Setting up Quad 988 right

Haipo,
That's interesting because I used 3 amps on my 988 and the Atma-Sphere was by a wide margin the worst regarding bottom end control. The impedance on the speakers drops to 2 ohms around 10KhZ if I'm not mistaken and OTL amps including AS do not handle loads like that very well. AS amps really strut their stuff with impedances avove 8 ohms. My M-60, however, sounded terrific in the mids. I also used a BAT VK60 for a while but the 988's in my listening room sounded best with a Pass X150.5 believe it or not.
Good luck!!

Dear all,

Thanks a lot for all your comments and advices. I will try to move the speakers around to see if I can the the image to heighten up a bit. To answer Wc65Mustang, my amplification is Atmasphere M-50 MKII OTL. I loave the combination. Prior to Atmasphere, I use Plinius SA-250 (still have one on hand), but I didn't like it as much compared to Atmasphere (for 988). Any other suggestion.

Hai

Jeffery, you are correct, I did not plan to equal space them. Some sacds have the diagram for the layout included in the packaging. My upstairs room/ceiling is 17ft wide by 20ft or so with an 8ft flat ceiling and no back wall, instead it opens into my ground level living room that has a vaulted ceiling and is two stories high plus the vault, and the same width as the upstairs but is about 35ft long. I may add one or two "center" rears in addition to the five and/or a pair for side fill. That would be 8 or 9 988 quads total! I use two 18" Velodyne subs and have two more if I need them. I am planning on additional floor standing speakers for the front two channels for no spl limit material such as big band music and marches! Avantgarde duos are among my considered speakers, I have two pairs of large Nova's set up currently, one pair facing forward and the other next to them but facing rearward, bass is excellent and ambient information is greatly enhanced similar to the Quads. They fall very short to the Quads though in resolution and ability to properly recreate music. Listen to Christina Aguilera's Christmas album and you will notice how multiple drivers with crossovers totally muck-up her beautiful and complex vocals. It is a good demonstration of phase errors in my opinion compared to the wonderful Quads!!

Raising Quad 88 or 89 off the floor onto stands will severely affect (reduce) the bottom end. This is well documented not just my opinion. Search out the posts here, on Audio Asylum, or discuss with your retailer. Keep them coupled to the floor; as I mentioned previously the brass cones worked great for me. I had mine almost 4 years and tried almost every permutation of distance from front wall, side wall, toed in/toed out, tilted up/tilted down, etc.
Good luck and email out of this thread if you want to discuss in more detail.

Mr, if you intend to space the 5 equally about the circle, I think you'll find that the L- and R-fronts are too far apart. The ITU 5-speaker setup, for which virtually all multichannel recordings are made, has the 3 fronts spaced fairly narrowly--say, at 10:30, 12, and 1:30--while the 2 surrounds are spaced fairly widely--say at 4 and 8--so that they're as much sides as rears.

I suggest you experiment with your 5 988s on the floor before you attach them to your ceiling. Do observe the space to the rears of all of them, too.

Sure ought to sound great when you get them aligned!

How big is your room?
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I am working on a music/theater system and I plan to use five or more 988 mounted to the ceiling "upside down" in a circle. The circle array is specified for five channel sacd and probably three channel as well. Another reason for this arrangement is I want the center to be, or more correctly, I want the front L&R to be time coherent with the center channel. For correct imaging and high frequency responce (reception at the listening position a.k.a. "sweetspot") they must be toed in anyway. Also, even in a "two channel" stereo system a center speaker set at -13db can do wonders as Paul Klipsch and others have taught me. Read my thread on "Quad is going to happen to me."

With my 989s in a larger room, I discovered that the soundstage (SS) got bigger the farther from the front wall they are; mine are now SEVEN feet from the wall in my 19-feet-deep room. And I too sit fairly close to the plane of the speakers altho mine are farther apart in my 21-feet-wide room.

Quads are NOT tall speakers and the drivers are POINT-, not line-source. Many owners of the '63s and now the 988s find the image and SS height too low. Some kind of stand about a foot high would help. Gradient made an apparently-fine-sounding dipole subwoofer built so that the '63s stood on them; you might investigate those. I see that Sound Anchors does not list a stand for the 988.

I sure love my 989s, altho I confess I just ordered a pair of ET LFT-8s.
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There is a good review of how to set up the 988 on Audioreview.com written by Audiogon member "Jordi".

Good Luck!*>)

Having owned 88's I would move them farther apart if enough clearance from the side walls is available. I never tipped mine up or down but I did replace the factory feet with brass cones and discs. As you are discovering speaker placement is critical for optimum performance and it may take a great deal of experimentation to find the right spot.
What is your amplification? This is also critical.