The most placement forgiving planar speaker?

Hi Fatparrot,

I thought I did explain the venetian-blind effect, albeit succintly: "I am talking about the noticeable discontinuity or abrupt shift in the image as you move you head from side to side."

Let me try again. With cone/box speakers, as you move your head laterally, say slowly from left to right, the center image such as a singing voice will remain in the center for a while, say for six to twelve inches; when your head has moved far enough to the right, the voice will shift to the closest (right) speaker.

With most dipolar speakers, i.e. planar speakers producing sound to the front and to the rear of their diaphrams, if you move your head just a few inches from left to right, the center image will suddendenly disappear and then reappear slightly to the right. This effect will continue as you keep moving your head. Now you hear the center image, now you don't, and now you hear it again, similar to the way you see only between the slats of a venetian blind: thus the "venetian blind effect." So to get a stable image, you must keep your head stationay, locked within a few inches of the listening center.

This sounds far worse than it really is. And the Maggies aren't certainly the only speakers to do that. All dipolar/planar speakers do, some more than others. In other words, they all have a relatively small sweet spot compared to cone/box speakers. This sweep spot gets bigger with each new generation of the Maggies and is quite large with the Soundlabs.

The venetian blind effect can be quite disconcerting to some people. When you are within the sweet spot, however, the sound is vividly three-dimensional and truly magical. That's why I continue to have a love-hate relationship with dipolar speakers.

Dont get Innersound speakers if you are worried about a sweet spot, its about 12 inches....your head will be in a vice

Take a look at my system; Bruce Thigpen, the designer of the speakers said, "No problem" with them being inches from the wall. He was right. You'll want to do some room tuning, though, behind the planars. Makes a big difference in ridding unwanted room reflections.

Audiokinesis - Great description. Much of my experience with the A1s make a lot of sense after reading your text.

Mikesinger - My experience with the Sound-Lab A1 is that they are not so sensitive to exact placement vs. the Magnepans that did require a lot of experimentation of toe-in and rear and side wall placement.

Teajay - I was a Magnepan owner, 3.5s and 3.3s, and loved these speakers. For their price, they have little competition for the musicality they produce; I would go as far to say they are THE runaway steal of speaker value. They have a midrange and top-end clarity that is wonderful. But as Justin_time and Audiokinesis mention here, the Sound-Labs bring on a low-level resolution and dynamic contrast that the Maggies simply don't have. And when I heard the series 3 vs. the 20s at the dealer, there just was not a huge difference in these areas so I could not find a reason to "move up" in the Maggie line.

I never thought I'd find another speaker that has all of the Maggie magic and yet resolves their low-end extension and dynamic compressed weaknesses. And I have yet to notice a single quality of the Maggie that is lacking in the A1s.

I too often felt the need to crank up the level on the Maggies to get them to come alive. With the A1s, I don't need to do this. For this reason, I find the Sound-Lab to be far less "needing" of "high-power" amps.

With the Sound-Lab, there is a greater tonal coherency whereas the Maggies' midrange always had a little too much presence vs. the rest of the range. One other dramatic tonal difference between the products: neither the Magnepan 3.x nor 20.x are nearly as extended/authoritative in the bass as the Sound-Lab.

Hi_hifi - Physics aside, I find that I have excellent low-bass output in my 13x18 room. I might also note that I heard the U1s (with SALLIE's) in December in a room that was just a bit bigger than mine, at approx 15x20, and the bass in that audio setup was outstanding. If I had not heard these speakers perform so well in sizes that you describe as "pushing your luck", I would be very skeptical to the performance possibilities in such a small room. But based on what I have now, I would think that a room of size, (20 x 25 x 8-9) would allow for all the adjustments for placement that I will ever require. It sure beats spending a fortune to build a room of 30-40' in length. And if the installation of SALLIE devices behind the speakers removes the slight bass hump in my current room, then I know I'm good to go with the "you stand a chance" sized room as mentioned.

In the 3-5k used range you are definitely looking at Maggie 3.6s and perhaps Soundlab M-2s, or maybe M-3s. Soundlabs and Maggies are both great; they are different than each other, but great. One other possiblity would be a pair of Wayne Picquet's Quad 57s (which would probably fit in your budget even "new", ie with his refurbs) - they are outstanding, but won't have quite the low end or the large imaging of the full range planars (Wayne would tell you to solve those requirements by stacking two pair of 57s).

Back on the room, Duke is one of my all-time favorite hifi dealers (really, truly, seriously), but I don't share his opinion that you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. I know that Duke knows the difference between deep boomy/muddy bass and deep accurate bass and I have to assume that he meant deep acccurate bass.

Duke said:

"First of all, you don't need a large room to generate deep bass. Think of a high quality car stereo system, or as an extreme example headphones. The ears register pressure even if the room dimensions are too short to support a wavelength."

- headphones are like a system in an optimized room - the drivers and the room acoustics are both known in advance and are designed to have the intended dimensions, absorbptions, and reflections

- the trick is not to just get deep bass, but a frequency response that doesn't emphasize some frequencies at the expense of others; if you want deep bass, just push your speakers up against a wall or in the corners - the bass will get deeper and the rest of the sound will get muddier - because room size and relfections do matter.

Duke acknowledges this:

"Now with a speaker whose reverberant field response is tonally incorrect, the more "room sound" you get the worse the tonal balance."

But he then goes on to say:

"But what if the reverberant sound isn't detrimental to the tonal balance? In that case, the size of the room is much less important."

And that was original my point - you won't know if the reverberant sound is or isn't detrimental to the tonal balance until you hear the speaker in your room - there are too many variables to know without listening to the speakers in the room. If you try to put Soundlabs or Maggies in a small (short) room, you are asking for frequency response issues - starting with the low end and continuing right up the through the midrange and beyond.

If you like spending x on your speakers and selling them for 60% of x, just put them in whatever room you have and give it a go. The room matters more than people often know or like to admit.