Effects Of Power Cords On Electrostatic Speakers

Very good points.

By 'coherence' I mean that all frequencies have the same character, which is hard to get when treble comes from a beryllium tweeter and bass comes from a paper cone, but easy to get when they all come from the same membrane. To get that in the HT I went to 6 MMW's, 2 DWM's, and 1 Quad 2905 (centre), with Bryston amps. These Magnepans are all based on the older planar-magnetic technology rather than the quasi-ribbons or ribbons, which may have been a mistake - but I knew that I loved that sound, and in the HT it's a wonderful, engaging, immersive, coherent sound.

Magnepan DWM goes down to a usable 37Hz in my room, so the big 20.7 or 30.7 should do that too - recall that they use the same bass technology as the DWM. I haven't heard the 20.7 or 30.7, so check that the ribbons integrate well with the planar-magnetic panels.

And of course, your room is its own study, so YMMV with the bass response. It's an ongoing journey, but you're starting at a very good place.

I would crossover to cones at a lower frequency. Actually, I cross over at 50 Hz with an 18Db / octave electronic crossover, so the cones are silent for anything north of 100 Hz.

The DWM’s don’t cost much and you can plant a swarm of them around your chair. I just needed two in the HT and two in the 2-channel room. Most of the bass came from them rather than the isobaric sub when I played "Power and Glory", which was recorded direct to disk in the stone cathedral in LA, from M&K records.

I've often wondered how horns would work - an excellent question. Do tell me when you find out.

I found that the most important thing is shielding on the power cables for electrostats. A minimum 14-gauge cable, though.

Galen Gareis presented the following talk at the Masterclass Sessions at the AXPONA show, titled "The Uncommonly Understood Nature of Common Cable Characteristics."

Technical Papers: Iconoclast Cable

Video posted on this page.

As an engineer for 4+ decades, I found this fascinating. Especially since most of my EE peers did not have the knowledge of cable design. This should be a must see in entirety for all the cable naysayers.

Anyways, he does make a few comments toward the end about why E-stats can run better with a different cable than most box speakers being fed by standard amplifier.

Hope this helps.