Final-Audio New Series electrostatics


I am a fan of Final-Audio Electrostatic speakers.  I have transitioned to the current models.  Any others out there in audio land using the newest iterations?  The M series.

riverdinaudio

Showing 2 responses by pinwa

I believe I got the second pair of M35s sold in the US.  They have replaced the Magnepan 20.7s I was using previously.  Sonically these are great sounding speakers with some limitations.  I have had trouble with arcing in the panels playing classical music at very loud levels.  It is unclear if that is problem specific to my pair or a general reason for concern.  Oddly, it has only occurred with symphonic classical music.  I have also run into buzzing on a couple of tracks, typically with lower frequency stringed instruments, i.e. cello or bass guitar.  It seems likely that the panel is vibrating in the frame but it is possible there is some sort of resonance in the panel.  Again, I have no idea if that is limited to the first models that were manufactured or occurs more widely.  So far there have only been four tracks over many hundreds of hours of listening that have been an issue but ... In my conversations with Ravi he has promised that those problems with my speakers will be addressed sometime in the future so I am not overly concerned and the speakers really do sound fantastic.

@madtrader I'm not really sure it would be responsible of me to share the two tracks that caused arcing in my M35s.  I have no idea if there is something specific about that music/recording that might damage other speakers.  It is possible there is clipping or square waves or something specific to the music.  Anyhow, the first time it happened I was entertaining an audiophile who wanted to hear orchestral music at "realistic" levels which for him meant well over 90 dBc, much louder than I normally listen.  The second track I was playing with peaks in the high 80s I would guess, again loud but not something that I felt was inappropriate for the music.  Remember live symphonic or jazz performances frequently have peaks over 100 dB.

This track has unusually deep and reverberant bass guitar and it caused buzzing in one of the panels and it was probably playing in the mid 80s dBC.  I imagine dBA would be at least 10 decibels less and when music is this bass heavy it often needs to be played at a louder SPL to sound correct to our ears.  I suspect any speaker that had a low frequency resonance might vibrate to this track.  https://open.qobuz.com/track/2574377

This second track is one of my standard reference tracks and I never heard an issue with it until I tested some cables a friend lent me that have a much more pronounced bass response and I heard buzzing in the left panel in the first 20 seconds of the song on the plucked cello (?).  I don't hear that on my second system or earbuds so I assume it is the panel but I would be curious how you hear it.  That is with peaks around 83 dBC slow.  https://open.qobuz.com/track/11235714

I am a big fan of the M35's bass response which is much better than the Magnepan 20.7s.  However I do use subwoofers that I think are well integrated.  But when I played this track I felt the bass was a little too prominent so I muted the subs and I was surprised to find the very low nearly subsonic bass didn't just diminish, it simply didn't exist anymore.  It points out the limits of even well designed electrostatics and I suspect quite a lot of conventional designs as well.  My guess is that unless you have subs or speakers that go down into the mid 20 Hz region you won't even know that there is information there.  https://open.qobuz.com/track/127028098  And that track doesn't cause any problems I hear with my M35s. 

As I said, I have had my M35s for 7 months and played more than 1000 hours of music and I have only heard issues with those 4 tracks.