ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

Patrick Turner wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:
I trashed the screed I wrote because Mike said it all. This is smart;
they're John's speakers, so only the sound at his listening chair
matters. If John wants a benchmark, independent of a listening
position, a good measuring distance for '57s is also the minimum
listening position of two meters, two long paces. (1) It would probably
be smart to raise the bottom rail of the '57 at least 14in off the
floor; it might still need tilting back; stacks of paperback books are
handy. For years I kept mine on a steamer trunk (full of books, zero
resonance) with the bottom rail 24in off the floor which put the sound
level with my ears when seated in an office chair with my feet up on
pouffe. Alligning '57s correctly can account for an amazing amount of
"lost" SPL restored to your ears.

You may be right here about the alignment & positioning, which I ddn't mention
in my reply on the subject.

I read your instructions for doing it the hard way with interest,
Patrick. Oinkerton Pork Butcher will be proud of you for the way that
post drains the glee from the audio hobby -- just like an engineer!
That's a brilliant exposition of why I generally don't bother to do
that job (if you don't want to do it right, don't do it at all),
trusting my ears instead. For those tempted to cholerics, my ears are
trained by having owned stats from when they first appeared when I was
a teenager and by having wasted my life sitting in concerts in the
finest concert halls to which the shareholders (that's your pension
fund) flew me in the company jet.

But at 3 or 4 metres which would be possible in the large rooms of the rich people

who mainly bought ESL57, the height may not matter if the path to the ears is
uncluttered.

With Quad ESL, either of the types here under discussion, anyone with
experience of them will be hard put to think of a situation in which
elevation or tilt does not improve the sound. (Mike? Phil? Astound me
with something I've overlooked.) You see, Patrick, even a genius like
Peter Walker had his blind spot. In the case of the ESL the "blind
spot" is an altogether too apt pun. It is those bloody grilles, so
stylish on the '57, hidden behind the sock on the '63 but still with
that nasty downward-pointing perforation which directs the sound at the
carpet.

The '57 in fact benefits from being put nearer the ceiling than the
floor, and particularly if inverted for stacking, wants to be raised a
very substantial way. The actress Fay Dunaway has a pair of '57 up
above doortop level near the ceiling of her living room in her Paris
apartment, a super solution.

And do not dipole speakers have queer response due to reflections?

Troll.

My stats have perfect dispersion patterns because only my chair matters
and the room is tuned by dumping amps strategically. EL34 PP amps make
the most mellow roomtuning devices. Seriously, If you sit on-beam to
the '57, that's the sweetest sound you'll ever hear. Do yourself a
favour and give up stereo. Sell your spare '57 or stack the pair in a
custom-made frame. I have a handwritten letter from Peter Walker in my
collection in which he tells someone that he can use any other good
speaker for the fill-in position if he insists on two speakers but that
the best sound will come from a single '57; I owned that single '57 (I
bought it to get the letter) as well as a pair, so I had plenty of
opportunity to test the theory.

Mono is Mama Mia! If-- you gotta have the right speaker and set it up
right. My town house is four stories tall. I stack several ESL63 at the
top and play thrilling music (Esther Lamandier, Emma Kirkby, Gregorian
Chant, Michael Vetter and the Overtone Chior, Piet Kee on the organ,
piano music) while I cook several floors below, using the stairs as a
horn flare for the ESL with room doors on the landings opened or closed
according to the requirement for Helmholz chambers (I just throw in
that bit for the engineers to agonize over -- there are also some
airing cupboards which on this scale is good for finetuning compression
chambers); it's a stunning sound and, at that scale, dispersion pattern
is irrelevant. Everything depends on viewpoint and scale. Nobody forces
you to sit in a chair and listen to music. Great sound is more a
question of putting your mind in gear than spending a lot of money on
this week's fashion-trash.

Patrick Turner.

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

"Phil Allison"

" I have been doing just such tests, with pink noise, on a pair of ESL63s
this week."


** Further to the above - this is basically how I carry out response and
sensitivity ( dB /w/m) tests to Quad ESLs ( and others) in a domestic
environment.

Tools:

1. The "Denon Audio Technical CD, 38C39 7147 " with octave & 1/3 oct pink
noise bands.

2. A CD player, Sony CDP101 in my case.

3. A power amplifier with known flat response ( +0 ,-1 dB 10Hz to 50 kHz)
and low output impedance.

4. A "true rms" AC voltmeter with response flat from 5 Hz to 100 kHz +/-
1% of reading - this is an ESSENTIAL item.

5. A Rode SPL meter with 1/2 inch true condenser mic capsule & modified
electronics to give *flat* response rather than C weighted - which is
nearly 10 dB down at 20 kHz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting).

6. A camera tripod for the Rode meter.


Procedu

Position Quad ESL (or box speaker ) on a stand so the central (or tweeter)
axis is 1.5 metres above the floor - all speakers are kept well away from
adjacent walls.

Position SPL meter *exactly* on axis and 1.5 metres in front of the ESLs or
1 metre for box speakers.

