Best new loudspeaker

considering the entry date for this speaker. so far, no design has reduced errors of timbre in the midrange to a greater extent than the quad esl. i doubt any design in the future will surpass the quad in this respect.

i have to give serious consideration to the purchase of stacked quad esls as my next and hopefully last speaker system. there is only one other contender, namely the analysis audio omega.

enjoy your cones. perhaps you can put some ice cream and syrup on them. they'll taste better that way.... lol!

you are correct the quads do have excellent timber my buddy has I believe the 989 ,but severely limited in dynamics from soft to loud and a limited sweet spot compared to the best of the cone loudspeakers
as well as soft at the upper and lower extremes,many people are willing to sacrifice these factors for the purity of the midrange,so do enjoy your loudspeakers,
the only true full range electrostat loudspeaker is the Big Soundlabs which are excellent .the big MBL radiastraler
is also superb speaking of a incredible loudspeaker
these 2 are the finest representatives of their specific
technologies.

Hi Techmachine,

You may be new here but obviously you're no newbie.

You mentioned the big SoundLabs and the big MBL Radialstrahlers as "the finest representatives of their specific technologies". I'd have a hard time arguing against you on that.

These two speakers have at least one important acoustic characteristic in common, which they also share with live instruments. Care to speculate on what that might be?

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

the quad 989 is inferior in purity to the original quads.

the 2805 is no better. the 57 was and is the best midrange and lower treble reproducer. the soundlabs are a distant second.

MrTennis, I have a customer who would disagree with you. He plays, or played, violin in a symphony in either Vermont or New Hampshire (I can't remember which). Prior to auditioning SoundLabs, he told me that the only speaker he had ever heard get his instrument right was his personal pair of tricked-out original Quad ESLs. He brought 90 discs to the audition, and over the course of two days he listened to portions of 80 of them (the other 10 were SACDs and I didn't have an SACD player). When we were through, he told me that not only did the SoundLabs get his instrument right, they also got the cello and double-bass right, which he said he'd never heard any speaker do before.

Duke