DIY HiFi; build yourself electrostatic speakers and show them off

DIY HiFi; build yourself electrostatic speakers and show them off.
DIY HiFi; build yourself electrostatic speakers and show them off | PC Perspective

HackaDay article referenced in the PCPER article.
Electrostatic Loudspeakers: High End HiFi You Can Build Yourself

Follow the links in the HackaDay article and you will be able to easily create your own high end electrostatic speakers for your home, and use them with your PC. What do you guys think? Anyone like electrostatic speakers and can comment on how they sound in comparison to regular speakers? I know that they need a bass module due to the design of them. Looked interesting nevertheless.

I have been building electrostatic speakers for over 20 years now. There's nothing that compares to the sound. Large panels do not need a separate bass unit unless you want disco level bass. The picture you posted is of a wire stator and that's the most laborous kind to build. A perforated metal stator is far more popular and easy. Wire stators have their advantages but due to complexity many avoid them.

I demo'd a pair of STAX electrostatic headphones back in 1989/90 and the sound was ultra-realistic.
The Demo had a lady talking and walking around and you'd swear that she was right in the room with you. Another part of the demo was a car starting up and revving up.

Thanks for sharing, lots of info about a subject i had never read about before.

Have heard these along with weird stuff like titanium ribbon tweeters, diamond tweeters and various top end horn systems. I'd still only just rate the ribbons and diamond over these but perhaps I have not tried a good enough system and room to really call it.. would love the chance again.

Every system needs bass if you want to reproduce the full range properly. Which in my books, a true Hifi should. I see bass as the foundation with all other sounds arranged above that. I find both bass heavy and or high heavy/disproportionate rigs are more fatiguing to listen to also.

What sort of xmax do such panels have? I'm curious from a bass POV if they would need reinforcement if large enough.


Edit:
One thing that should be said. Nearly started a company building subs years back. After researching for quite some years the various aspects, I realized I'd do well to leave multi speaker main designs well alone and focus on subs. Mains are so complex (plus expensive) if you really want to do them well, to the point that I'd rather pay for them than even bother to go down that road.

In comparison, these Electrostatics look far more accessible from that point of view and perhaps, easier to get 'right' - maybe this is part of why they can sound so darn good.

Another good avenue to DIY is amps. You can get reference benchmark sound on mid-high end budget this way.
Holton Precision Audio | Sound by Design

N4CR said:

Have heard these along with weird stuff like titanium ribbon tweeters, diamond tweeters and various top end horn systems. I'd still only just rate the ribbons and diamond over these but perhaps I have not tried a good enough system and room to really call it.. would love the chance again.

Every system needs bass if you want to reproduce the full range properly. Which in my books, a true Hifi should. I see bass as the foundation with all other sounds arranged above that. I find both bass heavy and or high heavy/disproportionate rigs are more fatiguing to listen to also.

What sort of xmax do such panels have? I'm curious from a bass POV if they would need reinforcement if large enough.

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Xmax is only 1-2mm but driver area is 1 square meter. Big ESL:s give a very tight and clean bass which is quite enough for music listening. Usually the first reaction when people hear big panels for the first time is amazement of the bass. It's very hard to combine extra bass drivers to ESL:s because regular boxed drivers do not integrate well. They lack proper impulse response. Usually better ESL:s are combined with transmission lines or horn bass.

B00nie said:

Xmax is only 1-2mm but driver area is 1 square meter. Big ESL:s give a very tight and clean bass which is quite enough for music listening. Usually the first reaction when people hear big panels for the first time is amazement of the bass. It's very hard to combine extra bass drivers to ESL:s because regular boxed drivers do not integrate well. They lack proper impulse response. Usually better ESL:s are combined with transmission lines or horn bass.

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Interesting, this will make for some fun numbers when I wake up! Thanks.

I guess these electrostatics are so tight you won't get away with normal 'subs' and mediocre amps. Would love to see what could be done with a really good sealed sub setup because it is the cleanest and most damped of all ways really. I don't rate horn or TL as high as sealed designs for cleanliness of reproduction. Either of the other two ways add distortion and group delay with multiple drivers required, which further chops up the room. Often a good sealed setup really comes down to excellent high excursion yet low distortion driver over a wide part of the BL curve, along with an amp with enough damping and oompf to keep a hold of the bugger in peaks. Plus enough surface area, so 21" or more if you want to do 20Hz and some infrasound properly on the occasion you may wish to crank things up a little.

If you're in a castle you'll need two but that's the golden formula really. Like electrostatics, surface area is king.

N4CR said:

Interesting, this will make for some fun numbers when I wake up! Thanks.

I guess these electrostatics are so tight you won't get away with normal 'subs' and mediocre amps. Would love to see what could be done with a really good sealed sub setup because it is the cleanest and most damped of all ways really. I don't rate horn or TL as high as sealed designs for cleanliness of reproduction. Either of the other two ways add distortion and group delay with multiple drivers required, which further chops up the room. Often a good sealed setup really comes down to excellent high excursion yet low distortion driver over a wide part of the BL curve, along with an amp with enough damping and oompf to keep a hold of the bugger in peaks. Plus enough surface area, so 21" or more if you want to do 20Hz and some infrasound properly on the occasion you may wish to crank things up a little.

If you're in a castle you'll need two but that's the golden formula really. Like electrostatics, surface area is king.

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On the contrary a transmission line or a horn are way superior when done right. Especially the horn. You just don't see many sub horns because you need a 4 meter line even if you do a tapped horn. The horn works as an acoustic 'lense' which means that the bass driver can move air multiple times more efficiently than a regular speaker. This produces extreme sensitivity, extreme dynamics and gut wrenching punch at moderate amp levels. I own a horn bass that produces 115db at 1 watt. And no, the system in the video is not mine - just look at the glass table jumping upstairs to get a grip of the power.

I have had 2 pairs of Monsoon Planar computer speakers in the past and without a sub they are all mids and sweet highs. Friend bought a pair of those Fostex T40RP and we followed a mod tutorial on them and to our ears they still sounded all mids with little bass.

rezerekted said:

I have had 2 pairs of Monsoon Planar computer speakers in the past and without a sub they are all mids and sweet highs. Friend bought a pair of those Fostex T40RP and we followed a mod tutorial on them and to our ears they still sounded all mids with little bass.

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Planar speakers need to be 6 feet high and 1-2 feet wide to produce bass. No computer speaker joke is going to work.

B00nie said:

Planar speakers need to be 6 feet high and 1-2 feet wide to produce bass. No computer speaker joke is going to work.

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They came with a sub for that reason, they still sounded better than most computer speakers around at the time.