Connect AC meter to speaker terminals to monitor the input level in volts
rms.

Play octave band noise centred on 500Hz and adjust signal level to get a
reference reading of around 80 dB SPL.

Play each octave band in turn and note readings on BOTH the AC meter and the
SPL meter - any drop in the AC meter reading is used to correct the SPL
meter reading.

Do same as above for 1/3 octaves and plot on a graph.

Sensitivity can be tested with full audio band pink noise or preferably by
averaging the SPL readings in the octaves from 100 Hz to 8 kHz - in each
case the level is adjusted to show 2.82 volts rms on the AC meter
corresponding to nominal 1 watt / 8 ohms.

For Quad ESLs, the SPL meter is moved to a position exactly 2 metre away,
6 dB is then added to the reading to give an SPL figure referenced to the
usual 1 metre distance.





........ Phil

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

In article .com,
Andre Jute wrote:
My stats have perfect dispersion patterns because only my chair matters
and the room is tuned by dumping amps strategically. EL34 PP amps make
the most mellow roomtuning devices. Seriously, If you sit on-beam to
the '57, that's the sweetest sound you'll ever hear. Do yourself a
favour and give up stereo. Sell your spare '57 or stack the pair in a
custom-made frame. I have a handwritten letter from Peter Walker in my
collection in which he tells someone that he can use any other good
speaker for the fill-in position if he insists on two speakers but that
the best sound will come from a single '57; I owned that single '57 (I
bought it to get the letter) as well as a pair, so I had plenty of
opportunity to test the theory.

If you don't get a rock solid central mono image in the sweet spot from a
pair of good '57s, your room needs treating. They don't take kindly to
poor acoustics. Pretty well the same as any speaker. ;-)

Anyone who recommends mono over stereo has never heard good stereo in a
decent listening room. And that is probably 99.9% of the listening public.

--
*Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

Andre Jute wrote:

(1) You can get wonderfully inflated readings from the ESL63 by
measuring dead centre and 12 inches in front of it, where it has a faux
point source. Of course, that would be the same as measuring *behind*
the speaker, for the ESL63 is a dipole which has the faux point source
each side, and the sound at the listening position is from the cone
with its point behind the speaker.

If your microphone is a foot in front of the speaker, nothing special happens.
The virtual point source is always on the other side. Trying to find that loud
spot is like looking for the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, unless
you've wired the delay line backwards.

As for Andre's theory that the louvred grill directs the sound into the carpet,
that really is a crock.

--
Eiron

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

Andre Jute wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:
I trashed the screed I wrote because Mike said it all. This is smart;
they're John's speakers, so only the sound at his listening chair
matters. If John wants a benchmark, independent of a listening
position, a good measuring distance for '57s is also the minimum
listening position of two meters, two long paces. (1) It would probably
be smart to raise the bottom rail of the '57 at least 14in off the
floor; it might still need tilting back; stacks of paperback books are
handy. For years I kept mine on a steamer trunk (full of books, zero
resonance) with the bottom rail 24in off the floor which put the sound
level with my ears when seated in an office chair with my feet up on
pouffe. Alligning '57s correctly can account for an amazing amount of
"lost" SPL restored to your ears.

You may be right here about the alignment & positioning, which I ddn't mention
in my reply on the subject.

I read your instructions for doing it the hard way with interest,
Patrick. Oinkerton Pork Butcher will be proud of you for the way that
post drains the glee from the audio hobby -- just like an engineer!
That's a brilliant exposition of why I generally don't bother to do
that job (if you don't want to do it right, don't do it at all),
trusting my ears instead. For those tempted to cholerics, my ears are
trained by having owned stats from when they first appeared when I was
a teenager and by having wasted my life sitting in concerts in the
finest concert halls to which the shareholders (that's your pension
fund) flew me in the company jet.

Well, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings about thie hobby, but
I have to fix gear for a living, and although Mozartian test signals are the final
decider
I do like things to measure modeartely well, rather than attrociously, which usually
makes
speakers sound maybe passable but maybe not optimal on all music because many speakers
sound as if
there is a graphic equalizer in the system with a few slides set randomly +/6dB or more
along the band.


But at 3 or 4 metres which would be possible in the large rooms of the rich people

who mainly bought ESL57, the height may not matter if the path to the ears is
uncluttered.

With Quad ESL, either of the types here under discussion, anyone with
experience of them will be hard put to think of a situation in which
elevation or tilt does not improve the sound. (Mike? Phil? Astound me
with something I've overlooked.) You see, Patrick, even a genius like
Peter Walker had his blind spot. In the case of the ESL the "blind
spot" is an altogether too apt pun. It is those bloody grilles, so
stylish on the '57, hidden behind the sock on the '63 but still with
that nasty downward-pointing perforation which directs the sound at the
carpet.

You'd be surprised if I said that many ordinary listerners don't like a really flat
response.
I listened to a Celtic Harp last night with a lady friend and you'd have thought the
player was with us with my system. But she preferred an 8 dB cut to the treble.
Her own system is in a cupboard with louvre doors in front, this give about 2hHz of
sound
yet she sings along and is a happy little vegemite.



