My Life with Quad

[Alex_UK]

Wow, Barry, we have an early contender for "post of the year" I feel!

I know Quad aren't British owned any more, but they are still a proper British company who know how to do customer service.

Congrats on the 7k.

[DSJR]

The 520f is a TERRIBLE soggy monstrosity of a power amp and you need to donate your example to me IMMEDIATELY!!!!! Why the related and beefed up 606 wasn't styled similarly I don't know, the breeze-block looks hardly purposeful, even if most are hidden away

I was told the 50E's weren't as good as the 303. I take it your experiences are different to this? By the way, a 606 can happily drive 57's and this combination is sublime. A friend has used this, with the limiters in her 1978 vintage 57's, for well over twenty years now with no hiccups at all (small cottage sitting room but with lots of 'stuff' behind the speakers to break up rear reflections...

[Rare Bird]

The '240' was a nice power amp... Nice living room Barry

I don't think i could live with any other Quad but the 3 series..

[Gordon Steadman]

The 520f is a TERRIBLE soggy monstrosity of a power amp and you need to donate your example to me IMMEDIATELY!!!!! Why the related and beefed up 606 wasn't styled similarly I don't know, the breeze-block looks hardly purposeful, even if most are hidden away

I was told the 50E's weren't as good as the 303. I take it your experiences are different to this? By the way, a 606 can happily drive 57's and this combination is sublime. A friend has used this, with the limiters in her 1978 vintage 57's, for well over twenty years now with no hiccups at all (small cottage sitting room but with lots of 'stuff' behind the speakers to break up rear reflections...

I'm sure Barry will give his opinion but I can confirm that the 50Ds were considerably better than the 303. I understand that the Ds and Es are basically the same apart from output options. I used mine as back up to the Stereo20 and they came very close indeed through the 57s.

[Barry]

The '240' was a nice power amp... Nice living room Barry

I don't think I could live with any other Quad but the 3 series..

I never heard one, but they are the rarest item in the Quad stable - only 180 of them were made.

Know what you mean about the Series 3 electronics; for me it is the wonderful styling of the 33, FM2, FM3 and AM3, as well as that of the more utilitarian 50D, 50E and 303 power amplifiers. I didn't mention it my post, but I was surprised to learn that it was Peter Walker who designed the cosmetics. (Had I mentioned it, it would have appeared to be even more of a hagiography!)

Good to have you back with us André

Regards

[Figlet108]

My Life with Quad
1 They don’t do bass. Agreed, they don’t go much below 50Hz and roll of at a rate that is asymptotic to 18dB/octave (i.e. fast).

But what bass they do is pure and clean without any “enhancement” (that is frequency doubling) by any enclosure. Just listen to a 40Hz note played on an electric bass – it is so clean. And anyway I was never a bass freak – I have attended enough live rock concerts to know I don’t like to have my guts ‘churned’ by high volume bass notes. Nor am I a fan of the pipe organ, so do not miss the deep notes. (The beginning of R. Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra starts with a bass note of 32Hz, and with some recordings 16Hz. This comes across well enough on the Quads, though it doesn’t have the ‘weight’ that other speakers provide.) Peter Walker designed his speaker with domestic considerations in mind: he had no intention of foisting wardrobe-sized units on anyone. His design was a practical compromise between bass extension and size.

If you want to extend the bass performance, try stacking a pair of Quad ESLs (if you have the room), or use a sub-woofer (which is not without its own set of problems of integration).

2 They can’t be played loud. Agreed, and for many this is a serious shortcoming as it means the Quads cannot really impart a true sense of dynamics.

Without wishing to sidestep the issue, I have attended enough live concerts (especially orchestral concerts) to know that there are very few systems available that can truly reproduce dynamics without compromise. I’m happy with what the Quads can do - when the software allows it (!) I don’t play music loud enough so as to feel I’m having my ears battered. Again, I attended enough rock concerts in my youth to know I have had enough of loud music. The sensitivity of the Quad ESLs is 82dB/W, which when driven by a 50W amplifier achieves 99-100dB, and that's loud enough for me!

Overdriving the Quads in an attempt to increase the volume is a serious issue: they will be damaged by arcing between the motor and the stator electrodes, if they are fed with an audio signal of greater than 30V. In practice this means 20V rms or about 50W.

3 They are directional; they ‘beam’, so much so there is really only seat (the ‘hot seat’) where one can hear the superb imaging and soundstage. In other words they are anti-social speakers and have been likened to a giant set of headphones – only one listener can enjoy them.

