The most placement forgiving planar speaker?

Soundlabs are excellent speakers. U-1s, A-1s, and M-1s are all among the most impressive speakers available - if you have the right equipment, and if you have a proper room.

I've heard at least seven pair of Soundlabs: 3 pair of U-1s, 2 pair of A-1s, a pair of M-2s, and a pair of Pristine IIIs. One pair of U-1s sounded exquisite, most of the rest sounded very good, and one pair sounded very so-so. I don't think the difference was so much attributable to the models (although, no doubt the U-1s are the best of the best), or even the electronics (although the gear, especially the amps used with Soundlabs will make a significant impact). What I believe caused the considerable differences I heard among the seven pair was the variation in room acoustics.

At the end of the day, the low end that you can get from Soundlabs, or any other planar, or any speaker of any design will to a degree be determined by the length of your room. For example, I think a 32 Hz signal has a wavelength of approximately 35 feet. That means that if you are trying to accurately reproduce a 32 Hz signal, your speakers need to be at least 35 feet from the back wall (behind the listener) and you will need some additional space between speakers and the front wall (behind the speakers). With less than that total distance, the primary wave is going to reflect off the back wall before it has fully "unfolded" it's fundamental wave and you are going to have less than an ideal result. How much less than ideal is going to be a function of several considerations, only one of which is the length of the room. Once you establish the room length needed to support your desired lowest frequency (assuming the speaker can go that low - pretty much all models of Soundlabs will go to 32Hz), the room length will in turn dictate an optimum room width and ceiling height. (While there is some debate about whether Cardas' formula yields the exactly optimum "golden ratio" it appears that most of the other ratios put forward as "golden" are substantially similar to the ratio recommended by Cardas; ie, the relationships between room length, width, and height are widely accepted as being important to achieving good acoustics.) Additionally, the ideal room will not be rectangular in shape, but will have pied out walls and a pied ceiling (all of which starts to resemble the shape of a concert hall). Finally, the room treatments need to be implemented so that reflections and absorptions occur at the appropriate locations. The chances of all this lining up in a room that wasn't designed for audio is slim, and therefore what virtually all audiophiles get is something that is less than optimum. How much less than optimum is generally unknown until you experience the environment (ie, hear the speakers and the rest of the system in the particular room). It may be that a given room happens to yield acceptable results, or that in moving up from a lesser set of speakers to say, Soundlabs, that the improvement is enough to meet your expectations. But I'd be careful about saying that any speaker is notably less sensitive to room acoustics than any other speaker because all speakers interact with the room to form a "system" that impacts the overall sound.

I know that the readers on this thread probably know all this stuff, but I can tell you that once you invest several thousand dollars in a pair of fairly esoteric (expensive, large, heavy, hard to pack and hard to ship) speakers you won't want to find out that what generally might have worked for someone else doesn't work so well in your room. It's my opinion that when you reach a certain level of equipment that attributes such as frequency extension (at the bottom and top), frequency response/tonal balance, defintion/detail, and imaging are all going to be impacted as much or more by the room as they will be by the equipment.

Again, I think Soundlabs are among the all-time great speakers, but I know from experience that you can't just stick them in any room and expect them to do their magic. As much as I admire Soundlabs, I can't see any big technical reasons (other than perhaps their dispersion characteristics) that would make them easier to place in a room than other planars. And even with respect to dispersion, I think all you can say is that Soundlabs have a different/unique dispersion ability, but again, whether that ability works well in any given room is a function of the room's characteristics and how those characteristics work with the speakers – it’s not just a function of the speakers.

In summary, I think it's wise to proceed with caution on generalizations. With so many interdependent variables I think the results are as likely to be random as they are predictable. Having said all that, I’ll go way out on a limb and say this – if I had a free pass on just one of the variables, I think it would be room length; having a longer room (well over 20 feet and preferably closer to 40 feet, or even longer) would likely give the low end a chance to do it’s magic, and in turn get out of the way of the exquisite midrange and high end that Soundlabs can reproduce. Additionally, given that most folks building rooms in houses have some sense of proportions, any room that is 40 feet long is likely to have some decent width and probably ceiling height – although the chances of the ratio being golden is slim (obviously a 40 foot hallway isn't going to do the trick). To be sure, this "longer is better" notion is just a consideration and is itself random and far from quantifiably optimum, but I think the beauty of Agon is that people are helping other people learn from their experience and as a result hopefully more people are getting a reasonable return on their (money, time, and effort) investments. With that as a caveat, my very rough rule of thumb is that under 20 feet in length, you are pushing your luck, at 20-30 feet you stand a chance, over 30 feet you’re getting warm, and by 40 feet you might be hot. And if you really want to get it right, study, measure and try to create the ideal room environment, or try to get a demo in your room first (good luck with that :).

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.