The most placement forgiving planar speaker?

Based on my experience I would say Sound-Lab M-1.

Unless you listen in a tiny space, they will work in your room. Bonus is they perform wonderfully with a wide variety of amps and throw a sweet spot that is "room sized."

In other words, you have to work hard to find a spot where they don't image and sound good :^).

Amazing how Albert's explanation perfectly describes my now 6-month experience with the same-sized A1's. In my room, there is a little bass hump if they are too close to the back wall. Closeness to side walls does not seem to be much of a factor. I have a wonderfully huge sweet spot no matter where I am as I walk across the back of the room. The Magnepan 3.5's that I owned before had a sweet spot of only a couple feet with a comparable 7-8' distance back from the speakers.

The Soundlab is an amazing speaker, if you can afford $7000.00, what about Eminent Technology LFT VIIIA?, placement can be as close as 2 ft from back wall and side wall is not critical, Bruce Thigpen (owner & designer) is about as nice as they come, give him a call and try a 30 day in home audition, at less than $2000 with Sound Anchor stands its a no-brainer.....and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who knocks these speakers.

I found that my Maggie 1.6's were pretty easy to place. Just need about 2 feet or greater from the back and side walls, if I recall. And as has been previously stated, I wouldn't try to stuff them in a small room.

DrKen,

I'm a SoundLAB dealer and owner, and Albert and JaFox are right on the money about Sound Labs being relatively forgiving of room, speaker positioning, and listener positioning. The tonal balance holds up throughout the room, and the soundstaging is still good well off center. Having owned smaller model SoundLABs as well, let me say that the M-3, M-2 and A-3 are very similar to the full-sized models in these respects.

One other planar that gives an exceptionally wide sweet spot is the Beveridge line of electrostats. They don't show up used very often, unfortunately. They might be back in limited production, but if so the prices I've heard mentioned make SoundLABS look like bargains.

Duke