Room Lenses work wonders behind 'stats. DIY lenses using 5 or 6 tubes are even better or you might want to make noodle lenses. Check out Audio Asylum for info. I recently heard of using bi-fold louvered doors from Home Despot. These are said to be great diffusers and are easy to set up. Just fold them enough to stand up and place them behind the speakers. WAF might be a factor.
Taming/Damping Electrostat Backwave
In my understanding of the physics of the situation, the signal coming off the back of an electrostat panel is the same signal that comes off the front though in opposite phase. If there are reflections off a back wall, they cannot be a better signal than the one off the front of the panel. It strikes me that in a strict sense, if one could COMPLETELY eliminate the backwave on electrostatic speakers (a giant silent sound vacuum, sucking in the sound off the back of the dipole), this would be, in the words of the once famous and now infamous [:)] Martha Stewart, 'a good thing'. Am I missing something? Is there any argument to support not trying to eliminate the backwave through all means possible?
My Martin Logan SL3s sound reasonably intolerable when too close to the back wall, great when a certain distance away, and in my limited, ad hoc, distinctly non-scientific (not to mention bad WAF) experiments, even better when I put a variety of dampening material between the panel and the back wall (even when the wall is 6ft back).
Does anyone have a view or experience on the "complete backwave elimination" strategy? Do you try to eliminate it entirely? Do you leave some backwave in for 'flavor'? How do you deal with it? Put shag carpeting on the wall? Hire tall sheepdogs to sit on stools calmly for hours on end a la Fay Ray? I would love to know how other people deal with the backwave issue...
My Martin Logan SL3s sound reasonably intolerable when too close to the back wall, great when a certain distance away, and in my limited, ad hoc, distinctly non-scientific (not to mention bad WAF) experiments, even better when I put a variety of dampening material between the panel and the back wall (even when the wall is 6ft back).
Does anyone have a view or experience on the "complete backwave elimination" strategy? Do you try to eliminate it entirely? Do you leave some backwave in for 'flavor'? How do you deal with it? Put shag carpeting on the wall? Hire tall sheepdogs to sit on stools calmly for hours on end a la Fay Ray? I would love to know how other people deal with the backwave issue...