OK after some digging I came across Sean Olive's response to a question that the ML was disadvantaged in the test;
Hi Duke,
Yes, we were aware that these electrostatic panels are directional and have a small listening sweet spot, as revealed in our anechoic measurements. You can clearly hear the timbre of the speaker change (it gets duller) when moving your head a few inches, or walking past it. In my opinion, that an undesirable characteristic of a loudspeaker: An ideal loudspeaker should sound good in any room, in any position, and in any seat. Of course, not many speakers do all these things, but this one is particularly poor in that regard.
The problem is that this speaker will never sound good, no matter where you put it. No loudspeaker, listening room or listening position can change the fact that the speaker has an extremely poor octave-octave balance and multiple resonances visible in the on and off-axis measurements (
look at the measurements of speaker C in slide 28 ).
To answer your specific questions:
1. The speakers were located about 3 feet from the back wall (which is reflective), near the center of the listening room, pointed at the primary listening seat, far away from the side walls. This is the optimal position according to the
owners' manuall on page 10.
2. The speakers were evaluated using both high school and trained listeners. The high school students were tested as two groups of 9 each sitting in two rows around the primary seat. More of these students were sitting in non-ideal off-axis positions than the trained listeners who all sat in the primary seat or "sweet spot" in separate sessions. Yet the trained listeners were more harsh about the colorations and imbalances of this speaker than were the high school students - even though they were supposedly hearing the optimal sound from the speaker.
So to conclude, I don't think the electrostatic speaker was disadvantaged in any way.
According to the owners manual we set it up according to instructions (which are frankly not every well written, vague and contradictory. It's almost like they are saying put it wherever you think it sounds best, which is not very helpful).
The electrostatic loudspeaker didn't do well because it is technically and sonically inferior to the other loudspeakers in the test. The subjective and objective measurements support this statement, as does 30+ years of loudspeaker research at Canada's National Research Council, and more recently at Harman International.
Sorry, you can't get blood from a stone.
Last edited: Jun 19, 2010
Cheers,
Sean Olive
Audio Musings