Several members have requested that I post my system which I have finally managed to do. Please pardon the shots that are out of focus. I am not the world's most gifted photographer or even close. I have done my best to explain things but I'm sure there will be at least a little confusion do please ask questions. Most of the requests have occurred here in analog so I posted it here. There is an analog component but it is rather plain Jane in comparison to the rest of the system.
Golly noromance, the thing is 20 years old. It certainly is not 4K. I am itching to get a laser projector but the prices are still too high. My screen is 113" diagonal. Even an 85" flat screen would look sort of lost between the speakers even though it would have a much better picture during daytime hours. The new laser projectors are three to 5 times as bright and the bulbs last 20,000 hours. This should fix the wash out problem I have during the day.
Yes, regular projectors are not too bad but the decent laser ones are still crazy. The JVC unit is down to a paltry $25,000. Watching the Russian GP right now. It would be nice if someone could win besides Mercedes. Digital? At this point all I do is turn it off and one and listen just like any other system. Vinyl still wonderfully analog. The system is like a big set of headphones except the band is in front of you and not in your head. Look at the screen shot of the Acoustat measurements. Look how different they are above 2 kHz. They are 20 dB apart in places and the set up is almost perfectly symmetrical. What you can not see is an alcove on the left and a window on the right. Below 2 kHz they run together pretty nicely but there are still 5 dB differences in places. Remember, these speakers are as simple as it gets, no crossovers just identical electrostatic panels. You have the transformers but there is no way they would be that far off. It is all the room. If You measure anyone's system you are going to see stuff like this. Imagine what this does to the image. I can bypass the room control by remote and the comparison is almost silly. If you had not heard the corrected system you probably would think the system was pretty good but, you punch in the room control and everything snaps into focus, game over. Initially, there was a steep learning curve. Once you learn how to program it then you have to figure out what you want to accomplish. This is a matter of trial and error tuning until you get what you want. It took me probably five years until I stopped tuning. The only time I have to work with it is when I change amplifiers or move the speakers. Then I have to set up the mic and take new measurements and reprogram all the presets which is straight forward. The single major problem with these loudspeakers is they are very selfish. Once you move off center the high frequencies drop off fast. This is why I want to switch to Sound Labs 845's, much better dispersion. The plastic mats on the floor in front of the speakers are electrified, cat control. Better a little zap than the big one he would get behind the speakers. Plus, they are the ultimate scratch posts.
I know them well! I have been party to the destruction of three of them. Mark Levinson made a stand that stacked two Quads on either side of a Decca ribbon tweeter. The system was finished off with two 30" Hartley subwoofers. It was driven by six 25 watt John Curl designed amplifiers. In trying to get it tuned properly we destroyed I don't know how many ribbons and three quads. The system went deceptively loud and the Quads never sounded stressed, they just fried. Eventually, we got the hang of it and the slaughter stopped. As far as I know we only sold two of them. This is in Miami, FL. That Quad is a magic speaker. It has that ESL rightness that is lacking in dynamic speakers. Back then it was the only one readily available until Acoustat launched the Model X which was hopelessly colored due to a really bad cabinet. With the Monitor series they finally got things right. If you come across another pair you might try stacking them. Just a thought.
Indeed! Impressive story. I've had the pleasure of hearing stacked Quads with a Decca Kelly ribbon on Croft OTLs. No subs. Large room. Opera. Late 80s. Nice.
Fair enough. Very difficult speaker to match subs to. The Harleys never quite made it. If you ran them up higher to take the load off the Quads they became very noticable. I do not think even digital bass management could have gotten them to work. I would love to try four 10" drivers in two enclosures, balanced force configuration with a digital crossover which I know is an enanthema to you but an analog one would never work. Nothing like a challenge. The single most noticeable defect the Quad has is the lack of low bass. The rest is so endearing that most Quad users are happy to overlook this and for the sake of purity, Quad users usually shun anything digital. Given the performance of early CD machines very understandable. Digital has moved on. As long as it stays at 24/96 and higher it can be very listenable but, it does sound different than vinyl. I agree with Michael Fremer on this one. As long as conversions are done at 24/192 or higher they are invisible.
The Hartley woofer was actually a 24" driver. Matching subs with the ESL was for years unsatisfactory to most QUAD owners, but that was before the GR Reaearch/Rythmik OB/Dipole was introduced.
I made my own stands for stacking pairs of QUADS: three layers of 3/4" MDF glued together! Like @noromance, I prefer singles, also naked. Great on small ensemble music (Baroque, acoustic Blues, Bluegrass, Folk, Singer-Songwriter, etc.) and of course vocals, but with very-limited maximum SPL capability (subs help increase that). I have a pair of the QUAD front grilles made by Jerry Crosby, but no grill is even better. Ugly as hell, but oh well.
Any of you guys ought to hear the three- pairs- of —quad -57 system that is owned by a local friend. Dave Slagle of EMIA built the amplifiers that drive each speaker via a single interfacing transformer per speaker. So, he eliminated the quad audio step up transformers and all the associated electronics built into each speaker. It’s not quite direct drive but the sound is perhaps best I’ve ever heard. And that is a level of praise that I do that easily or happily confer on any system other than my own.
Lewm, how are they set up? Two each side and two in the center? Eliminating the electronics may upset the frequency response. How is he equalizing them? I did the same with the 2+2s. I eliminated the complex interface replacing it with one large transformer. It was favored to run up to 20 kHz at the expense of low bass. I always intended on running subs subs so this did not matter to me. The big penalty was that the single transformer is a crazy load which few amps can handle. Even the JC1's were getting into trouble until I added a resistor in line with the primary. And, which of your systems gets the praise?
Roger Modjeski designed a replacement for the Acoustat Medallion interface (which he characterized as having "serious problems" ;-) . He also offered a direct-drive OTL amp for Acoustats, as well as QUADS (the 57 for sure, the 63 I don't know).
bdp24, I wouldn't say "serious" problems but it was a compromise I did not have to make. Jim Strickland of Acoustat and Roger West of soundlabs were/are both determined to make 1 way full range electrostatic speakers. The problem is that it is virtually impossible to maintain reasonable flat frequency response with one transformer. Jim Strickland weaseled his way around his problem by using two transformers and a crossover of sorts a solution eventually borrowed by Sound Labs. Because I do not expect the speaker to do anything under 100 Hz and I can equalize any response error I can easily get away with using just one transformer straight up. The problem with the high voltage amps is that it is very difficult for them to develop the sort of power you need to drive the speakers with gusto even after having removed 100 Hz down. People tend to think that ESL are fragile and lack dynamic impact. Not if you drive them correctly! They will hit as hard as any horn albeit requiring a lot more power to do it. The horn and the ESL are the best impedance match to air. They just go about it in different ways. The result in terms of impact and transient response is the same but because you can use big magnets on horns they are a lot more efficient. The problem for ESLs is that there is a limit to the bias voltage you can use before you start to arc out. You could get them just as efficient if you could get the bias voltage up to say 10,000 volts but at a relative humidity of 50% they start arcing out at 4000 volts, .Some are limited to 3000 volts.
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