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Walker's "Little Wonder" (Quad ESL 57) - Your Opinions/Experience?

dlaloum

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Thanks Sal.

Totally makes sense, given some of the speakers you have gravitated toward.

That reminds me of why I moved on from my early Quad ESL 63s.

Before I bought the Quads in the 90's I'd been using my wife's old Thiel 02 speakers. They were a medium size two way speaker put out by Thiel in the early 80's, before Thiel went all in for time/phase coherence. My wife's audiophile brother and father picked them out for her I think as a college gift or something. But I loved the sound of those Thiels.

When I bought the Quads I spent quite a while entranced by what they did in terms of floating the sound in the air, without any box sound, and the incredible sense of detail and insight in to recordings etc.

But occasionally I'd throw the little Thiel dynamic speakers back in to the system and I'd be utterly taken aback by their sound again.
There was a general tone/timbre to the Thiels I really liked, but most of all I was struck by how palpable the sound seemed to be compared to the Quads. I'd play, say, the Enter The Dragon soundtrack - full of different types of percussion - and the Quads would unravel all the delicacies in the recording, but in terms of impact the sound felt sort of "ghostly" and removed, more like I was viewing a performance happening in another room. On the Thiels, bongos, wood blocks, tympani all had a more sense presentation, and a sense of air-moving acoustic force, more like a real bongo being struck and moving air in the room. I puzzled over this for quite a while, wondering if the difference was mainly in the dipole radiation of the Quads or whatever. (I found the Thiels had better presence in this respect, even when the Quads were mated with Gradient dipole subwoofers). But after a while I gave in...I just found the little box speaker that much more compelling in terms of "moving me" musically.

So I went on the hunt for some dynamic speakers that could do what I liked in the Quads, but with that dynamic speaker character.
Ultimately my next speakers were big Von Schweikert VR4 Gen II speakers. They "disappeared" in a way quite similar to the Quads, with gigantic soundstating and imaging, but with that more dynamic/palpable/ forceful sound. (Not that the Quads still weren't better in some respects).
Similar trip from my end - although WAF was what pushed me to surrender my Quads (the relatively small lounge/listening/HT area, was somewhat overwhelmed by my ESL63's rear surrounds, and ESL989 Fronts....) - The Gallo Reference 3.2's I now have at the front are more dynamic while still sounding similar to the Quads... but yeah, the Quads still did some things better. - In my case, given an appropriate (large) space, I would go back to an all Quad 5 channel surround setup in a heartbeat
 

dlaloum

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I think issue is the balance. It had a sharp 50 hz resonance, and effectively nothing even at 40 hz and a big dip between that and the midrange. It didn't have any body to the sound. So you turn it up more than the other ESLs and eventually push it too far without ever getting a solid body to the overall presentation. Here are the crude by today's standards measures of the original CLS from Stereophile. The ones I heard a few times were the CLS IIa version and there was a later CLS IIZ or some such. Lots of full range ESLs tend to have a resonance in the low end, a dip in the lower midrange and good response climbing up above that. Most distribute that resonance over a wider range of frequencies and fill in the 50 to 250 hz range better than the CLS did.

View attachment 225509
I Honestly cannot recall whether it was the original CLS or the one of the II's I listened to.

But I do remember comparing them to the big TOTL hybrid ML stat - and when hearing a bass singer or bass baritone, on the hybrid, it had the weird sense of hearing a tenor or baritone singing lower... whereas the CLS all stat, tended to get the Timbre right - that Bass singer sounded like a bass singer, and not a baritone or tenor lowered down... there was a definite sense of disconnect between the midrange and the bottom end. - I experienced that, every time I listened to a hybrid ML... through the 80's and 90's (yeah I havn't listened to ML's in a while)
 

dlaloum

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Quite probably, Sam/Tom always showed an aversion to speakers that lacked dynamic impact.
A preference he showed super clearly when he did the much slandered rave review of the Klipsch La Scala's.
A speaker I personally found unequaled in that quality for 30+ years, no matter their weakness in other areas.
I wanted to try a set of La Scala's.... but no opportunity came my way that was within budget...

I had a chance to try a set of Forte's (cannot recall whether it was II's or III's) in the mid 90's (used)...

The experience was ultimately disappointing - strangely they seemed to need to be driven hard to "come alive" - which was unexpected for a high efficiency horn design... that meant that at moderate SPL's they were disappointing - but they did "rock out" well...

