Hey, Jim, this is my thread which I started and shared with UKRA for
edification and laughter. It's a bit mean of you, in this season too,
to grab it all for yourself by editing the distribution list, thereby
depriving us of your great wisdom and knowledge, especially when
you're in agreement with me, thereby affirming your great wisdom and
knowledge.
On Dec 24, 12:05 pm, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Eeyore
wrote:
Electrostatics may indeed have less colouration than most speakers but
that has nothing to do with the bass.
The absence of any meaningful baffle means the electrostatics will
always have poor bass repsponse. It's inherent to the design (the rear
radiation cancels the front radiation more at low frequencies determined
by its physical size).
On the ESL63 the resulting LF roll-off is -6dB at about 35 Hz, roughly
second order IIRC. This, of course, is the nominal 'free space' value. In
the room I use for the main hifi system the last time I measured it was
only about -3dB at 30-35Hz. The result does not sound 'bass light' to me.
But this will of course depend on the room, etc, and the absence of a box
boom may make other speakers seem to have 'more bass'... :-)
I am always amazed (and entertained by their stupidity, er,,, on
Christmas day I mean chutzpuh) of people whose own speakers bottom out
around 100Hz lecturing me on how my Quad ESL-63 are "bass light"
because they heard some other clown say it. (Dave Plowman already made
the point about most people's idea of bass being around 100Hz. Gordon
Rankin, the American amp designer, once made the point in a discussion
of designing boxes for Diatech speakers that the cleanest sound is by
rolling them off at about 60Hz rather than the 10 or even 15Hz lower
that was then the mode. I tried it. Wonderful sound for box speakers;
made the more normal designs sound wretched. On another occasion I was
trying a crossover point on 57s to woofers of 110Hz and somehow in a
listening session, the woofer wasn't operating -- I swear I didn't do
it on purpose -- and none of my panel of self-declared audiophiles,
though none of them with electrostats at home, noticed a thing...)
It may be more significant that the sound pressure level you can get at low
frequencies is perhaps more restricted than a good conventional speaker of
similar price. But that is a question of sound power, not frequency
response.
It is worth saying that Quad stats, in a room say smaller than 3000
cubic feet, *will* damage your ears, and the more so if you stack them
correctly to enhance the bass, because the bass is enhanced more than
the mid- and high-frequencies. What happens on a stat is that bass is
so clean that you think there is less of it, you turn it up, there
isn't the grunge expected from boomboxes which also acts as a level-
signal, you keep turning it up, and the actual sound energy reaching
your ears is much higher than you would permit with a boombox. I
became very aware of this when I bought a STAX electrostatic earphone
as a gift for myself last Christmas. In test, trying to level-match
B&O, Sennheiser and STAX headphones, I discovered that I used the STAX
consistently 2dB and more above the level of the conventional driver
headphones. I don't have a dummy measuring head, so my numbers may be
a bit of a kludge, but the tendency is clear, and the reason is the
clean bass, the absence of warning signals included in lower quality
bass.
Slainte,
****ing outside in the green and beloved island. I was planning a ride
on my bike this afternoon. Oh well...
Jim
--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
May you never come to the notice of the authorities!
Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review