Electrostatic vs. Boxed vs. Ribbon?

I think Rives summed it up as well as one can.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I have been hooked on electrostatics since the early eighties.Yes they suck if you feed 'em the likes of Led Zeppelin or most any heavy rock band,but if your an audiophile,thats not what you are going to play over your system anyway.Personally,I save the rock for the system in my vehical,plenty of amps and subs to do it justice.The open life like sound of electrostatics with female vocals and jazz is breathtaking,and I have yet to hear a box speaker to equal it.

Sorry, correction, Page 5 of the second link begins discussing transducer types. But the "loudspeaker evaluation" on page 2 may still be worth reading (I didn't read it though so be careful-although ava is credible). He also discusses piezoelectric drivers that get overlooked often and I thought it was interesting 'cause I always forget about those. (I *did* read that transducer section though and saw nothing wrong). But all the articles address what your interested in. Each technology comes down to how well the designer did it as others have rightfully said.

Audiokinesis is right that some designers have worked with some of the "general" disadvantages of e-stats with sucess; but by reading Dunlavy's article it you'll at least be aware of what a designer is faced with and know when a design may have not dealt with these issues-or how it did. Quad and Soundlab are certainly better than Final (I have not heard good things about those--one person described their sound as "nails on a blackboard").

There's oddballs too like open-baffle (dipole by default) electromagnetic systems (Rives' #2) that are free from cabinet resonances and internal standing waves and share the same dispersion pattern just like the e-stats (and they have a loyal, although small, following). In fact, transmission lines generally don't have as nasty a backwave reflection (or cabinet resonance for that matter) as the other "boxed" types which is one more on the list.

I have spent most of my adult life listening to electrostatic speakers. I fell in love with the Achostats? in the mid sixties but could not afford them.In the mid seventies i got a pair of esl quads which I loved and stil keep in my office.By the end of the seventies I bought a Pair of dayton wrights great when they worked.In the mid eighties I bought the martin logan monolith I,and replaced these with the ML Prodigies when they came out.Through the years I spent a fortune on tweeks trying to get these speakers to sound right for orchestral music.I listen primarily to classica lmusic.Last year I finaly gave up and got the JM Utopias and I have been happy ever since.
Good luck
ramy