Planar to dynamic, dynamic to planar, or ...

Even though I have excellent dynamic speakers now, I still vividly remember the sound of a properly set up Apogeee Duetta and Martin Logan CLS from the mid 80's. It felt like I just walked in on a group of live musicians playing in front of me. Uncanny.

I love my VMPS hybrids. With a low bass woofer and a mid/upper bass woofer mated to planar mids and ribbon tweeters it seems to be the best of both worlds. Dynamics are excellent like cone speakers and the super transparency and imaging of planars are still there.

Except for the bass I also like Magnepans. They need alot of power to sound decent however. You may want to try a line array. Selah audio makes some outstanding ones. These can also be super dynamic, highly sensitive and have the transparency of a full planar or electrostatic speaker. Selah audio has a forum at audiocircle and although I've never heard one of Rick's speakers, the reviews are extremely positive. You do need a decent sized room for those speakers.

The line arrays may satisfy your needs as they have a row of woofers and a row of ribbon tweeters. Selah also has them with built in subwoofers.

I ended up with a second system with Infinity RS1b's to listen to when I missed planar sound. Certain music sounds better with planars and some with cones. The Pipedreams are still the big kahuna here though.

My girl is not too happy with me but it sure sounds good!

Best,

Paul :-)

I'm a back and forth fan. I have a pair of Maggie 1.6's and a pair of Aerial 6's. The Aerials are dead on musically, and I've never heard anything image like they do. THey are small, and don't really care where you put them.

The maggies don't image as well, and it's hard to get used to the taaaalll soundstage, but if you're not into critical listening, nothing fills an apartment with music like a pair of maggies.

cone or horn designs have a coloration i don't like. there have been a few exceptions, such as an early gradient, aerial 10t, esp bhodran and maybe a proac response 3. however, i suspect that after a period of time, i would tire of those cone designs.

once you have listened to the quad esl, it is not possible to listen to conces too long.

by the way, ribbons and planar magnetic speakers sound different than electrostatics. i prefer electrostatic--full range, but the occasional panel replacement drives me nuts.

currently i have maggies, but i miss the esls.

I'd be interested to hear from open baffle speaker owners and how the fact that planars are dipoles figures into much of the pleasure you get from the planar sound. Is that open natural presentation that I could get from my old Maggies due more to the rear wave than the ribbon itself. If so, then open baffle cone designs such as Orions or Alons would get the best of both worlds, dynamics and the holographic imaging. I went from Magnepans to Merlins. I purposely chose Merlins because they present an amazingly deep soundstage and are capable of disappearing as well as any planar I've heard. Although the Merlins have many advantages over the Maggies, and not just in terms of dynamics, but balance and cohesion as well, there is still something I miss about the Maggies. The comparison I use is that both speakers are like windows looking out over beautiful sceneary (take you pick--mountains or beaches). Both offer a clean pristine view. The Merlin window, with better lower level detail, may even offer a clearer view of the world. Nonetheless, its like the Maggie window is open just a crack and you can "feel" the mountain air as you watch the eagle fly. It could be just a matter of taste, however, and the fact that I find the mountain air so intoxicating.

Every time I hear cones again, I hear that bthunk, pting of exagerrated leading edges and I kind of miss it.

As I have mentioned before, I can swing from planar to cone in the middle of a music selection simply by changing the crossover frequency between my cones (a subwoofer system capable of up to 400 Hz) and my Maggies. (If one used a full range cone speaker system, with mid and tweeter, you could run the cones all the way up).

Although I am a planar fan, I do admit that some kinds of music, most notably organ played at high volume, sounds best with cones. By the way, I also think that horn midrange and tweeter are best for horn instruments like trumpet, but I haven't yet got arount to installing switchable horn drivers.