Small room electrostat/ planar speaker?


In about 30 days will be moving to a new home where its going to be hard to make my 1.7 maggies work in a spouse friendly way ( the only large room is the main living room). I've always gravitated to planars and electrostatics, box speakers that don't sound colored or slow usually cost more than my entire system. Where I'd like to end up is a system that's extremely resolving at low to moderate volume levels, my main dissatisfaction with my current Mg 1.7 speakers and Prima Luna amp is that it really doesn't come to life until the volume is moderate listening levels or higher.

I'm wondering if anyone has seen something that approaches the coherency and speed of the 1.7s that would work in an 11x12 listening room? I'd like to keep the cost limited to $4k if possible.
128x128davide256
All planar speakers-certainly all magnepans-have crossovers; this is a main reason I prefer single driver or other non-conventional crossover designs, e.g. 1st order crossovers or "super tweeters" crossed over way up high with a simple filter (ohm walsh; zu for example).
The Sound Lab ESLs employ full-range drivers.
atmasphere: the sound labs look interesting, but i was responding to rocktown's comment that magnepans have no crossover: they, and any other, planar magnetic speaker i know of have multiple drivers & crossovers-was not referring to electrostats, but quads & others do have multiple panels...
One of the remarkable things about the Eminent Technology LFT-8b speakers is that it's "midrange" panel covers the frequency range of 180Hz to 10,000Hz, with no crossover! The 1st-order filter at 180Hz hands off to a sealed-box 8" woofer, and the 1st-order filter at 10,000 to a ribbon tweeter. All for $2499 retail.
@aniwolfe , @bdp24,

Can you guys give a recommendation to the room size for the LFT-8b (the smallest acceptable size). I was reading about it after your recommendation above and it looks like a good candidate for my office system. I am currently using a great sounding KEF LS50 in an incredibly tiny office but will move to a bigger space soon (not sure about room size yet). How far from the walls do you place the speaker?

I am going to be using the Benchmark AHB2 amp (mono block 380W) in the office will that SS amp be too bright with the E.T.?


@yyzsantabarbara

Well the ET’s in my experience sounded best with about 3 feet or more behind back of the panel. They do not need an overly dead sounding room to sound good in my experience. Even though they don’t have a very wide horizontal dispersion compared to dome driven speakers. I felt the side walls played a part in channel balance. So if you will need to be careful with that. The way I combated that was, a lot of toe-in.

Also they sound amazing playing Moving Pictures by Rush. Geddy’s bass lines sound so good.