What is your opinion regarding electrostatics?


I am planning to purchase a pair of FINAL o.3 ESL/hybrids (made in the Netherlands). Surprisingly, these speakers did not make a review in any major audio U.S. publication, I wonder why....
Has anyone had the opportunity to listen to the Final's?
Power amp: parasound hc-3500 / Preamp by Placette
Musical tastes: jazz/blues/rock & french pop
herve1
Sean: having lived with planars & e-stats for 12 yrs, I too would dare advise against yr having expectations from the highs -- especially as new media can go well over 20kHz.

The mids& mid-highs are very fast, granted, but until two yrs ago (when I changed from stats), the +15kHz region couldn't reach conventional speaker levels: witness, Detlof, who uses plasma for the upper highs.

A related subject is placement; with stats firing along the long side of the room, I have been happiest without toe-in at all. And yes, I do sometimes listen to jazz & blues apart from classical. I suppose Detlof, A-Porter or Duke, would be among the resident experts on the placement...

Cheers!
Greg you are right about the toe-in, with stators on the long side of "shoe-box" like rooms. I am just using a very tiny amount of it and another thing should be mentioned, that with stators the distance to the side walls is uncritical for all intents and purposes. Another advantage of dipoles, which is not to be underestimated.
Detlof, now that you mention the side walls issue, I remember that the narrow stats were standing ~10 ft apart centre-to-centre and two ft from the side walls. Eight ft into the ~23ft room -- i.e. not far from your present set-up (between 1/3 & 1/2 into the room).
Cheers!
Yes Greg, how does the saying go? "Great ears hear alike " or something like that, no? (-;
Cheers!
One of a handful of speakers that stood out at the last CES was Finyl(?). Their HT set-up was truely outstanding offering a punchy low-end with typical sizzling upper freq sounds. Sonics were well balanced, and their relative low-profile, large soundstage was very suprising! I like this speaker alot!

Jack