On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 23:31:09 GMT, mick wrote:

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.

The Quads do indeed use annular radiators to form a simulated point
source, unlike most planar speakers, but otherwise you'll find that
they sound entirely different from any paper-coned speaker,
particularly the obvious one - Lowther.

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!

You'll be horrified by how your memory plays tricks! Progress works.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering