ESL vs Planar Magnetic

[fivestring]

Hello a.wayne,

I guess you have miss understood my response.. We do not listen to live music when we listen to hi-fi , we are listening to recordings of live music , Hence no hi-fi will sound like live music , just a recording of such and yes losing details in the recording is distortion , favoring one over the other ?

I couldn`t agree more, this is the reason I said we`re still in the dark ages.

small drivers, small effective surface area, long excursion - high surface loudness

Small drivers: 1" dome tweeter and 5-6" cone woofer/midrange, no matter if they are high tech units costing thousands of dollars, mounted in a corian boxes, they`re good for background music reproduction only, nothing more (of course, high end reviewers will tend to disagree).
Tall ribbon on the other hand, although far from real sonic nirvana, is a major leap forward but still only acceptable in absolute terms.

Now you tell me what is the trade off with ribbons - soundwise?

I know tall speakers aren`t popular among casual listeners and they are sensitive to pillow wars, but we`re talking about sound quality here.


@tinitus:
My experience: 1m tall 2cm wide ribon is already enough for immense musical enjoyment, soundwise and SPL wise, but it has a very narrow vertical listening window (which is really annoying), perhaps 30cm tall, where it sounds very clear, while above and below this window (but still within its 1m length) the magic is gone, well almost.
2m tall, 2cm wide ribbon on the other hand is completely free from this problem (no wonder, it approximates true line source behavior much closely), it sounds the same whether you sit, stand or lie, has smoother sound, taller soundfield and greater SPL capabilities, of course. The drawback of the taller ribbon being less visual acceptance among casual listeners, but those who appreciate its qualities will find it irreplaceable.