"Geoff Mackenzie"


Quite a few years ago I went to an "Evening with Quad" in a church hall
somewhere. The fairly elderly presenter gave an interesting and
instructive talk, and at one point went into the wings and returned with a
tenor sax on which he played some very good jazz. After a minute or so a
couple of stage hands came on carrying the cling-film dust cover from an
ESL63,


** The ESL63 dust cover is not " cling film " - it is actually the same
extremely thin, Mylar film the diaphrgnms are made from.


which they slowly raised in front of him until he and the sax were
isolated from the audience. They then slowly took it away; the presenter
stopped playing after another minute or so, acknowledged the applause and
explained that the object of the exercise was to demonstrate that the film
was absolutely acoustically transparent, which was why there was no
difference whatsoever in the sound. Cue oohs and aahs from the audience,
and more applause. Well, most of them, anyway. I and a few others sat
looking puzzled. To me, it was as if he had been playing in a room, and
someone had shut the door then opened it again. OK, that's an
exaggeration, but to me there was a very noticeable difference.


** Demonstrates the power of suggestion the eyes have over the ears of over
those with weak minds.


When I got home I took the film covers off my own ESL63s (the metal
protection covers had already been removed once my daughter was old enough
to be trusted not to poke sharp metal objects through the cloth, and that
made a huge difference) and on a variety of sources confirmed to my own
satisfaction that I preferred the sound "without".


** Removing the grille and/or the sock increases the level of frequencies
above 10kHz - so the sound gets a tad brighter - which gives the illusion
of " more detial ".

Fools nearly everyone into thinking it is therefore " better ".


The presenter also talked about the huge range of the Quad speakers, from
DC to light,

** OK, so gross exaggeration and total bull**** are your stock in trade -
Mr. Mackenzie.


and why there was absolutely no need to use any form of sub,


** Yawn...

Did he produce his army IQ test for you to pour scorn on too ?

Wot a ******......


...... Phil