Gradient Woofer for ESL 57

Sorry I do not mean to hi jack your thread but Quads are so fine and Duke is darn good at what he does.

I wonder how Duke's Planetarium bass system (where he uses several subs to avoid room nodes) at Audio Kinesis would be with Quads

http://www.audiokinesis.com/

'By using multiple subs spread asymmetrically around the room, each sub will produce a unique peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position. The combined average of these unique peak-and-dip patterns is much smoother than any one of them would be, resulting in more natural-sounding bass with excellent pitch definition.'

Just a thought. I know the Gradients were designed with the Quads in mind.

Yes, I've heard about the planetarium...but I have a pretty small room, and I don't think it will help me.

Regarding your initial point (quads are so fine) I certainly agree with you. This is an amazing speaker if matched to the right amplifier. That said, I like it much better with the Gradient SW-63. If you listen to a lot of Jazz as I do, and like to hear the bass among other instruments, there is no comparison. The SW-63 are pretty tight, fast, and go down to at least 30Hz. The reason of my post is that I consider the combination ESL-57 + Gradient SW-63 to be superior than the Quad only...so I wondered whether the SW-57 is an even better match. Additionally, the SW-57 is smaller and looks nicer given that it was designed to fit perfectly the ESL 57.

i have quad 57s. i am reluctant to try cone subs. i would much prefer a panel sub, such as the bass panel of magnepan's latest effort.

Mr. T, you need to hear dipole woofers or sealed acoustic suspension. You already know the problem with panels and low frequencies, neither enough surface area nor excursion to achieve the necessary volume displacement. Panels would have to be the size of your front wall. With today's technology I doubt there's any getting around cones for the frequencies below 50 or 60 Hz.