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Volume Controls better @ 11:00 and above |
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Ash
Senior Member Joined: 18 Mar 2013 Location: Dorset Status: Offline Points: 4334 |
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Majestic into Proprius with Lautus interconnects provides either my K1000 or Mark Audio speakers with a profoundly incredible signal. I don't think I could achieve a better sound with alternative electronics, regardless of how expensive it is.
If I had the space, I'd buy a pair of Quad ESL 57 to try out with this signal path. |
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discrete badger
Senior Member Joined: 14 Jul 2009 Status: Offline Points: 479 |
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The original "radiator" ESLs out there are all very long in the tooth and the affects of age are particularly intense with this design, and degrade the sound greatly. There are operations which do a complete rebuild to better-than-new performance, but it's labour-intensive work and the costs reflect that.
The '57 is quite demanding of amplification (low impedance, capacitative load, limited power handling), is prone to severe damage through overdriving, has a very small (even for ESL) sweet spot, and has limited bass, treble, and volume. So one might wonder why they have such a religious following - especially as there was a later design by the same person which resolved the severe limitations. Well, what they do for speech, vocal and light chamber music at moderate volumes has to be heard to be believed - a real testament to audio engineering ingenuity. |
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Ash
Senior Member Joined: 18 Mar 2013 Location: Dorset Status: Offline Points: 4334 |
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They're also "multi-way" as apparently they contain more than one electrostatic panel (three per radiator??), of different sizes for bass, treble etc. Perhaps this is another reason that the "sweet spot" position is so narrow as very angular listening positions would result in very different arrival times so phase and frequency emphasis both affected. Plus the design is very planar in terms of dispersion pattern so won't radiate really wide to the same extent that a Mark Audio shallow cone profile would.
Edited by Ash - 27 Mar 2016 at 3:50pm |
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discrete badger
Senior Member Joined: 14 Jul 2009 Status: Offline Points: 479 |
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It's not so much a time-alignment thing, more a dispersion thing. The narrow sweet spot is due to the "beaming" directionality of the treble panel; mid and bass is much more diffuse. But for the single listener sitting in the sweet spot it's perfectly aligned. Actually, in any reasonable listening position it's well aligned, it's just that there's little treble :-)
Treble disperson is one of the many things greatly helped by the concentric delay line in the later design.
Edited by discrete badger - 27 Mar 2016 at 7:02pm |
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