I love my little Quad 9Ls;will I like bigger ones?

Your sense of the 9Ls matches my experience of the 11Ls -- except that, with the right electronics, the imagining of the 11Ls is superb. Vocals are great, very smooth top to bottom, and bass, while understandably limited, is tight and musical. I found that they work best with amps that emphasize transparency (Music Hall and PS Audio) -- not as good with the Naim Nait I have now (so they're in the closet).

Your Quad 9L purchase is as "acidental" as mine. I went to audition a pair of Audio Physic Yara and requested the dealer to play the Quad 12L on display. I was so hooked to the music made by these speakers, that I forgot all about AP and ordered their larger brethren - Quad 21L. These are some of the most underrated speakers. I am DAMN sure you will be happy with the bigger Quads. Go for it!!

I was one of those "mixed comments". Although I loved most aspects of their sound, my 11L Actives were always edgy on some material. But now they sound very good. Last year I put wool diffraction pads around the tweeters and added aftermarket power cords. Finally, when I got back from a trip recently I didn't remove the speaker grills as I normally would, and that further softened the remaining peakiness. I lost some of that "live" spark, but now most recordings sound quite good, and I don't feel like I'm an engineer listening to a mix.
Further, after auditioning a number of other monitors recently, I realize that the next step up in sound quality would require real money, particularly if one needs to but outboard amplification. (Dynaudio Focus 140 sounded marginally better than the 11L Actives, for example, while the Contour S1.4 sounded much better, to me.)

Thank you everyone for all that, I really appreciate it.
I also listened to some Dynaudios a bit (C1s and a couple others at a show and one dealer) and thought the bass "pumped" a little and that the vocals were just not quite right. The exception was the big Evidence (out of my league in cost and size) which still haunts me as awesomely natural (along with Von Schweikert VR9s).

But the little Quads have a rightness to them that I just can't quantify exactly. (My old Apogee Stages, a completely different sound of course, also are in this category. Its funny how these are cheap speakers in the high-end world.)

I have been using Harbeth SHL5s now for a while that, while pleasant and easy to live with, sometimes let me think something is missing, or that the speaker is imposing its own signature and texture to a great degree on the music (and upstream components). A lot of different disks that I know have very different sounds from previous speakers I had (Aerials, Kharmas) sound alike on the Harbeths. Changing cables and power cords also has much less effect with the Harbeths than other speakers.

Oh well, thanks for reading my ramblings and letting me hijack my own thread...

I had the 12Ls...and for a monitor...they have very clean, deep articulated bass...some of the best Ive heard...further up the chain the midrange doesnt possess the 3d realism of some higher end speakers(GMA, VANDY)...and the tweeter can be a bit forward for my tastes...but its still a good to at times very good speaker...one could do alot worse...

Phasecorrect, how are those GMAs?

Quad makes good speakers- not question but the 9l is a completely different design than the 11 and 12l active. Passives are another entirely different animal too.

All sound good but different.

GMA Europas...excellent speaker in terms of audiophile imaging, soundstaging, transparency, etc and truly amazing on vocals...I found them to be a bit bass shy...to be fair this was in a 20 x 20 room...and the bass they did produce was of average quality...a little loose for my tastes... all depends what you listen to...i like reggae, dub, electronica, etc...

Phasecorrect--thanks!