What is your opinion regarding electrostatics?

Audiokinesis, in your post of 09.05 you possibly gave me an explanation, why when listening to the Exalibur horn speakers I found them a tad too "polite", i.e. artificial, compared to my rig at home, which in its fairly uniform soundfield seemed to have a closer aproximation to the real thing. I've also experimented intensively with infield listening and positioning myself further away from the speakers, finally preferring a position, which gave me the best holographic soundfield. Since Sean diagnosed me as a "nut" (-; whereas, by no means in disagreement, I would rather call my mental state experimentative and curious, happily moving in fool's paradise, because unhampered by any technical knowledge, I have nothing to lose if I tell you, that for better ambience retrieval, I am experimenting with a pair of Quads, placed at right angles from and right next to my main body of speakers, close to the long side of the walls, firing toward each other and with their own set of electronics feeding them. The results so far are quite interesting, IF you apply power to them VERY judicially, first setting SPL for the main body of speakers and then blending the side speakers in very carefully. I was amazed, that the holographic nature of the soundstage practically remained the same, whereas ambience seemed to increase in quite a pleasurable way. I borrowed the stuff from a dealer friend, in order to make this experiment and shall have to give it back, but am sorely tempted to try something similar at a later time.
Cheers

Detlof, I dont know if you are aware of it, but the great tonearm owner/designer of SME (Alistair Aikman)(dont know if thats the correct spelling),runs 2 pair of ESL-63, not stacked, but just as you described above. It seems that the right angles DO produce the holograph akin to the real event. Check out HiFi News & Record Review on the Aikman interview years back if you have the issues. According to the interviewer the sound at casa Aikman was positively live. This audio superstar can own just about anything he wants. Must be something to it...........Frank

This brings up a question for me (I started the "need wisdom comparing planars" thread)...has anyone tried using two pairs of Maggie 1.6's in the "wall of planars" configuration alluded to? Is this a "poor man's" Mag Tympani?

Or are there better roads to the same end?

Now Frap, that is truly fascinating! I did not know about Aikman nor do I read the the mag you mention. Thanks for putting me one to this. Just goes to show, if you experiment with an "open mind".......just another word for "fools paradise" (-; ...you sometimes get interesting results!
Tim, I don't know, never tried it with Maggies. However using Quads etc, it only really worked, if each pair of speakers has its own amplification, that is, you would have to use either four monos, or two stereo-amps, one per side. Quads, like most stats are not an easy load for an amplifier and hence running two, even on fairly powerful amps, was not a good solution.(I do cascade two specially modified Stax F 91s however, but they run on the Spectral 360, which seem quite unperturbed by this load.) So to really get an advantage out of this kind of setup ( better dynamics, much better SPL ) it soon gets quite complicated and costly. Just think of the extra cabling it takes. Put Perhaps the Maggies are easier to drive. I'd surely try it out, if you have the necessary hardware at hand.
Regards, Detlof

Several thoughts, my system uses Crosby Quad 63's and Entec LF40's. After many years of moving the Quads around my 19' by 29' room, they are currently sitting a little more than 8' from the back wall and about 4' from the side walls, toed in toward the listening position. Demian Martin of Entec has visited my home two times and he feels strongly that any dipile should be a minimum of 8' out from the real wall to insure enough time lag between the direct sound and the first reflection so that the ear does not confuse them, otherwise imaging will suffer. I guess that the same result could be accomplished by attenuating the back wave with damping mayerial; however, in my room that seems to suck the life out of the sound. After much experimentation, I have ended up with two 8" diffusors centered on the wall behind the speakers and a single custom 16" deep diffusor in each corner of the room. I also use 5 of the Argent Room lenses and two custom 16' resonators in the corners behind my listening position.

Even with the subs the Quads do not play at really loud levels, but up to f, they are great at differentiating dynamics. This is particularly true from p to ppp.

I found it particularly difficult to seemlessly mate a sub with the Quads, but am reasonably pleased with the latest Entecs which incorporate less motional feedback than their predecessors (yes, the subs still sometimes outpace the dynamics of the Quads).

Last, the outboard crossover that came with the Entecs was horrible and colored the sound of the Quads. At present I use a teflon cap at the input of my amp and a separate attenuator that is in series only with the subs to set levels.