Tom Alaerts wrote:
Here is a classification of the best speakers ever made:
1. Quad first series ESL of 1957. The speaker designer's reference.
2. Quad ESL63 of 1981.
Have you heard any of the newest Quads? First reactions are very good.
I love the 57, but it's a bit too limited as a universal speaker, the
63 can handle more music, but the midrange is -ever so slightly- less
superb than in the 57.
Personally, while I always loved Quad ESLs (myself I only have quad
electronics), I also think that there are many really superb speakers
these days. I think that the advantages of ESLs were more evident in
the past than nowadays.
Some other speakers which impressed me as much as ESLs -but in
different ways- over the years: big magneplanars with ribbon tweeter,
certain more upmarket Sonus Faber speakers, JBL S2600 (hardcore model
with an Everest-type horn), Bert Doppenberg's horn speakers with AER
fullrange drivers, and a speaker with those German white ceramic driver
units from Thiel (the German Thiel Acuton, not the American Thiel).
That's an interesting selection. I wouldn't mind hearing the newer
Quads. But, measured as pleasure per buck spent, I think my Quads win
hands down over anything else, including over Lowther horns. It seems
to me that Quad electrostats are the standard in every generation since
they appeared. Mr Gilbert Briggs of Wharfedale in 1955 when he first
saw Peter Walker's first full range electrostatic speaker demonstrated
at the Waldorf Hotel in New York with Stanley Kelley (a maker of ribbon
speakers) "solemnl agreed to changin into black and meet in due course
in the workhouse." But the very next paragraph of Mr Briggs's
entertaining account starts, "But practical considerations always prove
in the long run to be more potent than theoretical or technical
perfection..."
The truth is that speaker fashions come and go but that I have never
heard any speaker for which I would exchange my Quad electrostats. The
key is not the immediate impact at a show or in a showroom but longterm
livability. There the Quads are supreme precisely because they are so
restrained. Quad electrostats are of couse not speakers for audiophiles
-- who are people who talk more about hi-fi than they listen to music.
Quad electrostats are for music lovers.
enjoy, Tom
Thanks, Tom.
Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
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