Quad ESL63

[ppppenguin]

When i unpacked my ESL63s a few months ago after building works there was severe arcing from several panels in one of them. Not good. Rather than sending them back to Quad for service I decided to do a part exchange on a fully refurbished pair by One Thing Audio.
http://onethingaudio.org/

It's taken a while but yesterday I went to Coventry to collect my new speakers and give them my old ones. The whole setup isn't exactly conventional. It's based at a private house with a large shed/workshop at the back of the garden. They also have another workshop on an industrial estate where they run their other (main?) business of designing and building industrial control systems.

The house is a bit of a mess but my new speakers were running nicely in the living room as I went in. Steve Williams, the director, wasn't very communicative but his chief engineer, Ron Best, was cheerful and happy to show me the workshop. This was also far from immaculate. It's hard to see how they keep the electrostatic pannels sufficiently clean during assembly. But then it's not microchip or hard drive tolerances. They have done a lot of work and materials and assembly methods and claim that their panels are better than Quad's own.

The photo shows an ESL63 panel on test. I know the available current is minimal but there's a lot of 5kV very exposed and waiting to bite. Just below the bench are ovens where they bake the panels before sealing and final assembly.

Listening to a panel working on the bench is an odd experience. The sound appears to be coming from nowhere and everywhere. This is part of the trickery of an ESL63, where it synthesises the effect of a point source of sound about 24" behind the speaker.

I'll get my new '63s back in position today. Will be nice to have them back. Also be nice to have the huge boxes back out of the way in the garage.

Overall, while the whole arrangment there is odd they have really whought about how to get the best out of ESL63s, and ESL57s for that matter. One question mark is the age of the people. Ron is 76 and I doubt that Steve is any younger so how much longer will the business continue?

They should have a stall at the NVCF in May so that's a chance to see and talk to them.

[ppppenguin]

Sorry to say that things didn't go well. After just over a year I started to hear ticking noises from one of the speakers. This got worse and later this year I took the offending speaker back to One Thing. I wasn't pleased by them saying they would charge me £100 to fix it when it really should have been done free of charge.

They sent it back; it was hissing and humming. So back it went again. They said it was fine when it left them but obviously had gone wrong. They fixed it again. It hissed, crackled and hummed when it was back with me. My guess is that it didn't like being shipped, though this was in Quad original boxes designed for the purpose.

Eventually they offered a full refund of everything I'd paid which finally arrived in my bank today.

Overall I'm not impressed and wouldn't recommend using their services.

This leaves me with the question of what to buy to replace them. A pair of new ESL 2812 would set me back a very large amount of money. Also they are bigger than the '63 which neither Ruth nor I would like in our living room. At the moment I'm getting surprisingly good results from a a Bose Acoustimass 5 system: https://www.bose.co.uk/en_gb/support/pro...ries3.html This had belonged to Ruth's late partner. I also tried a pair of Goodmans Maxims that were given to me by an uncle when I was about 14. They are nice little speakers but the power handling is very limited as is the bass response. I suppose I could cross them over to a subwoofer but not sure I want to do the experiments. I also have a pair of Celestion Ditton 10 which are OK-ish.

So where do I go to get something approaching the transparency and neutrality of the ESL63s? As I said, the Bose system isn't bad (the bass is probably goes lower than the '63s) but it's not what I really want. I'm planning to visit Audio Gold in the new year: https://audiogold.co.uk/

Ideas on a postcard....

[peter scott]

If you have the Quads back then you have nothing much to lose by investigating them yourself now.

Peter

[ppppenguin]

No, I don't have them. Had to send them back.

[ppppenguin]

I wonder if Graeme, our resident audio expert, has any thoughts.

[Mark Hennessy]

Choosing speakers is highly subjective, and specific recommendations from anyone on the internet is basically worthless as it will be coming from people who have different taste to you, and will have a different room. You just have to try a few different things in your room and figure out what works well. The speakers you mention are a world away from the performance of a '63 in good condition, but your (relatively) positive comments about the Bose does suggest that you perhaps don't need ESL performance. But if you do, then the £6,500 asking price is actually quite reasonable, all things considered.

I have heard the 2812 in a hifi show, and as far as one can tell in that sort of environment, they were pretty good. But obviously you need a massive room for ESLs to work well. This room was about 40 foot or so (medium-sized conference room in a large hotel), and it's perhaps the only time I've heard anything approaching an accurate and believable stereo image from ESLs. Every other experience has been in much smaller rooms, and the imagery is always "interesting", but never correct. But, some people seem to like that. Even in a larger room - by UK standards - perhaps about 20 foot square - is not big enough in my experience. While the 2812's were one of the best things that I heard at that show, it was basically the room making that difference. Most others were exhibited in standard-sized hotel rooms (perhaps 10 foot square, give or take), and anything larger than an LS3/5A just didn't work well in the space. The rooms were all hard acoustically, with very thin carpets, concrete block walls and large windows. The company I was helping out got reasonable results after letting me tweak the position of the speakers in the rooms - it looked a bit odd, but provided there were 5 or 6 people in the room to help with the acoustics, it actually sounded pretty good. We did a second walk-around a couple of days into the show and discovered a handful of people who copied our layout! Once word got around that there was a Nagra T in the room, it resulted in a lot of traffic, and many people did comment on the sound quality once they'd got over the novelty of 1/4" tape. That was the only tape machine in the whole show, but that was about 6 or 7 years back - now, 1/4" tape machines are everywhere at hi-fi shows! But I digress...

