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Unfortunately, I have to move into a smaller space and that means my Quads probably won't work. I'm starting to consider various box speakers. A friend of mine has a pair of Spendor SP1/2 that he's offering me, but I wouldn't be able to hear them prior to committing to the shipment. Perhaps this is a ridiculous question, but has anyone ever heard these models side by side to comment on a comparison?
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I currently still own the Quads and they are in a small room 11 x 10 and sound wonderful. I have owned the Spender SP1/2e and they are one of my favorite speakers. The spenders have the box sound and have excellent mid bass and are very non fatiguing.
The Quads are on another level with their transparency. I find they do bass just fine and can be used in large or small rooms.
If you have the quads and like them keep them and make them work.
Please note: I have removed those boxes from behind the speakers.
Nice setup. I owned a pair of Quads for about two years. Great mid-range, great mid-range, great mid-range. You can see where I'm going with this. Their shortcomings (bass and treble roll off, beaming, lack of slam) became too much for me to live with, so I sold them, eventually settling on a pair of ADS 1230s and never looked back.
Quads sound best in a small room, smaller than my listening room at the time (1978-1980). For voices and strings, I haven't heard any speaker (including my a/d/s) do better. Overall, however, I'm happier with conventional cones and drivers in a box.
I am not sure why on earth you would buy a the 1/2 without hearing it first. Ask yourself first if there are other boxed speakers you like and would be happy to listen to day in and day out. Because they WILL NOT sound like a Quad. So are you okay with that? Comparing dynamic speakers specifically the Spendor or not often still yield a similar comparison palette - the dynamic is going to sound - umm more dynamic - it's going to have more at the frequency extremes (and much better if the dynamic is a good dynamic speaker) - probably will have a wider listening window (be better off axis) - downsides will be not as holographic a midrange with the see through quality and won;t have a box resonance (although that can also wind up sounding thin and lightweight.
That is generally what you're in for with a comparison of Quad panels and Dynamic loudspeakers. Spendor 1/2 specifically you can say this about as well - but if you have hated every boxed speaker in the world - you're going to hate the Spendor - if say you have liked Harbeth speakers then there is a decent chance you will like the Spendor (both are lossy cabinets and both use the same RADIAL driver) - they're not the same but they're not world's apart either. So if you hate Harbeth you're likely going to hate Spendor.
At least try to find Spendor reviews that compare them to speakers you have heard so you will have a better idea of the sound. Describing it through words or looking at frequency plots just don't get you there. You get about 25% of the information from that.
The key thing is YOU already know what the Quad brings to the table. You don't need anyone telling you that. What you need is to know what the 1/2 brings. Some people here are going to prefer boxes to Quads and others will choose the boxes.
This Spendor 1/2 review may help as it is compared to some others that you may have heard so you will know what to expect.
Hi and sorry to jump in ... do you mean that their cabinets are not stiff enough ?
I think this is a very interesting point indeed.
Could you give me some example of speakers with no lossy cabinet just to understand a little better the issue ?
It is a very important issue for me ... i was thinking that deadening the cabinets was the way to go, but now i am changing my idea completely
Stiff cabinets may be is the best solution for boxed speakers ?
Thanks a lot indeed.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 06/23/14
In a nutshell, "lossy" is British term used to describe a specific type of cabinet construction. Lossy cabinets are less inert than some other types because they are designed to shed or release certain bands of vibrational energy as quickly as possible while allowing other bands to sort of blend in with the sound of the drivers. As part of the design philosophy, the interiors of lossy cabinets are usually treated with sound deadening materials so that cabinet resonances can be further "tuned" or controlled in a specific manner.Proponents of lossy cabinet design believe that since the audible traces produced by cabinet vibrations cannot be eliminated, they should at least be controlled in the most useful way possible, so that they might seem to be part of the musical presentation.
Check out this link to hear it from the horse's mouth...
Edits: 06/23/14 06/23/14 06/23/14 06/23/14 06/23/14
and reconsider your conclusion. Alan says he wants the resonances adequately buried beneath the music amd BBC tests find them inaudible. That's the goal. The consumer/listener needs to judge for himself if the design is successful. I hear nothing from the cabinets of my Harbeths when listening to music. In contrast, my old monitor audio speakers from the early 80's definitely had a wooden coloration.
