In praise of Quad Electrostatics

[CageyH]

I'm happy to look after the ventricals for you as you prepare to move to France.

[Gordon Steadman]

The case for the defence M'Lord


[IMG][/IMG]

edit : Harry - her son, my step-son, suggested the answer was to get a MUCH bigger TV. I like the boys style! I'll leave him to work on his Mum

A nice pair of 57s wouldn't look that big. They do look a bit like a couple of sentinals. Did you get a blast of noise headed for Jupiter when you first switched them on?

[Oldpinkman]

Apart from the wire falling off Gordon - they've been good as gold. Undoubtedly my all time , never to be beaten , bargain purchase. And the 57's are just as big, but turned sideways, and look like a 1950's radiator.

As for the Ventricals Kevin, I appreciate your kind offer, but there is plenty of room in the loft, and I have the original boxes for them.

And, at some stage, I am going to have to man up, and put them back in the system, and see whether the 63's make enough of a case to justify blocking out so much daylight. I have few doubts that my ideal system in my ideal room (further from the rear wall, further from the listener) would be the 63's. In the actual domestic environment they are likely to be used, close to a wall which benefits the Ventricals, and close to the listener, where the ESL's don't get to "breath" and give a really deep soundstage, then it might be such a near run thing that the Ventricals win out. They do some things better - well differently. They are more "apparantly" detailed - the ESL's are just so damn laid back.

But not this weekend...

Meantime, its a reluctant farewell to the Lowthers, and I need to start sorting out cartridges for sale, a Nikon D50, a sofa bed...

[struth]

My apologies Grant. I realise I have jumped into this thread missing out essential background, posted elsewhere during my sabbatical from this forum.

Those speakers you mistook for Ventricals are in fact the Lowther Fidelios I lovingly restored to their proper and rightful beauty (I say "restored" - but I don't believe the guy I bought them from changed drivers as he claimed, and I suspect they were always a pile of poo before I fixed them. I should really say "allowed the beautiful cabinets to achieve their true potential" rather than restored - but its a bit of a saga.)

These beauties are the delicate dainty (but amplifier demanding) Ventricals front of house

[IMG][/IMG]

(Currently stored behind the sofa)

And these were an experiment with Kef R900's

[IMG][/IMG]

D'ya see now why she was premature in being so rude about the "big ugly" Ventricals? However, I favour Harry's "keep the ESL's and get a bigger telly" route - although the picture on that Phillips is the best I've ever seen...

Why is life so difficult?

Anyway, I take the point that I can't keep hoarding and something has to go, and reluctantly I think it will be the Lowthers.

Showing up my speaker ignorance again lol. In that case the lowthers are georgous in that setting. Quads are stunning but maybe as you say need a bigger room to do justice visually. I know I wouldn't get them past swmbo

[Oldpinkman]

In response to an email query from Cagey about the Frugelhorns, and in anticipation of putting in an offer on a house in France which lacks a custom designed ESL auditioning room, I decided to revisit my own speakers. The following is cut and pasted from my reply:

Interesting question. I was about to just reply that we would return to using the ventricals when we move as the esl63 take up far too much space and don't get to work at their best in a short, close to walls environment. So I put the ventricals back in last night. And we watched some bluerays. All comments are from Mrs S.

"it looks so much better. Those others dominate the room. They sound really good. You'll have to get them sprayed black"
I put on the Barbara Streisand partners lp I bought her for Christmas

"they're pretty good. A bit of bass missing. It's nice. I haven't heard my birthday present yet (from my parents - Eva cassidy songbird - "our album")"

So we played the first 3 tracks

"so why do the quads sound so good? You tried loads of other speakers and these were always the best. How do the quads sound so different? Yes - go on, put them back...

Shit. It's so different. It's just right. Omg that's a double bass, not an electric. Omg I never heard those harmonies before etc. "

To the question " so what do we do now? "

" there's room for the quads in the living room "



Note - we had tried the Ventricals against several other speakers, and always preferred them, until I insisted on getting the cling-film and perforated steel plate jobs, and the ESL's are in a room and position which doesnt really let them work properly.

Note also, this is at the root of my struggle to engage with the OTT mains brigade. It is not so much that nobody yet has persuaded me that fannying with the mains makes any difference to the final sound (other than removing obvious fault conditions), its more the number of times I encountered bad rooms when at PT. For me, the whole project starts with getting the speakers right, and working with the room. Once the speakers and room are producing the best sound they can, some fine tuning - or extraction of higher benefits from the rest of the system becomes worthwile. I have heard any number of bad rooms, and consequently systems which made a noise that didn't appeal to me, and I doubt very much that changing the mains fuse would do anything for that.

[Firebottle]

Work with the Quads and a sub, it is such an open door to whatever the downstream electronics can throw at them.

I'm just adoring what a dollop of Single Ended EL84 can do, CeeDee or vinyl.

Alan

[Andrei]

Richard, going back to your trial with the Kefs: how did you find them? I heard those speakers in Auckland this January and frankly they were dreadful - despite being run by a great amp. I put it down to those eunuch (Uni-Q) drivers, they had a metallic sound that just grated.

[Andrei]

Richard, going back to your trial with the Kefs: how did you find them? I heard those speakers in Auckland this January and frankly they were dreadful - despite being run by a great amp. I put it down to those eunuch (Uni-Q) drivers, they had a metallic sound that just grated.

[CageyH]

So, how much smaller are 57's?

[Oldpinkman]

Richard, going back to your trial with the Kefs: how did you find them? I heard those speakers in Auckland this January and frankly they were dreadful - despite being run by a great amp. I put it down to those eunuch (Uni-Q) drivers, they had a metallic sound that just grated.

No - they weren't awful. Nor metallic. Always hard to know what else affected somebody else's hearing experience. Certainly they were a room challenge. Anywhere too close to a rear wall and the bass got way over the top. The port bungs offer some respite there. Once matched to the room properly they were pretty good - but lacked the "speakerless" qualities even of the ventricals, never mind the Quads. It was the LS50's I found very disappointing.