Not your Daddy’s Maggie…
By Roy Gregory
Not so long ago – well, okay, maybe a little over three decades – panel speakers were a major part of the high-end landscape. Companies like Apogee, Martin Logan and Magneplanar stood astride the market, objects of desire that gave conventional box-speakers more than a run for their money. Many an audiophile hankered after their own, preferred panel and I should know, having owned both Magneplanars and Apogees. Yet, within a few short years, panel speakers had all but passed from public consciousness, more an oddity than serious contenders. So, what happened? Perhaps more importantly, should we care?
The answer to that second question is definitely yes! There is no denying that a well-designed panel speaker offers a balance of virtues and presentation that’s distinctly different to even the best boxes. Dipole designs (and most panels are dipoles) drive a room quite differently, while the absence of an acoustic enclosure produces if not an absence of colouration, then colourations that tend to be different in nature and influence. Those two factors alone mean that panel designs offer a real alternative to box-speakers, an alternative that is for some listeners, hard to forego.
So, what did happen?
Panel speakers are essentially simple devices. Gayle Sanders built the first Martin Logans in his garage from off the shelf materials/components and clingfilm. The planar magnetic and ribbon drivers used by Magnepan and Apogee are even simpler: they don’t even require a power supply. But the ‘80s and early ‘90s, offered challenges too, especially in the technological field. They pre-dated the general availability of powerful neodymium magnets and, having watched the incredibly complex pattern of an Apogee bass diaphragm being hand cut with a craft-knife from Bacofoil, I find it slightly remarkable that any Apogee speakers were ever successfully manufactured. Combine the manufacturing and material issues with the design challenges, throw in a few manufacturer foibles and it’s not surprising that those early panels ultimately failed in the market, despite their initial popularity.
The early Apogees were ruinously hard to drive and inefficient, later models barely any better. Martin Logan struggled to generate sufficient, convincing bass from its pure electrostatics and never really cracked the integration issues of their hybrid designs. Magneplanar’s pricing policy, selling abroad to regional distributors at US trade, made the products astonishingly expensive in overseas markets. Throw-in a convoluted legal battle between Magneplanar and Apogee over the former’s patent on their ribbon tweeter design along with the fact that panels like the sort of space found in larger American homes and it’s hardly surprising that Apogee faced financial hardship, Magneplanar retreated to the US market and Martin Logan gravitated towards the Home Theatre and installation market. By the time they finally cracked the issue of generating convincing low-frequencies from an all-electrostatic design with the innovative and mightily impressive CLX (still arguably one of the most affordable, genuinely high-end bargains on the second-hand market) the market had moved on and high-end panels had been left behind.