Personally, I always recommend monitors rather than speakers. As you've specifically said you want neutrality and transparency, that's the only sensibly option, frankly. Hi-fi speakers are rarely neutral as they are designed to sell - hence they tend to be "impressive" and "exciting" - which is all very well at first, but quickly becomes tiring to those who know what audio should sound like. Monitors, meanwhile, are tools to let you make decisions about mixing and microphone placement, etc, so they shouldn't add anything to the performance. They don't flatter poor recordings, but they allow good recordings to really shine.

If that sounds like the sort of thing you're after, there's plenty of choice. But it's all about personal preference, so I can't be too specific. And again, I would be extremely cautious of anyone who recommends specific models based on what little (basically zero) you've told us about your listening room, taste in music, and your existing audio system. Unfortunately, everyone likes to be an expert - especially in the hi-fi world.

But FWIW, I like brands like ATC and Genelec, and I'm also fond of most of the BBC-style monitors being made today by various companies. Because you pay a hefty royalty for a BBC licensed design, you might find that the non-BBC models in the ranges from some of these brands might be preferable (the BBC licence is actually a bit of a restriction in practice, as it's quite possible to do better than the BBC did all those years ago). If looking second-hand, Rogers did a lot of nice stuff, but support is non-existent today, obviously. There's a little bit about BBC speakers on my website, but relatively little about the new BBC-licensed designs available today because positive reviews of those would cause a certain competitor of those companies to accuse me of a conflict of interest. But there's no shortage of other reviews, including some from non-hi-fi press such as Sound on Sound (often with measurements).

Perhaps as a starting point, how did your BC1s work in your room?

[ppppenguin]

It's so long since I had the BC1s that I've forgotten what they sounded like. My room is acoustically fairly absorbant, with carpets and upholstered furniture. It was only just about big enough for ESL63s.

Many years ago I compared LS3/5As with ESL63s (at London Sound which by then was in Ruislip and had a big enough space). My feeling was that LS3/5As told you everything that was wrong with the source material, which is exactly what monitors are meant to do. The '63s also did that but I felt they didn't make it so abundantly "in your face". Since I play quite a few 78s the way the '63s don't exaggerate the defects is very welcome. My normal listenng is mainly classical, plus jazz and that horrible term "world" music.

It's nice to have capable bass but it's not the most important thing. I sometimes use a recording of "Job" by Vaughan Williams to hear what's going on in the bass. There's a shattering passage with full organ and orchestra. The '63s took it cleanly as you'd expect but the bass felt a little light. Entirely acceptable. The Bose speakers I'm using at the moment again take it pretty cleanly but are probably putting some false emphasis on the bass. Really not bad. With care and at low-ish volume I tried the Maxims; the result is a confused mess.

I know that my ears aren't as acute as they were years ago. I'm 64 and am now barely aware of 15625Hz line whistle. 10125Hz is still loud and clear. I haven't done tests but it's obvious that my right ear's HF response is significantly down on my left. My brain compensates for this but if I put a finger in my left ear the effect is immediately clear. I've done this at live concerts which remain my ultimate reference point. I know that in orchestral concerts my ear/brain will distort some fortissimo climaxes. Gently attenuating the sound with fingers removes the distortion.

So perhaps all I really need now is something decent rather than going for really top quality.

I recently had an email discussion with Ted Kendall. He and I have been friends for many years since meeting at the aforementioned London Sound c1978. He went on to the BBC and has done remastering professionally for many years. In the far gone days when we listened together we tended to agree on what sounded right. I respect his opinions, not only because of this, but also because I have a number of his remastered recordings which sound right to me**. He also suggested ATC and Genelec so I think that's the route I need to take.

**Last year I was playing a CD of Paul Robeson, remastered by somebody or other on a reputable label. I thought it sounded dull and lifeless. I dug out a 78 of one of the tracks and roughly sync'ed it with the CD. Night and day. The 78 had hiss and crackle but the nusic was all there.

[ppppenguin]

I've just looked back at my correspondence with Ted and my memory was faulty. He suggested PMC, possibly the LB1, which he actually uses for day to day work. They've certainly had good professional reviews. He actually used them to replace a pair of ESL63s which needed more space than he had in his studio. While the LB1 is no longer made PMC still make similar speakers.