The '57 in fact benefits from being put nearer the ceiling than the
floor, and particularly if inverted for stacking, wants to be raised a
very substantial way. The actress Fay Dunaway has a pair of '57 up
above doortop level near the ceiling of her living room in her Paris
apartment, a super solution.

And do not dipole speakers have queer response due to reflections?

Troll.

My stats have perfect dispersion patterns because only my chair matters
and the room is tuned by dumping amps strategically. EL34 PP amps make
the most mellow roomtuning devices. Seriously, If you sit on-beam to
the '57, that's the sweetest sound you'll ever hear. Do yourself a
favour and give up stereo. Sell your spare '57 or stack the pair in a
custom-made frame. I have a handwritten letter from Peter Walker in my
collection in which he tells someone that he can use any other good
speaker for the fill-in position if he insists on two speakers but that
the best sound will come from a single '57; I owned that single '57 (I
bought it to get the letter) as well as a pair, so I had plenty of
opportunity to test the theory.

Mono is actually OK....



Mono is Mama Mia! If-- you gotta have the right speaker and set it up
right. My town house is four stories tall. I stack several ESL63 at the
top and play thrilling music (Esther Lamandier, Emma Kirkby, Gregorian
Chant, Michael Vetter and the Overtone Chior, Piet Kee on the organ,
piano music) while I cook several floors below, using the stairs as a
horn flare for the ESL with room doors on the landings opened or closed
according to the requirement for Helmholz chambers (I just throw in
that bit for the engineers to agonize over -- there are also some
airing cupboards which on this scale is good for finetuning compression
chambers); it's a stunning sound and, at that scale, dispersion pattern
is irrelevant. Everything depends on viewpoint and scale. Nobody forces
you to sit in a chair and listen to music. Great sound is more a
question of putting your mind in gear than spending a lot of money on
this week's fashion-trash.

I often do other things than sit in a chair when there is music in my house;
I'm always busy, and endorphins generated by female company always
enhances the music and food and wine.

An audiophile sitting alone in a dark room without any company might be missing
something......

But concerts do tell you what to expect from a system, and I am always on the lookout
for good ones to go to.

And what I also re-discovered this winter is that doing a few hundred metres in the pool
and a few kilometres
on the bike every week also improves the sound and reduces the obsessive perceptions.

Patrick Turner.




Patrick Turner.

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
"wonderfully well written and reasoned information
for the tube audio constructor"
John Broskie TubeCAD & GlassWare
"an unbelievably comprehensive web site
containing vital gems of wisdom"
Stuart Perry Hi-Fi News & Record Review

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

In article ,
Patrick Turner wrote:
You'd be surprised if I said that many ordinary listerners don't like a
really flat response. I listened to a Celtic Harp last night with a lady
friend and you'd have thought the player was with us with my system. But
she preferred an 8 dB cut to the treble. Her own system is in a cupboard
with louvre doors in front, this give about 2hHz of sound yet she sings
along and is a happy little vegemite.

Nice mellow sound, then. Plenty people like excessive bass too.
Doesn't make them 'right' - just maybe happy.

--
*Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Patrick Turner wrote:
You'd be surprised if I said that many ordinary listerners don't like a
really flat response. I listened to a Celtic Harp last night with a lady
friend and you'd have thought the player was with us with my system. But
she preferred an 8 dB cut to the treble. Her own system is in a cupboard
with louvre doors in front, this give about 2hHz of sound yet she sings
along and is a happy little vegemite.

Nice mellow sound, then. Plenty people like excessive bass too.
Doesn't make them 'right' - just maybe happy.


Interesting notion - the obverse presumably being 'I'm not happy with it,
but at least I know it's *right"....??

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

"Keith G" wrote in
:

like a really flat response. I listened to a Celtic Harp last night
with a lady friend and you'd have thought the player was with us

Damn, you're lucky. None of my GFs and FBs had an interest in audio.

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

"Prune" wrote in message
4.76...
"Keith G" wrote in
:

like a really flat response. I listened to a Celtic Harp last night
with a lady friend and you'd have thought the player was with us

Damn, you're lucky. None of my GFs and FBs had an interest in audio.



I never actually said that, but asitappens mine does - she is even *more*
pro valves and vinyl than I am!! (Understandable, as she is both a
clarinettist and pianist...!! ;-)

But forget all that - just get one who can cook.....

Or, even better, one who can cook like an angel and then *insists* on doing
the washing up.....

:-)

ESL57s - loss of high frequency?
 

"Keith G" wrote in
:

But forget all that - just get one who can cook.....

Or, even better, one who can cook like an angel and then *insists* on
doing the washing up.....

Hehe... I cook myself, and I find it natural that all the greatest chefs
are men. I'd be more interested in one that will do my laundry, ironing,
and folding -- that's the chore I most despise.

For now, though, one woman still seems a boring proposition for me.
Variety is the spice of life, gentlemen.