Speed kills....

A lot of the aparent speed and detail of electrostats is in the lack of dispersion, but the truth is they can store quite a lot of energy which in any other speaker we’d blame for muddy sounding results. Take a look at figure 6 here:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/martinlogan-masterpiece-renaissance-esl-15a-loudspeaker-measurem...

What electrostatics do spectacularly very well is ignore a lot of the room acoustics. It's really hard to achieve the same level of clarity at the listening room with point source type speakers.

And please don’t come after me, I like ESL speakers. I just want to broaden the understanding of what it is we like about them. 

 Roger Modjeski says that’s because of the extremely low moving mass of the Mylar used in ESL drivers.

It's not just mass, but the amount of force you can exert against the mass and, critically, self-damping. 

ESL's suck at the last bit of this, nor are they particularly smooth in the frequency domain. 

If you want shocking speed, glass smooth frequency response and lack of smearing you need large drivers in a well treated room. :) 

@bdp24

Erik, there is a reason loudspeaker designers still work hard to get theirs to sound as natural (lifelike timbres, especially vocals) as the 1957 Quad ESL.

Can you point out specific evidence or is this your personal assumption?

Limitations yes, but not at what’s most important to some music lovers. Add a pair or quad of dipole subs, and you may forget about what they don’t do.

I’m not saying otherwise, just wanted to suggest to arm chair speaker designers that the perception of speed comes from the dispersion alone.

Best,

E

I was a little too absolute:

 the perception of speed comes from the dispersion alone.

I should have said "mostly" from the controlled dispersion pattern. 

And honestly, overall, ESL's are some of the most room friendly speakers on earth. Pairing them with a sub is where this all goes bad. Subs need treatment, EQ and good placement. 

I was just thinking, if we want to talk about the benefits of the ESL as a driver, maybe we shouldn't compare them to box speakers, but dipoles and line sources instead. 

That is a much more fair comparison of the ESL's quality than in a conventional box. You get very similar dispersion patterns (but not the vertical narrow control)