True, and I have had friends complain of the sound staging, until that is, they sit in my chair, or alongside it. Sadly the directional properties, both in the vertical plane and horizontal plane are as a result of the layout of the ‘drivers’ in the speaker. Directionality in the vertical plane is due to all the drivers being ‘line drivers’, that is, consisting of vertical strips, though this directionality has been somewhat ameliorated by making the drivers curve in a shallow arc. The vertical directivity can be reduced by either raising the speakers about 10" off the floor or by tilting them forward by raising the rear leg by about 3" (subject to experimentation). People sat in higher seats when the Quad ESL was designed. Nowadays, easy chairs allow people to sit lower down, so the treble ‘beam’ shoots over the listener’s head. Tilting them forward (at the risk of making them physically unstable) allows the treble beam to be directed at ones ears. Beaming in the horizontal plane is due to either the narrow width of the treble line driver, or to the interference pattern caused by the mid and bass driver pairs, which flank the central tweeter.

Hi Barry,

I'm very new to Quad having only just got a pair of ESL 2805s a few months ago so forgive my johnny-come-lately impertinence and I haven't heard ESL 57s so don't know how they compare to the 2805s.
However everything that you say about how wonderful the 57s are resonates with my short experience of the 2805s. I would say though that I have not experienced any of the first 3 negatives you mention. Bass is deep and powerful and they play *loud*, certainly in my attic anyway. A blast of Daft Punk at volume soon shuts up any ESL skeptic that has visited. I also don't get the beaming with the 2805s.

I'm so smitten with them that I can't ever imagine being without them (or one of their successors). Once you hear ESLs it's hard to compromise with anything else.

Anyway, my point is, what am I missing - why haven't you moved up the ESL range? 2805s for example can be got used mint for about £2k, which for an exit level speaker isn't outrageous.

Excellent post by the way - very informative.

[Rare Bird]

Barry:
I was on a studio Engineering course when i first encountered the '240' they had a pair of them.. i know about the low numbers but that makes me wonder sometimes because i see quite a lot turn up on auction!

I'm only back till someone rattles my cage

[Barry]

The 520f is a TERRIBLE soggy monstrosity of a power amp and you need to donate your example to me IMMEDIATELY!!!!! Why the related and beefed up 606 wasn't styled similarly I don't know, the breeze-block looks hardly purposeful, even if most are hidden away

I was told the 50E's weren't as good as the 303. I take it your experiences are different to this? By the way, a 606 can happily drive 57's and this combination is sublime. A friend has used this, with the limiters in her 1978 vintage 57's, for well over twenty years now with no hiccups at all (small cottage sitting room but with lots of 'stuff' behind the speakers to break up rear reflections...

The '500' power amps were a development of the 405, whereby the single output transistors of the 405 were doubled up in the 510 and 520. Incidently the circuits of the 510 and 520 are identical, save the 510 is a single channel amplifier, employing an output transformer to couple to the speaker load (as did the Quad 50s), whereas in the 520 (a two channel amplifier) the coupling is direct. The 606 went one step further and employed 3 output transistors in parallel.

It is obviously a matter of taste as to whether you prefer the professional looking 19" rack mounting style of the 500s, or the more domestic styling of the 606, 707 or 909. That aside, the 500s use XLR connectors and (on my sample) Neutrik 'Speakon' connectors. I don't have WAF to consider! () Quad 520s occasionally appear on Ebay, and go for about £300. Most, if not all, are ex-studio and have been "well used", that is, are scruffy cosmetically.

When I used my 50Es, they were to try out the idea of locating monoblock amps directly behind the speakers with the minimum of speaker cable (less than a foot) and use long runs of balanced-line cable back to a preamp with balanced outputs. The idea worked well, but from memory, I think I found that overall the SQ maybe was not quite as good as either the 303 or my, heavily modified, 405-1. I ought to repeat the comparison, but this time under similar conditions: short unbalanced interconnects between the preamp and power amps, with long speaker cables used for both. Having to "faff about" with different connectors though does nothing to encourage me to undertake this comparison.

Anyway, I now have achieved my ambition of using close-coupled power monoblocks with balanced line feeds from the preamp, by using Levinson ML-2s fed by either a Levinson 26 or 28 preamp. And overall the SQ now is considerably better than that provided by the Quads.

[The Grand Wazoo]

What a great tale Barry, and as usual, so nicely told.
I've only ever owned 1 piece of Quad equipment, which I shamefully allowed to languish in a box for far too long. But you know that, don't you!

[synsei]

I really like the 306 I have just now, its sheer openness and finesse compared to other amps I've had in my system is a joy to behold, but it has got me wondering about its bigger brother, the 606. What extras would a 606 bring to the party bearing in mind that the speakers I'm using can only handle 60 watts?