Vandersteen Quatro Wood CT

Greetings Referee1,

I've had the original Quatros - pre-wood days for decades.

Yes, the M5-HP is necessary for the Quatros proper functionality.

Every time I roll an amp into my system, I go through the setup process. Signal generator > M5-HP > Amplifier > DMM.  Don't be turned off from buying them because of this. I love the speakers.  (I have expensive TEK bench top sig gen and a few other cheapo from fleabay which are accurate enough. Of course I verify the test signal first in Hz.

Ask a friend with a good DMM  and decent skills in it's use.Or, pay someone for the first time. If you have several amps, do them one after another and write down the dip settings for all your amps. When new, the M5-HP filter was an additional charge.

Hope this helps; feel free to ask more........

Cheers,

-W

The HP filters are easy-peasy to set-up.  Any dealer can assist you or Vandersteen directly.  We used our preamp and amplifier on them and placed them almost up against the wall for WAF.  The sound amazing when matched with the correct components.  There is a chart on the cover of the filters so as mentioned before, once you know the amp specs or you can use a meter to measure that (place the probes on the meter on the output jacks and that is it) you are ready to go with each amplifier.  Nothing to be concerned about at all.

I love having the capability to dial in bass response on the Vandy speakers.

Happy Listening.

Reach out with any questions.

Yeah, they're worth it. 

As @karl_desch said, "You just need to know the input impedance of your amplifier.  The high pass filters are dip switch controlled and super easy to adjust.  The only time you need a volt meter is when you don’t know the input impedance of your amp."

The other huge benefits of any of the speakers that utilize the high pass filters are:

1) You're taking much of the difficult task driving the low bass off your regular amp and shifting that burden to the powerful plate amps inside the speakers, designed specifically for that task. This opens up the opportunity to get great results with medium powered amps(e.g. ~75w). 

2) You get 11 band ANALOG bass EQ adjustment that will allow optimal placement in most any room without resorting to DSP. 

IMHO, these two benefits are HUGE!

One of the benefits of the new EVO model is that it can work well with most integrated amps since you don't need to insert the high pass filters between power and preamp sections. Ayre, Aesthetix and a couple of others can build in high pass filters, but many other integrated amps aren't going to be an option with Quatro CTs, 5A variants, etc., but those amps would be fine with EVOs. Cheers,

Spencer

I have model 5s and did not find the filters difficult to configure at all. Don't let that deter you. You only have to use a meter if you're a nerd, like me. The published specs will do just fine. Some of the best and most underrated speakers out there. Have fun.

A lot of fussing with multimeters when your budget can bring something that connects and energizes the first time and every time.