Ribbon midrange pros and cons


Ribbon tweeters are fairly common on some high end speakers. ...they sound great.....can anyone tell me why ribbon midranges are hardly ever used by some of the best speaker companies. ..what are the pros and cons? 
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Showing 3 responses by bdp24

Thanks @rauliruegas for that info. I think I’m one of the few planar loudspeaker lovers who never heard a pair of Apogees. For some reason they didn’t seem to be big on the West Coast; I never saw a pair in any California hi-fi shop, Northern or Southern.
I have a pair of the Magneplanar Tympani T-IVa, which have the great Magnepan ribbon tweeter. I also have the ridiculously-overlooked and under-appreciated (not by all; they got a great review in TAS, and VPI's Harry Weisfeld loves them) Eminent Technology LFT-8b, which has a ribbon tweeter and magnetic-planar midrange (180Hz-10kHz, with no crossover!), with push-pull magnetic structure. Best deal in planar loudspeakers, $2499/pr.
None of you have heard of the long-discontinued Apogee full range ribbon loudspeakers?! Three way, all three drivers (bass, midrange, tweeter) being true, pure ribbons. They remain the all-time favorite speakers of some. Very hard to drive---their impedance dropped below 1 ohm, and were very insensitive/inefficient, and were therefore commonly paired with Krell amps. And they were pretty expensive.