What is your opinion regarding electrostatics?

You folks mentioning the proper toe in angle might be interested in my findings.
On running the ESLs along the long wall of a 23'X 14' room, I find the best compromise to be 36 inches off the wall minimum, with a slight toe-in. Roughly halfway to the point where you would have them be a direct line to your ear, at a dead center seating position. While more upper treble detail can appear to be had at the full toe in or direct line pattern, there is somewhat more listener fatigue, and less overall enjoyment, if you do.
Another benefit of halfway toe-in is that it buys you more distance away from the backwall, possibly another 8 to 10 inches.
I do beleive that using the short wall, and getting the distance of the room in your favor is the more optimal way to run most any speaker. I think Stereo integration occurs better at 20 feet then at 10. Anyone have an opinion? Might make a good thread..........Frank

Interesting thoughts, Frap. In a rectangular room I generally prefer to place the speakers along a short wall, and to sit well back away from them. To me, this sounds more like what I hear in a concert hall.

I think there's a reason for this - you see, in a concert hall, for everyone except perhaps those in the first few rows, the reverberant field dominates - that is, more sound power reaches the listener's ears via the reflections than direct from the instruments. Typically in a concert hall, the reverberant energy dominates by a huge margin - we still get our directional cues from the first-arrival sound, but the timbre is greatly enriched by the reverberant field (which also gives us the feeling of huge acoustic space). Indeed, the concert hall's feeling of velvety lushness is the product of a powerful, diffuse reverberant field. See Pisha & Bilello in the September 1987 issue of Audio magazine.

When we listen "near-field" (say a few feet from the speakers), the direct sound dominates. Proponents of nearfield listening claim that the recording itself already has all the reverberations you need, and any added by the listening room are distortions. The problem is, the ears expect for the reverberations to come from all around, not from the two points of origin of the direct sound. So while nearfield listening can give you holographic imaging (including depth), I get more of the "feel" of live music by sitting much farther back, where the reverberant field is dominant, and also where small head movements don't cause significant image shifts.

There is something of a tradeoff relationship between precise soundstaging and a rich sense of ambience - in concert halls as well as in listening rooms!

In my demo room, I have two listening positions - a single chair about 8 feet back, and then a couch about 18 feet back. The soundstaging is more holographic up front, the ambience richer in back. Probably a bit more than half of my customers prefer to listen from the chair, up close, while I usually prefer to listen from the couch - but (just to muddy the waters a bit) it does vary from recording to recording. C'est la vie.

Audiokinesis, in your post of 09.05 you possibly gave me an explanation, why when listening to the Exalibur horn speakers I found them a tad too "polite", i.e. artificial, compared to my rig at home, which in its fairly uniform soundfield seemed to have a closer aproximation to the real thing. I've also experimented intensively with infield listening and positioning myself further away from the speakers, finally preferring a position, which gave me the best holographic soundfield. Since Sean diagnosed me as a "nut" (-; whereas, by no means in disagreement, I would rather call my mental state experimentative and curious, happily moving in fool's paradise, because unhampered by any technical knowledge, I have nothing to lose if I tell you, that for better ambience retrieval, I am experimenting with a pair of Quads, placed at right angles from and right next to my main body of speakers, close to the long side of the walls, firing toward each other and with their own set of electronics feeding them. The results so far are quite interesting, IF you apply power to them VERY judicially, first setting SPL for the main body of speakers and then blending the side speakers in very carefully. I was amazed, that the holographic nature of the soundstage practically remained the same, whereas ambience seemed to increase in quite a pleasurable way. I borrowed the stuff from a dealer friend, in order to make this experiment and shall have to give it back, but am sorely tempted to try something similar at a later time.
Cheers

Detlof, I dont know if you are aware of it, but the great tonearm owner/designer of SME (Alistair Aikman)(dont know if thats the correct spelling),runs 2 pair of ESL-63, not stacked, but just as you described above. It seems that the right angles DO produce the holograph akin to the real event. Check out HiFi News & Record Review on the Aikman interview years back if you have the issues. According to the interviewer the sound at casa Aikman was positively live. This audio superstar can own just about anything he wants. Must be something to it...........Frank

This brings up a question for me (I started the "need wisdom comparing planars" thread)...has anyone tried using two pairs of Maggie 1.6's in the "wall of planars" configuration alluded to? Is this a "poor man's" Mag Tympani?

Or are there better roads to the same end?