On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 19:30:45 +0000, Alex wrote:

For those audiophiles who'd like to own a Quad 988 but lack the budget, or
the room, or both, which of the non-ES speakers come closest to that
magical electrostatic sound? [Answers from friends have ranged from well
known current brands (Dynaudio) to discontinued models I didn't know about
(DCM Time Window).]


I have only ever heard the Quad "radiators" in demo, but I was
very impressed at the time. Many years later I built some tube-loaded
speakers from a Babani book - the Kapelmeisters (by Vivian Capel). They
used a cheap eliptical driver with a parasitic cone tweeter, arranged
vertically (for max midrange dispersion) and loaded with a folded, damped
tube on the rear. The sound was pretty close in some ways to what I
remembered of the Quads! They had pretty good imaging in the "sweet spot"
(probably because of the single point driver and narrow baffle). Bass was
weak, but I don't remember the Quads being impressive in that region when
I heard them. They did have that lovely "clarity" that I remembered
though. I would recommend a design using a single full-range
paper-coned driver if you can find one. The Quads use concentric
conductive rings on the fixed electrode IIRC (unlikely for me...), giving
an effect similar to one of those.

I found a couple of old paper-coned "full range" speakers (i.e. with
parasitic tweeter cones) on a car boot sale some years ago. I might just
measure them & stick them in ported boxes to see what they sound like!

Follow-ups set to this group only.

--
Mick
(no M$ software on here... :-) )
Web: http://www.nascom.info