Quad vs. Martin Logan?

Int, I think Duke has given you an excellent summary.

I have 989s* and they are indeed fabulous-sounding speakers. What I love about single-panel 'stats is their coherency, their 'all-togetherness'. It's difficult to describe and sometimes takes several hearings to understand, but for the music I love, large-scale classical and film, they sound simply wonderful. The several comments about integrating cone woofers with planar MR/treble applies to ALL multiple-driver systems. While a few of them sound fabulous and many sound very very good, there's always a little discontinuity somewhere.

I suggest you listen very carefully to as many of these as you can, and don't forget the Eminent Technology hybrid-planar speakers. Compared with the rest of these, they're QUITE affordable. http://www.eminent-tech.com/main.html

* Now driven with the the equally fabulous-sounding Antique Sound Lab 805 DTs, 50-Watt SETs
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Yes, the Maggies are a different technology, but more like electrostats than cones, much closer in sound reproduction.

I agree with Jeffreybehr regarding his Quads. I really think those (along with the SoundLabs) are the pinnacle of electrostat sound.

Then again, it's all so subjective. Every speaker mentioned here sounds great, really. It becomes what your preference is.

BTW, glad to here about the ASL amp. I really want to try some Hurricanes with my Maggies when my kids are a little older, so I don't have to worry about them getting burned by the tubes. Good luck.

Ditto. I owned a pair of MLs and never got used to the tonal difference between the Mylar and the enclosed woofer. Yeah, MLs look cool, but they don't sound like what hi-end can sound like.

Most of what I could add to the original question has been responded to by others, however no one, that I noted at least, has touched on one of the differences between the Quads and some of the others. Quads act much more like point source speakers than Sound Labs and Maggies, both of which can add more of sense of height, similar to dynamic linestage speakers, which is missing from the Quads unless you have a optimal set up. Personally, if I had the bucks and the room, I have those bigggg SoundLabs.

I own a pair of the smaller (ISIS) Innersound speakers and before I bought them I auditoned the Martin Logans, Quads and Magnepan 3.6Rs. Never heard the SoundLabs, but haven't read anything negative about them.

I chose Innersound because they integrated woofer to panel better than Martin Logans, played louder than the Quads and were more available than the 3.6Rs (At the time there was a 6 month wait for 3.6Rs). My overall preference/ranking of the 4 is:

Magnepan 3.6Rs
Innersound
Quad
Martin Logan

You need to listen to as many as you can, and don't forget things like associated equipment, room size and WAF (if appropriate)