Went back to my Quad's very happily. (still feel like I should give the LaScala's a try ... )
 

hvbias

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I wanted to try a set of La Scala's.... but no opportunity came my way that was within budget...

I had a chance to try a set of Forte's (cannot recall whether it was II's or III's) in the mid 90's (used)...

The experience was ultimately disappointing - strangely they seemed to need to be driven hard to "come alive" - which was unexpected for a high efficiency horn design... that meant that at moderate SPL's they were disappointing - but they did "rock out" well...

Went back to my Quad's very happily. (still feel like I should give the LaScala's a try ... )

I'd suggest Klipsch's theater/professional line over the legacy products. The former are designed by Roy Delgado who studied under Paul Klipsch but are much more designed around science/measurements. You can read Delgado's posts on the Klipsch forum, he never throws PK under the bus but if you read between the lines the old heritage speakers were designed by ear. The times I've heard them I get why owners used tube amps with low dampening factors or high amounts of pleasing distortion, put a low Z SS amp on them and they'd take your head off.

Contrast this to the K402 which I heard with some pro amp (Crown?) and it was completely dead even throughout its range. If a trumpet was playing with a mute directly next to the microphone it would sound harsh like it's supposed to but it wouldn't make music that wasn't supposed to do that scream at you. They had that in room realistic presence like the ESL57 with unamplified instruments except with better dynamics.

The theater/professional products are usually priced a lot lower too.
 
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anmpr1

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I'd suggest Klipsch's theater/professional line over the legacy products. The times I've heard them I get why owners used tube amps with low dampening factors or high amounts of pleasing distortion, put a low Z SS amp on them and they'd take your head off.

I think it's mostly imagination. But what do I know? What I do know is that La Scala with an AHB2/DAC3HGC sounds very clean, and certainly non-aggressive (to my old ears). No noise whatsoever. Pleasant in my room, at routine listening levels. Substituting a Chinese push pull 6V6/6SN7 amp is no 'softer' or easier on the ears. It looks cooler than the Benchmark stuff. Tubes do that.

On the other hand, subjectively (FWIW) my home built Dyna Mk IV and PAS clone is a little 'muffled' in the 'clean' department. Built in my spare time, on the kitchen table, there is no guarantee someone else could not do a lot better job of it, and made it 'sound' better. :)

I've listened to Quads and other stat's many times over the years, from back-in-the-day when we had maybe a dozen brick&mortar stores in the greater Chicago area and numerous audio shows. They always impressed with their ability to deliver a lot of inner detail and when properly set-up an impressive though somewhat blurry soundstage.
But they would never had made it in my crib, I'd have probably had a light show dancing the the panels within a week. LOL
Their weaknessis in many other areas made them far away from my cup of tea.

It is why you need several different systems in your home. It's always been that way. Perhaps the latest and greatest self-powered Klippelized wunderkinds have solved this dilemma? If so then that is a plus for the end user.

Now the Acoustat's and Soundlabs can have more impact if you put 1000 watts on each channel.

From my experience, once you had enough watts (Strickland's TNT-200 MOSFET amp was suitable) you reached an endpoint. More watts was unhelpful. The panels themselves started to distort badly, and you turned the whole thing down. However, to their credit, they did not seem to permanently damage. Certainly not like the Quad's reputation, which resulted in immolation.

Soundlab actually works in a way similar to the Acoustat. They have two step up transformers ...

Acoustat transformer underwent several modifications. I'm not sure which mod(s) mine had. I recall there was a Mk2 mod, and possibly others. However it's been a long time, and I don't remember any details. I think my dealer modded mine, but I might be making that up. The original Model X was direct coupled to the panels, from a dedicated OTL tube amplifier. With mixed results from the field. I once encountered it, but honestly don't recall much about the sound. A very short demo, on my part.

The unusual Beveridge used direct coupled OTL amps, and had an .... um, er, ... interesting sound. But that is an altogether different story. One perhaps best left to memory.
 
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MattHooper

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Similar trip from my end - although WAF was what pushed me to surrender my Quads (the relatively small lounge/listening/HT area, was somewhat overwhelmed by my ESL63's rear surrounds, and ESL989 Fronts....) - The Gallo Reference 3.2's I now have at the front are more dynamic while still sounding similar to the Quads... but yeah, the Quads still did some things better. - In my case, given an appropriate (large) space, I would go back to an all Quad 5 channel surround setup in a heartbeat

Wait. You had an all Quad surround set up? That's insane. It must have been really something to hear.
 
