Quad 2805 and room placement

Hi everyone,
Many thanks for your response - most helpful comments.
Dave - my room is approximately 23 feet by 23 feet so it is a large room. The problem is that there is only one position for the loudspeakers - about 3 feet from the wall behind them. The door into the room, in the right hand side wall, is about four feet from the right hand corner, if you see what I mean, - when opened 90 degrees its edge will not be far from the right hand speaker.
By the way, Duke, I haven't bought them yet! Need to sell my present system first which may be difficult as the dealer no longer takes equipment in part exchange.
Anyway, your comments are really helpful.
I suppose I would really like the 2905's (if I can afford them) but they are really too big. Shame they do not make them in Classic finish - this would probably make them look smaller.
Regards. Any further comments gratefully received!
Brian

Hi Brian,

I am a little confused about your room being 23 square feet, do you mean 230? If so, that is a little bigger than my room.

I have been listening to my new 2805's for about 100 hours now and they sound fantastic! They are the best speaker I have ever owned, although I have owned more expensive over the years.

My room is 13' X 16' X 9' ceiling. I have them set up along the long wall, about 5' out. They are 10' apart measured from the center of the speakers. My listening seat is 9' from ear to the center of each speaker and my chair is about 1' from the back wall. I have diffusion behind each speaker (plants and louvered/curtained windows) and absorption behind my listening chair. The speakers are toed in so that they would intersect about 3 feet behind my listening seat.

This set-up seems ideal. Bass is very good, smooth and as full and tight as previous dynamic driver speakers I have owned. Imaging and soundstaging is world class, better than my AP Virgo's and Libras. The resolution and transparency is like nothing I have heard before.

I am using an EL34 based Rogue Cronus integrated, which has been highly modified by Mark O'Brien at Rogue with upgraded parts, wiring, simplified circuits, etc. It is 30 wpc in triode, and sounds really good. From what I have read, the EL34 is a great tube to use with Quads and 30 wpc is plenty of power in my room. I have an EL84 based Scott 222, but have not tried it yet, nor have I tried any solid state yet.

You will also notice that with the Quads, you will probably listen at lower levels than other speakers because you do not need to turn them up as loud to hear all the detail. To me, they sound "louder" at my typical 80db listening level than any previous speaker I have owned.

I would definitely ask for the home demo. If you can get them set up reasonably well, you won't be returning them! Good luck and keep up posted on your experience.

Dave

Ask the man who owns one.Great response.My reading is that while you don'ty want to overpower them this is a speaker that will benefit from more current then many folks think.A 40 to 100 watt.Maybe and Arc 100 watt for about $3500 used is what I would want.But in that sized room my EAR 40 watt especially with it's EL34 (best for mids) would do the trick nicely.I'd go tubes be they Seperates or Intergrated.With old 63's they always sounded best and since you don't need hge amounts of power, affordable.
Cheers
Chazz

First of all, congrats on your Quad purchase! I haven't heard the new models, but I've owned several pairs of Quads over the years, and like the new braced frame concept.

Distance to sidewalls is not critical with large panel dipoles, though generally you want them far enough apart to get good soundstage width.

Distance from the backwall is much more of an issue. You see, ideally you'd like to avoid a strong reflection arriving within say 10 milliseconds of the first-arrival sound. Three feet out will give you roughly 6 milliseconds delay before the reflected backwave reaches the listener. So I would recommend diffusion (not absorption) panels behind the speakers, offset towards the centerline of the room a bit, to intercept and diffuse that first reflection backwave energy at least in the midrange and upper frequencies.

In the bass region, dipoles behave very differently from monopoles. You see, its the out-of-phase backwave that will be getting the benefit of boundary reinforcement off the nearby "front" wall. So moving them close to the wall will result in greater cancellation of the frontwave, and actually decrease the bass at the listening position. If too much bass is lost, you might try putting a couple of bass traps in the corners behind the speakers, as this will help to soak up some of that out-of-phase backwave energy so that there will be less cancellation of the frontwave.

Best of luck to you,

Duke