Quad 57's stacked with Gradient sub woofer

Ggavetti,

If I recall right, my room was even smaller in my student days, so don't worry. The 57s are excellent for near field listening, but you MUST sit in the sweet spot and keep your neck in a vice to get their excellent high end just right.

Steven,

In the right room the Gradients can go fairly low, if driven right.( I used the 60 watt Atmas ) Not to "subsonic" levels of course. When listening to the first bars of "Also sprach "Zarathustra", you cannot make the furniture rattle or your pants flap, but they do hit about 35hz, I would say. You're also right about room placement flexibility, as far as the stacked 57s are concerned. Walker hated the idea anyway and scoffed at MarK Levinsons attempts in this direction. I myself however, if I recall right, did not find imaging diminished, when I experimented with this set up ages ago, but then possibly in those old days I didn't know how to listen properly anyway.

Sorry for the off-topic question, but you guys seem to be Quad experts. Do you think an 11x15 room is too small for the Quad 57?

As long as you understand that the Gradients are WOOFERS not subwoofers you'll be satisfied by their performance.

They were designed to be used as bases and work very nicely that way for a single pair of Quads.

Stacked Quads? You may get better performance from a single set and the Gradient. Stacked Quads only buy you more dynamic headroom at the expense of imaging and room placement flexibility. With the right amps I never felt that the Quad 57's needed more radiating area so the need to stack them was moot. YMMV...

When I had stacked 57s, I used Maggie bass panels with them and later Entec subs, the Maggies were indeed a great improvement, as well as the Entecs, which I placed away from the Quads. Later I used Entecs with the 63s. In both cases, having a better low end foundation was indeed a big inprovrement no matter what kind of music I listend to. I would run the stacked 57 without the x-over, letting them run free and blend in the Gradients very carefully by ear, using the x-over. I would start off by placing them under the 57 stack and then experiment. There is a good chance that you will like them placed that way, but I would certainly try other placements as well. Once they are properly blended in, you will probably never wish to do without them. What amplification are you using with this setup?
Cheers,