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MattHooper

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I think it's mostly imagination. But what do I know? What I do know is that La Scala with an AHB2/DAC3HGC sounds very clean, and certainly non-aggressive (to my old ears). No noise whatsoever. Pleasant in my room, at routine listening levels.

Although speakers like the La Scala are typically associated with using lower powered tube amps in part of the audiophile world, when my friend had them at his place he powered them with a big beefy Bryston solid state amp. Sounded fantastic. And quite clean. Didn't need tubes at all.
 

anmpr1

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Although speakers like the La Scala are typically associated with using lower powered tube amps in part of the audiophile world, when my friend had them at his place he powered them with a big beefy Bryston solid state amp. Sounded fantastic. And quite clean. Didn't need tubes at all.
One of our well known commenters (should know his moniker but can't remember right now) once posted how he used a Phase Linear amp with La Scalas. That's a little too hardcore for me, but I draw the line at the barbed wire baseball bat, when it comes to audio.

foley00b1e32c_crop_north.jpg
 

DSJR

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I know the UK is often a laughing stock these days, but our rooms are often rather smaller and differently built than those over the pond from us. Sure, in the 70's I was a naive rock music lover who'd have had many accidents with them had I bought a pair (I had Spendor BC1's at first, which Quad's Peter Walker supposedly rated very highly indeed back then and even these had bass and power handling issues). Certainly an acquired taste but if they did what you like, very little else would do - until maybe these new Klippel-friendly active wonder-boxes came along that get you all going gaga ;) (yes, speakers have got better and cheaper, in particular the wonder-babies now performing so very well today, but good old 'uns are still good, despite age and so on). (edit - I compared my then BC1's and later, my ATC passive 20's to the same pair of Quad 57's and neither were wanting really, the BC1 having a slightly 'hollow' bass tone and the ATC's a 'different league' dispersion up top - mids were good on all three, so make of that what you will compared to today)

I don't think many of us over here ever played speakers as loud as so many of you US posters do and the '57's (might not be their proper name, but that's how 'we' remember and speak of them) may well not have been suitable for all this new fangled 'pop' music played in a too-large timber built room ;) but in more intimate surroundings at not silly volume levels with lights down and before the alcohol takes effect, they could be utterly enchanting. the hf did 'beam' laterally as well as vertically and my and the owner's take was to sit very slightly off axis so you didn't get that 'pinched' effect. Like I said and was misunderstood by at least one poster here, it took but a minute to hear into and through them (most trad boxes sounded like, well, boxes, to a greater or lesser extent in direct comparison).
 

Robin L

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This must have been in the mid 1970's. A stereo shoppe in Pasadena, California, a pair of the esl 57s playing. Very different kind of sound, very precise and present but also miniaturized. I'm pretty sure I heard the 63 sometime in the 1980's/1990s. More diffuse, didn't like it.

But I did get real interested in electrostatic headphones on account of my sense they were offering up more resolution and detail. I'm using Drop 6XX headphones now, a different kind of precision. The pitches of inner voices in pop productions are easier to hear through the effects. Bach is easier to follow. The tradeoff is the sound isn't quite as "present" as it was with my Stax earspeakers. But that "presence" may in part be glare, pumped up upper midrange.
 

Sal1950

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I had a chance to try a set of Forte's (cannot recall whether it was II's or III's) in the mid 90's (used)...

The experience was ultimately disappointing - strangely they seemed to need to be driven hard to "come alive" - which was unexpected for a high efficiency horn design... that meant that at moderate SPL's they were disappointing - but they did "rock out" well...
I was never a huge fan of the Forte's or other models with non-horn bass systems.
The La Scala and K-Horns being fully horn loaded sounded more continuous to me.
But they both have other problems.
The LS rolls off very quickly on the bottom but can be place out in the room for best imaging.
The K-Horn goes deeper but demands corner placement which has it's limits on imaging.

On the other hand, subjectively (FWIW) my home built Dyna Mk IV and PAS clone is a little 'muffled' in the 'clean' department.
I got the same results driving the LS with my vintage Dyna ST70, very soft but a nostalgic experience.

What I do know is that La Scala with an AHB2/DAC3HGC sounds very clean, and certainly non-aggressive (to my old ears). No noise whatsoever. Pleasant in my room, at routine listening levels.
+1 IMHO that would be the perfect match.
It is why you need several different systems in your home. It's always been that way.
No doubt! I had 4-5 rigs running at any one time at my place in Chicago
Life was grand!
Sadly this retirement sardine can I live in now precludes that. :(
 
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MattHooper

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This must have been in the mid 1970's. A stereo shoppe in Pasadena, California, a pair of the esl 57s playing. Very different kind of sound, very precise and present but also miniaturized.

