Planars/ Electrostats benefits over box speakers?

A big benefit of panels for me is one that isn't talked about enough: Full size images! A grand piano is HUGE, and a good recording of one sounds that way through panels. Through most boxes they sound miniaturized. Panels also create a soundstage you are looking up at, rather than down on. The best deal in panels is the Eminent Technology LFT-8b. They aren't that big, 1' wide by 5' tall, and match better with tube amps than do Maggies, being an 8 ohm load rather than 4.

One of the couple of best systems I've ever heard was a pair of big SoundLab ESL's driven by big Atmasphere amps. I think the SL A1 or A3 was a favorite of J. Gordon Holt. For my money much preferable to Martin Logans, with Quads in the middle. But now Roger Modjeski of Music Reference/Ram Labs is making a direct-drive (no transformer) ESL/amp system that I'd love to hear.

At last weekend's T.H.E. Show in Irvine I took a good listen to the new Maggie .7, and to an ESL I hadn't before heard---a Sanders. I liked them both a lot, the Sanders a real lot. And a huge difference between a panel and a box speaker was reinforced by also listening to Vandersteen 7's and a couple of Wilsons at the show. As fine a loudspeaker as both companies make, the instruments and voices coming out of them sounded 1- Severely miniaturized, much smaller than in life and to the full size images coming from even the modestly-priced .7's. And 2- I found myself looking down on the performers, the sound of instruments and voices being about three feet off the floor. For me, that immediately destroys the "suspension of disbelief" a speaker needs to provide if I am to listen to music through it everyday. But that's just me!

Not with Vandersteens or the smaller Wilsons, in my experience. The big Wilsons are a different story, for those who can afford them. But for five or ten thousand, panels rule!

The interaction between speaker and room can effect apparent image size. But the components upstream of the speakers? I can see how they could make things smaller, but the speaker is the final arbitrator. The sound is being squeezed through those drivers the same no matter what signal they are fed. If a speaker sounds "small", nothing upstream can change that characteristic of the speaker, I don't believe.

I've heard only one $100k-$250k speaker, the big Wilsons at Brooks Berdan's shop, and it did sound huge. They are the only Wilsons I've heard that I could live with---too bad I can't afford them!. Brooks knew that life-size image and scale is of particular importance to me and some of his other customers, and, though preferring overall the Wilsons and Vandersteens that he sold, acknowledged to me the inherent advantage panels have in that area, and for us carried Quads and Eminent Technology LFT's. I find the effectively-point source Quads to also have that sound-being-squeezed-through-a-hole sound I find so objectionable, though they're great in other ways. I've heard lots of sub-$100k box speakers, but I've yet to hear one that sounds as life-size as a $5k Magneplanar. Sorry if that pisses you off!