How much does the speaker matter?

[Holmz]

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Have "dynamics" caught up to "electrostatics" capabilities in terms of distortion?
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I did not see plots on the specs page???

 

[dlaloum]

I did not see plots on the specs page???

I presume we are talking about ESL63 specs....?

I have found repeated mentions of distortion specs... (mentioned in the text of the stereophile article)

also here:

Audio Quad ESL-63

But have not managed to track down detailed, "modern" measurements...

 

[dlaloum]

Ahah more recent specifications from Quad:

https://www.quad-hifi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/New-ESL-2805-2905-2005.pdf

Above 1000Hz 0.15%
Above 100Hz 0.5%
Above 50Hz 1.0%

Not as impressive as previous claims of 0.03%! - but still very much in the "very good indeed" category.

 

[Holmz]

I presume we are talking about ESL63 specs....?

I have found repeated mentions of distortion specs... (mentioned in the text of the stereophile article)

also here:

Audio Quad ESL-63

But have not managed to track down detailed, "modern" measurements...

Like on that page’s “plots” link?

What is 1% ? is that -20 dB?
and 0.3%? Is that -30 dB?

 

[ferrellms]

But measurements don't account for psycho-acoustic preferences - the Harman work resulting in a Target curve gives us an indication.... circa 60% preferred the Harman curve.... so what about the other 40% ?!

And that's only looking at FR...

Not that I am discounting measurements - but there is no correlation mapping between measurements and personal preferences that would allow pure measurement based decision making.

Working in high end retail audio for some years, "educated" (some would say biased! ) my ears...

I can listen to a set of speakers in a demo setup for 5 to 30 seconds, and know whether they are worth spending any more time on.... or not.

And this is not necessarily price related... The little Gallo Nucleus Micro speakers primarily have sins of omission... single small driver, no bass to speak of (intended to be used as satellites with one or more subs) - but there are no nasty resonances, the sound is clean.... not overly resolving, but definitely listenable - lots of speakers at that price point, you listen for 5s and you just move on.... nasty!

Some people are so used to certain resonances, that they tune them out... One woman I knew, insisted for years that pretty much all speakers and systems sounded the same... - then at one point I had to send my Quad ESL's (original 57 version) away for repair, and I temporarily replaced them with a pair of Klipsch Forte III's (which have their fans...) - on walking into my lounge room, the comment from the "all speakers sound the same" lady, was "is your system playing in mono?" (we shared a home for some years, so she was familiar with the sound of the system).... she clearly heard a difference, she clearly thought it sounded worse, but could not pin down the reason... yet she continued to claim that all speakers sound alike...

There are a bunch of things that the Klipsch does better than the Quad's - measurable things - bass extension, high extension, maximum SPL's... but, they have flaws too... distortions and resonances - they still sound like "boxes" - and the distortions and resonances sit in the critical midrange, where the ESL57's provide a purity well nigh unequalled by others....

Can we measure these things.... yes. Do we have a relatively easy way of mapping those measurements to heard/listened experience.... no.

So how does one select a speaker based solely on measurements? - you can't! - all you can do is narrow down the choices, by using measurements to rule out the "nasties".... after that it gets difficult.

The Harman speaker preference score is the best way to choose a speaker that cannot be listened to in the room you will use it in. The room has such a big effect that ad hoc listening in any room (like a dealer room) other than yours is not as good as the measurements as far a choosing a speaker goes

Thus measurements like spinorama are the BEST way to choose other than a direct comparison in the room you will use the speaker in.