Harry Pearson, I believe, had an interesting observation about the 57s and the pluses/debits: He described them as similar to listening to a window that had been cracked open a little so you could hear what was going on outside. Only some of what is there comes through...but what does come through within it's hard limitations can sound awfully authentic.
 

hvbias

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"Sound coming through a window" I'm not sure if I have the right imagination to picture that lol.

I was listening to this CD after lunch (this pianist recorded the very best Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle I've heard in terms of performances) and it was a very solid, firm, in room sound. The deepest bass was missing.

91Ae5h2-B7L._SS500_.jpg
 

Duke

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Hey folks,

I'm curious about your opinions on Peter Walker's ESLs - from the original ESL 57 to the Quad ESL 63...

So I'm curious about people's experience or opinions of the Walker's Wonders - the 57 and 63. Any formative experiences? What esteem do you hold them in...or not...these days? Certainly technical discussion of their merits and liabilities are welcome as well.

Having been an avid DIY speaker builder since the late 70's, in the early 90's I was about to embark on a particularly expensive project when I realized that the total parts cost was in the same ballpark as a pair of used Quad 63's. So I abandoned the DIY project and bought the used Quads instead. Technically they were the "USA Monitors", rather than the original 63's. They did many things well but had a slight over-emphasis in the lower treble region, which showed up on female vocals. And I learned the hard way my ears are unforgiving of that. I tried a passive notch filter with mixed but ultimately unsatisfactory results. I had them hot-rodded by a company which specialized in such with disappointing results, as the hot-rodding did not address the basic problem. I tried warming up the tonal balance with the Gradient subs, and that helped some. I bought a Cello pre-amplifier which had six bands of passive EQ, and that helped the most. By then I had invested several times more money in solutions to this one (admittedly minor, but DISTRACTING to me) issue than I had invested in the Quads to begin with. I'm under the impression that I'm in the minority on this issue, as I don't see people COMPLAINING about the midrange of the Quad 63's very often!

Eventually I sold it all and bought a pair of SoundLabs. By this time it was late 1999, and I loved the SoundLabs so much that I changed careers and became a high-end audio dealer.

Over the next few years I owned three pairs of Original Quads, the "57's", in a quest to have a less-expensive solution for people for whom the SoundLabs were unaffordable or impractical. To my ears the 57's had a more natural-sounding midrange than the 63's. They still had other issues which made them impractical for me to be commercially involved with, not the least of which was the fact that I'm not a qualified ESL repair technician.

My armchair loudspeaker philosophy is this: A good speaker must do two things. FIRST, it must to SOMETHING so well that you can close your eyes and, focusing on that quality, suspend disbelief and get lost in the music. That SOMETHING can be natural timbre, imaging precision, sense of envelopment, dynamics, extension at the frequency extremes, inner detail, coherence, whatever. But it has to excel at SOMETHING.

The SECOND thing a speaker must do is much more difficult: It must NOT do anything so poorly as to distract the listener and destroy the illusion its qualities have just created. Or to put it more succinctly:

"The highest rated loudspeaker is the least flawed, not the most virtuous." - Floyd Toole

For my ears and priorities, the original Quads were less flawed than the 63's, but I can easily see someone else arriving at the opposite conclusion.
 
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hvbias

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Stereophile JA's measurements of the Forte III. This is exactly how how heritage Klipsch products have sounded to me (fwiw I'm in my 30s). Now you can do Google searches for their theater waveguides designed by Delgado to see the stark differences.

4kBjzFa.jpg


JA of course has some nice flowery language to side step these glaring issues, mostly by praising the sensitivity.

Edit: I'm not being dogmatic and saying the power response tells the full story. I have JBL LSR306 MK2 in my office with subs and these are quote unquote "great" speakers, and for me they are very good speakers for the $250 per pair I paid for them. If I had a few too many pours of bourbon I might even pay $350-400 for them, but that is about all they are. I enjoy IDM on them (big fan of Aphex Twin) but forget about any music that has acoustic instruments where I've been to well over hundred (each of the three) piano recitals, chamber music and symphonies.
 
