in al curved panels there are horizontal strips, (often transparant) without these the whole mylar would be almost flat. you can curve mylar by putting allot of tension vertical and almost no tension horizontal (or you would make it flat again
) and make the distance vertical where it is supported as small as possible. but it will never be perfectly curved. did you not get a chance to sit in the sweet spot? i'll admit there is more variation in response than would be desired outside the sweet spot, but i don't think i personally hate the way they sound outside of it - the other aspects of what make MP special are still there (low distortion, fast transients)
I owned Quads ELS63's for a number of years. The MP just don't compare. "fast transients" is a made up audiofool term. Yes low distortion in high frequencies but not in the lows.
The "buttons" are to break up modes in the panels. Drive with the right frequency, and you get resonate waves across the panel, one of the drawbacks of large panels. Think of waves when you "flip" a sheet to put it on a bed, or ripples in a piece of paper as you flap it. Similar to break-up modes in conventional cone speakers. Magnepan places the buttons asymmetrically in a pair of speakers so each panel has different modes, making them harder to "add up" and become (more) audible.
Well yes and no, breakup resonance.. well yeah you make the main resonance smaller but its more about creating new ones... to fill some voids. doing them asymmetrical gives you the ability to fill in as much as possible.
I spent many hours listening to my cousin's Magnepan speakers, but I bought Martin Logans for myself. We had to take turns sitting in the sweet spot when listening to the Magnepans. Thanks, but I'll pass. The Logans are far superior.
Did you write that backward? Magnepans have a tall thin ribbon tweeter, a line source that gives even dispersion of the treble. Martin Logans reproduce the treble on a panel wider than the wavelength of treble frequencies, causing uneven / beamy dispersion.
No, I have it right.
Then it must have been one of the Magnepan models that doesn't have the ribbon tweeter (like the LRS reviewed here).
on both you would take turns to have the best possible outcome in the sweet spot. even with normal speaker you would. since you will hear one louder in any case.
It was long ago - 1980’s.
I drive my Logans with an Aragon 8008BB. Plenty of power.
I listened the ELS mid model and quite liked them. They had decent dispersion so a couple people could listen at the same time.
I disagree electrostatics are easier to drive. They tend to present lower impedance at high frequencies along with a (sometimes high) reactive load. Usually one needs an amp with a good current reserve, capable of driving those amps into sometimes very low resulting impedances.
Roger Sanders who invented the CLS design discusses pretty clearly why he gave up on the curved panel due to multiple reasons. http://sanderssoundsystems.com/technical-white-papers/147-dispersion-white-paperany magnepan except the Pure ribbon have not the best dispersion, a ML although curved has a bad dispersion horizontal as well
True, though this is mitigated by the fact that the low impedance is at high frequencies, where musical energy is low.
Yep. Also due to their smooth flat-ish impedance curve, planars like the 3.6/R (which go from 4.25 Ohm in bass to 3.3 in treble) consequently have relatively linear phase / flat group delay.
