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

On a whim I bought a pair of little Quad 9L desktop speakers for my computer and I'm shocked at how much I like them. I am tempted to try a bigger pair up the line for my main system.
The 9Ls on my computer have a balanced sound from top to bottom with no shrillness, grain, or boom; not much deep bass but a pleasant, well-incorporated bass that seems to fit just right. Vocals are beautiful, and the soundstage is small but the relationships between the parts of the music, even in mono from my computer (even youtube),
are evident. This is a stress-free speaker that is very refined but not overly dull or blunted. Most important (to me), nothing seems be unnaturally pushy. With other desktop speakers (with tone controls) I was always turning down the treble to tame the digital glare or brittle upper highs. The 9Ls have not tone controls, and thankfully, none are needed. (I use Cardas Golden Cross ICs).

Are the bigger Quad cone&dome speakers similar, or are the 9Ls just the sweet spot in the line? (I see that the other Quads have mixed comments, but I was wondering if others could comment or confirm what I hear in the 9Ls. Thanks in advance.)
rgs92

Showing 1 response by nosnhoj

nosnhoj
12 posts
 
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.)
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