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dlaloum

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Wait. You had an all Quad surround set up? That's insane. It must have been really something to hear.
Sounded fantastic ... a bit bass shy for some effects / movies.... and hard to fit into a domestic living space, which ultimately resulted in their untimely exit from the household...
 

anmpr1

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Harry Pearson, I believe, had an interesting observation about the 57s and the pluses/debits: He described them as similar to listening to a window that had been cracked open a little so you could hear what was going on outside. Only some of what is there comes through...but what does come through within it's hard limitations can sound awfully authentic.
I'm reminded of Richard Heyser's Audio magazine review of the Klipschorn. He wrote that piano recordings didn't seem as natural in the direct listening soundfield, but when he went into the next room, the sound he heard was remarkably piano life-like.

Anecdote: when I was in the army, all the barracks rooms had different stereos. In one room the combo was Quad, along with a set of Bose 901s. No one wanted to listen to the Quad, however the Bose was probably the most popular of any. As I recall, they were about the same in price.
 
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MattHooper

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I'm reminded of Richard Heyser's Audio magazine review of the Klipschorn. He wrote that piano recordings didn't seem as natural in the direct listening soundfield, but when he went into the next room, the sound he heard was remarkably piano life-like.

Anecdote: when I was in the army, all the barracks rooms had different stereos. In one room the combo was Quad, along with a set of Bose 901s. No one wanted to listen to the Quad, however the Bose was probably the most popular of any. As I recall, they were about the same in price.

Very interesting, thanks!

As for the Klipschorn remark: reminds me of my experience with the MBL omnis when I owned them. I know some people find their imaging sounds a bit too diffuse from the sweet spot (I didn't really). But no speaker I've owned sounded as real from outside the room as the mbls. Like I mentioned before, some recordings of my sons practicing their instruments, sax etc, sounded utterly real through the MBLs from outside the room down the hall a bit.
 

hvbias

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I think I've been doing it wrong, I've been looking for speakers that sound good with me in the listening seat :D

I suppose I could shop for some speakers that

1) sound great when I'm not in the room (I've heard my fair share of speakers that make me want to leave the room, do these qualify? I'd be more productive than being a couch potato for a couple of hours)
2) speakers that will make me feel better when checking my phone about how the stock market is doing; SPX continues its downward trend, press F to pay respects

My experiences with MBL - bright, plastic sounding timbre, images that would be blown up to unrealistic proportions (thinking of a Julian Bream Albeniz album where he sounds stretched out 20 feet) with acoustic instruments. Whenever I'd hear them at audio shows the importers would be playing electronic music which suited them better, though those chaps would still always be playing them way too loud. Reminded me of my Maggie 1.6 except now omni.
 
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MattHooper

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I think I've been doing it wrong, I've been looking for speakers that sound good with me in the listening seat :D

I suppose I could shop for some speakers that

1) sound great when I'm not in the room (I've heard my fair share of speakers that make me want to leave the room, do these qualify? I'd be more productive than being a couch potato for a couple of hours)
2) speakers that will make me feel better when checking my phone about how the stock market is doing; SPX continues its downward trend, press F to pay respects

My experiences with MBL - bright, plastic sounding timbre, images that would be blown up to unrealistic proportions (thinking of a Julian Bream Albeniz album where he sounds stretched out 20 feet) with acoustic instruments. Whenever I'd hear them at audio shows the importers would be playing electronic music which suited them better, though those chaps would still always be playing them way too loud. Reminded me of my Maggie 1.6 except now omni.

I don't doubt your impressions from shows etc. I always found they played the MBLs way too loud at shows, which aside from being obnoxious could brighten the sound.

However, as someone who owned MBL speakers I can tell you that the diffuse or too large image size thing is easily managed by speaker placement and room acoustics. Same with brightness. I have a room in which I have some control over the acoustics and it didn't take over-damping my room to get the MBLs to sound smooth and realistic on good content. Sonic images, like vocalists, were nicely centered and startlingly "present." Some guests were practically spooked by the realism of vocals "like she is RIGHT THERE in the room."

As for the overall timbre, that for me was actually one of the main attractions. I care about timbre/tone first of all, instruments sounding reminiscent of how I hear the real thing, and very few speakers I've heard approached the MBL's ability to render the distinct timbres of different instruments. The startling dimensionality of the sound was the icing on the cake. In the listening sweet spot that they really came in to their own. Recordings of my own acoustic guitar (me playing) for instance were rendered with spooky accuracy. No other speaker quite managed the same. (My Thiel 3.7s were the next best in that regard). If I could fault their tone it was that I felt I heard a slightly metallic quality...very slight. But that's in the context that I find reproduced sound on any system to be colored in one way or another. Since all systems are a compromise of sorts, especially if one is referencing reality, YMMV.
 
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