Setting up Quad 988 right

With my 989s in a larger room, I discovered that the soundstage (SS) got bigger the farther from the front wall they are; mine are now SEVEN feet from the wall in my 19-feet-deep room. And I too sit fairly close to the plane of the speakers altho mine are farther apart in my 21-feet-wide room.

Quads are NOT tall speakers and the drivers are POINT-, not line-source. Many owners of the '63s and now the 988s find the image and SS height too low. Some kind of stand about a foot high would help. Gradient made an apparently-fine-sounding dipole subwoofer built so that the '63s stood on them; you might investigate those. I see that Sound Anchors does not list a stand for the 988.

I sure love my 989s, altho I confess I just ordered a pair of ET LFT-8s.
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I am working on a music/theater system and I plan to use five or more 988 mounted to the ceiling "upside down" in a circle. The circle array is specified for five channel sacd and probably three channel as well. Another reason for this arrangement is I want the center to be, or more correctly, I want the front L&R to be time coherent with the center channel. For correct imaging and high frequency responce (reception at the listening position a.k.a. "sweetspot") they must be toed in anyway. Also, even in a "two channel" stereo system a center speaker set at -13db can do wonders as Paul Klipsch and others have taught me. Read my thread on "Quad is going to happen to me."

Mr, if you intend to space the 5 equally about the circle, I think you'll find that the L- and R-fronts are too far apart. The ITU 5-speaker setup, for which virtually all multichannel recordings are made, has the 3 fronts spaced fairly narrowly--say, at 10:30, 12, and 1:30--while the 2 surrounds are spaced fairly widely--say at 4 and 8--so that they're as much sides as rears.

I suggest you experiment with your 5 988s on the floor before you attach them to your ceiling. Do observe the space to the rears of all of them, too.

Sure ought to sound great when you get them aligned!

How big is your room?
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Raising Quad 88 or 89 off the floor onto stands will severely affect (reduce) the bottom end. This is well documented not just my opinion. Search out the posts here, on Audio Asylum, or discuss with your retailer. Keep them coupled to the floor; as I mentioned previously the brass cones worked great for me. I had mine almost 4 years and tried almost every permutation of distance from front wall, side wall, toed in/toed out, tilted up/tilted down, etc.
Good luck and email out of this thread if you want to discuss in more detail.

Jeffery, you are correct, I did not plan to equal space them. Some sacds have the diagram for the layout included in the packaging. My upstairs room/ceiling is 17ft wide by 20ft or so with an 8ft flat ceiling and no back wall, instead it opens into my ground level living room that has a vaulted ceiling and is two stories high plus the vault, and the same width as the upstairs but is about 35ft long. I may add one or two "center" rears in addition to the five and/or a pair for side fill. That would be 8 or 9 988 quads total! I use two 18" Velodyne subs and have two more if I need them. I am planning on additional floor standing speakers for the front two channels for no spl limit material such as big band music and marches! Avantgarde duos are among my considered speakers, I have two pairs of large Nova's set up currently, one pair facing forward and the other next to them but facing rearward, bass is excellent and ambient information is greatly enhanced similar to the Quads. They fall very short to the Quads though in resolution and ability to properly recreate music. Listen to Christina Aguilera's Christmas album and you will notice how multiple drivers with crossovers totally muck-up her beautiful and complex vocals. It is a good demonstration of phase errors in my opinion compared to the wonderful Quads!!