The most placement forgiving planar speaker?

I found that my Maggie 1.6's were pretty easy to place. Just need about 2 feet or greater from the back and side walls, if I recall. And as has been previously stated, I wouldn't try to stuff them in a small room.

DrKen,

I'm a SoundLAB dealer and owner, and Albert and JaFox are right on the money about Sound Labs being relatively forgiving of room, speaker positioning, and listener positioning. The tonal balance holds up throughout the room, and the soundstaging is still good well off center. Having owned smaller model SoundLABs as well, let me say that the M-3, M-2 and A-3 are very similar to the full-sized models in these respects.

One other planar that gives an exceptionally wide sweet spot is the Beveridge line of electrostats. They don't show up used very often, unfortunately. They might be back in limited production, but if so the prices I've heard mentioned make SoundLABS look like bargains.

Duke

planars are very picky about "exact" placement (ie the small increments measurements need to be spot on). they are no different in that regard to other high end speakers.

beside that they can be placed very close to the side wall(dipole placment)and need to be out from the back wall and no tv in between.. dipoles work really well in rectangular shoe box rooms out from the back wall and can be close to the side wall..

speakers like audio physic like cube or square rooms far away from the side walls

One thing you can look at is the horizontal dispersion pattern. If it's smooth, you'll probably be able to place the spkrs reasonably easily.
Speaking of which, I remember a test showing the Soundlabs had good dispersion characteristics...

Hi DrKen,

Albert was right on the money about the Soundlabs. I had the pleasure of hearing them in his house twice and they imaged amazingly well.

If you can't afford their price tag, however, I would go for the Martin Logans. Their curved pannels seem to help quite a bit with placement. You still need a couple of feet of room from the back wall but the side walls are not as problematic. The focus and image size are very good but the venetian-blind effect is still there, albeit not quite as severe as with the Eminent Technology and Maggies, which I also like. I prefer the Martin Logans because they are quicker and airier. ML also excells in customer service, which should not be overlooked.