Nice review of the Quad ESLs

Dear Dave,

I looked online, but no doubt the edition is in print at the moment!

Our newsagents do not really go in for hifi mags except Whathifi and the other one which I can't even remember the name of!

But it will be interesting to read what KK has to say, and see if it ties in with my own experiences.

I have found that in my room with the current arrangement [visible on the Carlton Thread on this section of the forum] gets a more substantial and firmer presentation than the more normal spaced set-up, which can indeed lack some apparent weight when compared to even quite small conventional speakers.

As yet no person from the forum has auditioned my very unconventional arrangement of them. It takes some doing to prevent them doing the stereo pin-point image thing, but I have succeeded! Indeed I have achieved that special thing where there is a vague directionality, but no more sense than that the player, players, or ensembles are over there on the stage somewhere down the front of the auditorium.

Of course on very small numbers of players recorded in an intimate way there is more idea of the placings, as there would be when sits so much closer to the performance! This is a successful taming of stereo in my view. Even un-naturally separated recordings now seem cohesive and lucid.

On of the very useful aspects [in comprehending why a performance goes this way or that] is that the speakers don't separate the players from each other as in most replay [in the set-up I have employed] but certainly place the performance firmly with an defined acoustic space. Thus one can understand the effect of a resonant or dry acoustic has on the way music is played without any sense of strain or even taking initial note of it. This a very pleasing musical aspect ....

They present the music as recorded, either as good distance from the microphone [and thus in effect setting the listener further back in the concert hall] or very close such as the spoken radio announcer, who sounds literally across the room just behind the speakers. This phenomenon - uniquely in my experience - actually makes sense of the difference between the volume of the music as replayed and the end of concert announcements, which all too often seem far louder than the music. But as the ESL 57s manage the presentation of the music in the most lucid fashion but giving a sense of distance to the performance, it is understandable that a spoken voice would seem rather louder as if one were being addressed tby someone a few feet away. If that spoken voice is too loud then so must the music have been before in this scenario.

No doubt that before long I'll have some friends off the Forum round for some music, now things are getting more organised!

Then you might get an unbiased opinion of my - well I would call it this, wouldn't I? - best arrangement yet conceived for playing music.

Self-mockery should be understood from that of course, but not everyone else might have seen it without me making it un-coded!

ATB from George

Hi George, the magazine is only available online. I didn't know if it would be okay to post a link, but I think you could find it with Google.

Dave

Dear Dave,

I'll have another go after having supper!

ATB from George