x, just put them in whatever room you have and give it a go. The room matters more than people often know or like to admit.

Innersound ESLs are noted for taking a different route because they have a flat panel and beam the music straight ahead which helps eliminate the room effects.

This is just a heads up as I have not even heard them,
just read good things about them and it is good to keep your mind open...
I agree with Hi hifi, that Duke is one of the great gentlemen of our hobby and is extremely knowledgable about the world of planar speakers. Duke, last time I briefly talked over the phone to you, you shared you were waiting for your new Blow Torch pre-amp. I'm interested if you did get it what has been your experience with it in your system? It would be great if you would share your viewpoint with us. Thanks in advance.
Teajay, I can't speak for others but have had a Blowtorch preamp for several years (my system description is linked below) and so am very familiar with it. Compared with other units it simply gets out of the way of the music better, transporting the listener to the performance venue. Dynamics, soundstage, and imaging are outstanding. The downside is there is a good chance they will not be available any longer since Bob Crump of CTC Builders may be moving soon.

Bass performance in smaller rooms (mine is the one to which Jafox referred in his most recent post above) is trickier than in larger rooms, a significant reason being that room modes can be harder to tame and can be extremely difficult to handle with cone woofers with the energy concentrated in a relatively small area. A speaker with larger radiating area, especially a dipole, distributes energy much more evenly in the room, exciting room resonances less and making them more manageable.

Brian