Darryl Wilkinson of Sound & Vision says he hates MartinLogan, and his reason is that every time he sees those tall see-through panels he wants a pair. The panels are electrostatic. Instead of a cone, a clear film thinner than a human hair is stretched between two perforated steel sheets, and the music, stepped up to high voltage, pulls and pushes the whole film at once. In a MartinLogan hybrid, one panel plays everything from the lower midrange up, and a cone woofer in the base takes the bass. A flat panel would beam its treble straight ahead, so MartinLogan curves the panel to fan the highs across the room. Robert Harley of The Absolute Sound heard the Neolith reproduce voices "with staggering immediacy and realism," and Glenn Young of Home Theater HiFi found the Impression ESL 11As "ethereal and completely divorced from their physical positions." MartinLogan suits listeners who want voices and strings with no box around them.

The ElectroMotion ESL is the way into the electrostatic range, and the ESL X adds a second woofer for more bass. The Masterpiece series is the step up, and Jeff Dorgay of Tone explains the choice inside it. The Classic ESL 9 has passive woofers, while the 11A and 15A have powered woofers with Anthem Room Correction built in. He says buy the ESL 9 if the room gives you leeway in placement and the 11A if it does not. Paul Seydor of The Absolute Sound heard the smoothest, best-defined bass ever in his room from the 11A with room correction, after placing it carefully first. Match the amplifier to the panel. Young advises checking that it handles a low, reactive load, though since the 11A's own woofers take the bass, he enjoyed it with 12-watt Heathkit monoblocks. Leave space around them. The 11A manual asks for two to three feet behind each speaker and two feet to the side walls.

Gayle Sanders managed a hifi shop in Lawrence, Kansas, where he met Ron Sutherland, an electrical engineer, in the late 1970s. Their first prototype of 1980 sounded good until they turned it up, when a lightning storm erupted across the panel and a plume of smoke drifted toward the ceiling. The curve came out of a midnight session. Sutherland sketched a sound wave to show how sound disperses, and Sanders pictured a horizontally curved panel. They took a mock-up and photographs to the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago and came home with a CES Design and Engineering Award. The Monolith followed at the 1983 show, and dealers asked to sell it. Only then did the two put their middle names on the venture. The first 10 pairs were built with one full-time and one part-time employee. The company is still in Lawrence. Jon Iverson of Stereophile has owned Sequels, Quests, ReQuests and Prodigys, and Harley calls the Neolith the culmination of a 33-year quest to perfect the electrostatic speaker.