"Alex" wrote in message ...
For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget,
or the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that
magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from
well known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't
know about (DCM Time Window).]

I understand Quad have their own box speakers now. You'd expect them to
produce the family sound, but do they? How do they do against Proacs,
Dynaudios, Spendors? (I don't have a Quad dealer near me to check them
out myself.)

Please nominate your candidates for a poor man's 988, poor in money but
more importantlly poor in square feet.

The Dahlquist DQ-10 was intended by the designer to imitate the Quad sound.
It also imitated the looks. The crossover design even attempted to
time-align the drivers.

Imitation was also the goal of an earlier speaker Dahlquist was involved in,
the Rectilinear III. I've heard both and can vouch that he was at least
partially successful.

The characteristics that are most easily imitated are overdamped bass,
clarity, and a general impression of analytic sound.

It's not really possible to get the radiation pattern of a Quad point
resonator with a box speaker. However, any speaker which uses open back mid
drivers could conceivably come closer to the peculiarities of radiation
pattern of a Quad. So might a Spica TC-50 or TC-60, the front of which is
heavily adorned with felt. However, the bass quality of a small box speaker
is necessarily very different from an electrostat.

Spendors definitely do not have this sound. Any small box speaker that
attempts to produce a sound with a natural balance puts a little bump in the
upper bass. In other words, like virtually all box speakers, but to a
greater extent, it uses acoustic resonance to flatten the frequency
response, at the expense of phase delay. Electrostats don't do this.

Electrostats may not be completely time coherent, but as they have a single
driver, the impulse response must necessarily be very different from a
multiple driver speaker with the common high order crossover. This latter
reproduces a single impulse as a train of separated impulses from each of
the constituent drivers. This characteristic would be best emulated by a
Lowther full range driver, or a multiple driver system with a first order
crossover and a slanted baffle: Spicas come to mind.

I have a set of Acoustat 2+2's, a very large, full range electrostat.
Because the ear-brain system is so easily fooled, I could not honestly say
that every characteristic of the speaker sounds markedly different to my
ears than every dynamic speaker I own. However, one thing is striking, and
this may be the most useful practical guide: intelligibility of vocals is so
much higher than any two way speaker I am familiar with that it sometimes
causes a recording to sound completely unfamiliar. It makes me check the
label.

Of my collection of dynamic speakers, the Polk LS-15 and the Spica TC-50
seem to do the best at emulating these, inspite of the fact that the design
philosophy of these speakers is completely different.