His other suggestion was LS3/5A. He bought a pair many years ago and uses them in a domestic system. I'm not so keen. Apart from some doubt I mentioned earlier they are expensive new, both expensive and hard to assess secondhand and probably need to be crossed over to a subwoofer for decent bass.

[Mark Hennessy]

Ah, Ted...

I fear I might have offended him. I don't know for sure, as he didn't get back to me, but here it is (post #39 onwards): https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/show...p?t=144431

As I explained in that thread, PMCs are far from neutral, and I simply don't understand how they can be marketed as "monitors". The first time I heard a pair (2002), I was absolutely astonished at how much HF lift they had. Once I got past that, I then had to come to terms with the recessed mid and lumpy bass. When I later acquired the means to measure speakers, all my subjective observations were confirmed. However, a lot of people like them. It is an attractive sound if you like that sort of thing - which explains why they are so successful in the domestic market - but there's no way they should be used as monitors IMHO. However, it's impossible to change people's minds about this sort of thing - even with hard, objective data. This is audio, after all...

ATC, on the other hand, have stuck to their principles, and produce domestic speakers that sound like their monitors. They are just as successful as PMC, and certainly have my respect. The measurements in the last post of that thread show the cheapest ATC (the SCM7 from about 12 years back) is the flattest of the bunch that I picked at random to measure. They are what I would choose to mix on, although I have at various times used all of those I presented measurements for. Other speakers might sound "nicer", and so might be better for domestic use, but that's personal preference - I'm happiest with monitors because I enjoy hearing something that was close to what the engineers heard at the time, that isn't necessary for everyone. As a tool to do a job - rather than something to entertain you - you need a monitor. The arguments for monitor speakers are much the same as picture monitors vs domestic TV sets, of course.

As I say, I don't know what he disagreed with, but the other topic we discussed was LS3/5As. Perhaps it was that instead; perhaps it was both? I honestly have no idea. The public record shows that I asked nicely for confirmation, and also shows that I presented verifiable facts and sources. Which is unusual in audio - I go out of my way to do so, as the usual subjective conversations are practically worthless...

LS3/5As were never flat, even when new. The design that R&D produced wasn't bad, but it got modified somewhat by Designs Department (as was usual). Ignoring the obvious differences at the bass end, it's no wonder that you preferred the ESL to them, given that LS3/5As are quite up-and-down through the mid and treble. Of course, they are subject to ageing, and no original LS3/5A measures like it did from new. And they varied throughout the production run for various reasons well-documented elsewhere. The 11 ohm redesign helped a lot, and these measure reasonably well today. As I mentioned to Ted, I've been involved with a lot of research on the LS3/5A in recent years - I can't get into the details for commercial reasons, but be assured that what I write about them is based on objective facts rather than faith and belief.

The currently available LS3/5As will be much closer to the original design intent, and come with a warranty, but they are expensive. That's because they are expensive to manufacturer - trust me, it's not the profiteering you might be tempted to suspect. But as I said earlier, most of these present-day manufacturers also produce non-BBC designs that are well-worth considering - the ones I've got in mind have better sound quality and are better value for money - IMHO, of course. I don't want to get any more specific for the reasons I gave earlier...

One thing to bear in mind: decent quality monitor-style speakers do tend to be rather insensitive. Not as bad as the Maxims, but even so, they do need a bit of power behind them. Ideally at least 50 watts per channel in a smaller room, but obviously it does depend on what you pick. In my experience, a lot of people fail to understand this - even BBC engineers, sadly. People see a small box and assume a small amplifier is all it needs. The opposite is often true. So your current amplifier - and whether or not you're prepared to change is - is something to bear in mind when choosing speakers.

Something that is often forgotten: an amplifier enters clipping at a point before conspicuous distortion is apparent. This "grey area" sounds harsh, but not in a way that is obviously an amplifier problem - as a result, people usually assume it's the speakers straining. It's a shame clipping indicators aren't routinely fitted to domestic amplifiers.

[ppppenguin]

I hadn't realised that you and Ted had had what seem like a bit of a dispute. You've done a lot of measuements, Ted has done a lot of programme making and remastering. This is coming at the questions from two very different angles. I'm not going to make judgements between two friends except to say that as an engineer my default is to measure things. Though I'm not enough of an audio enthusiast to want to do speaker measurments myself. I always bear in mind Flanders and Swann: "But I never did care for the music much, it's the hi fidelity" Written about 60 years ago.

I have 100W per channel available (Quad 405) which should be enough for all but horribly insensitive speakers in my room. I'm aware that running an underpowered amp into clipping is a good way to destroy tweeters as well as making a horrible noise. If I wanted a lot of sound from relatively low power I suppose I'd be looking at Klipsch speakers. I suspect they'd be rather coloured as horns tend to be.

Can you please PM/email me about what you can't say here?