And you got all that from those tiny little pictures? Really, Richard, you have no idea about that system or the person that owns it. You don't know whether that is a permanent or temporary setup or whether the room is acoustically-treated. You are drawing all kinds of conclusions and lambasting this person whom you know absolutely nothing about, simply because they can afford a pair of Statements and don't show them pictured in the perfect room. You come off as sounding very jealous of the wealthy, more than anything.
Please reference the second picture of another set of E2's, directly above, with all the home-brew amps. Again, set up almost touching the side walls, and about 5 feet from the rears...
Perhaps there is something RADICALLY different about the E2 that I don't know about. Perhaps they ARE designed to sound their best when they are within an arms length of the side and rear walls, and have a radiation pattern and room interaction signature that is abolutely different from every other speaker that Martin Logan has ever produced. Having never owned a pair, I can't really say.
In fact, I've only even HEARD a pair once, at a dealer demo back when they first came out. And if memory serves me, the panels were set out into the room about 6 feet, and about 4 or 5 feet from the side walls, and the subs were NOT set squarely in the corners, but were also set out a few feet (but not as far into the room as the panels). And they sounded heavenly.
However, every pair of E2's I've ever seen on the Net has been in a room about the same size as mine (about 18x26). and I have Sequels. I think it's pretty well established that a room that size is only optimal for a ML up to about the size of a Request or maybe a Prodigy. I find it a little hard to swallow that the E2 would be comfortable in a room this size. I know that a Monolith sounds muffled and constrained in a room this size, unless there is some SERIOUS room treatment going on, and maybe even some sort of DSP device in the loop to tame the acoustics.
I would think that a person who could afford an $80,000 speaker could afford to put it in a room that would make it sound better than my Sequels, which I doubt a pair of E2's squeezed into such a small room would. It just seems that every single pair of E2's I've seen on the web in recent memory (with the exception of "
Frank K."'s system in Germany) has been set up nearly touching the side and rear walls. Either an AWFUL lot of E2 owners know absolutely nothing about setting up MLs, and are more interested in how they LOOK than how they SOUND, or there is something RADICALLY different with the way E2's work, compared to other ML speakers.
I have serious doubts that it is the later, and serious suspicions that it is the former. That is all I'm saying.
It has nothing to do with not being able to afford E2s. It has everything to do with seeing a lot of E2 owners with setups that just don't make any sense, with regards to everything we know about setting up and optimizing bi-polar electrostatic speakers.
And a lot of those setups also have other gear in the pics that folks on this list have generally dismissed as being completely incompatible with Martin Logan speakers, but those bits of gear also seem to be VERY spiffy-looking pieces of kit. I just find it hard to believe that the E2s are so radically different from other Martin Logans that they can be set up in violation of all the rules we know about other MLs, and that the E2's also, in violation to everything we know about ML speakers, work fantastically well with Mcintosh tubes, low-power Goldmund SS amps, and sub-100wpc SET monoblocks...
Speaking of Frank K., maybe he can enlighten us as to the sonic properties of the E2, and it's particular demands for setup, since he owns them, and seems to have them set up to sound good to his ears...
--Richard