This lossy cabinet design originated with the BBC. They never thought of it as able to hide resonance. And they didn't believe any box would hide resonances. This was the early 70s when heroic designs that cost a zillion dollars didn't exist. But the BBC believed you could choose where the box resonances were. The BBC valued the sound of spoken voice. Not surprising given it was a radio station. And regular boxes resonated near the voice region. So they made lossy cabinets that resonated below the voice area and damped the boxes so the lossines dissipated quickly. That's why BBC boxes tend to be good in the lower mids than most boxes and a bit poorer in the bass which was less important to them than voice.
Exactly, and some listeners seem to notice these "buried" resonances while others do not. That is why I might replace "buried" with the words "suppressed/tuned". Cabinet resonances can be made to coincide or co-operate with driver behavior as much as possible, but some people claim that they can identify the sound of this process. Who knows - maybe what they are really "hearing" is the sound of their own fear?
Edits: 06/23/14 06/23/14
Hi and thanks a lot for the very interesting reply
But i do not understand if the ideal situation is to have a fig.2 flat without resonances
Is this case the B&W Matrix technology has a better performance as in this graph taken from the same Stereophile magazine
I am confused
Kind regards,
bg
All I really know is that speaker designers must balance out the advantages and the drawbacks inherent in any design choice. Some designs are more nicely balanced than others are. Listening is the test of a product's success.
Hello i agree with you.
A classic must have really something special in the sound.
And of course what sounds good must be good.What confuses me is that other designers have chosen a completely different approach looking for maximum stiffness like the Magico Q1 depicted.
Maybe both the approaches can give good sound ? probably.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 06/23/14
Most speakers have enclosures designed to push resonances up high in frequency while Harbeth uses lossy enclosures to force cabinet resonances down low in frequency. Both approaches can work, but I would say that going with stiffer, more massive, "dead" enclosures would be the more expensive and laborious route to take (Magico).
Edits: 06/23/14 06/23/14 06/23/14
I agree that both approaches can work, but Magico is way out of my price range, so I will stick with my Spendor BC-1's. They sound good to me!
Dave
..Spendor and Harbeth do not use the same RADIAL driver. RADIAL is a cone formulation unique to Harbeth developed with (I hope that I recall correctly) Surrey University and is a USP for their speakers.
Spendor describe their cone simply as "polymer". OK the RADIAL cone is a polymer type too but not the same.
Yes about Harbeth's patented Radial driver.
Also, it's really not true that if you like either a Harbeth or a Spendor you'll like the other. Harbeths are more factual, Spendors more solicitous. The only person I've heard liking both is/was Robert Greene, but he never refers/referred to the Spendor's charm, seemed to consider it an excellent but lesser Harbeth.
I don't have a single audiophile friend who doesn't like both. A lot.
My favorite speakers, in no particular order:
Spendor
Harbeth
Quad
Magnepan
(PMC got kicked off the list for their crazy high prices).
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
I think it is perhaps not "like" so much as which ones you could live with.
Edits: 06/22/14
I find their differences more striking than their similarities. I guess that makes me weirder than I thought. Or it makes you and all of your audiophile friends weird. Less likely in terms of numbers, I guess.
Edits: 06/22/14
(Derived from another famous phrase). Lots of people like Spendors and Harbeths. I like a lot of different speakers that attempt accuracy. Some really expensive, some cheap, but the key is an experienced designer trying to reproduce the signal within a budget, as opposed to trying to entice the gullible with a hook.
I know you as a long-time Harbeth lover or at least admirer and I understand that, having lived with 7's, 30's, and 40's myself for quite a while and visited with P3's. And it is interesting to know that you also like Spendors. When I had both SP 1/2's here alongside the Harbeths, I found their differences significant. I had trouble imagining that one could be equally fond of both.
I thought the Spendors strove for an overtly appealing midrange and got that extremely well. I felt their bass was essentially absent, which surprised me given the size of the enclosure and that they were three-way speakers. The Spendors were instantly recognizable on subsequent hearings, sounding, as you say, like themselves. They had a sonic personality, which I have too often called 'charming,' though it is.'
I felt the Harbeths, especially the 30's and 40's were far more transparent, far less conspicuously appealing. I found them by a considerable margin the more objective speakers. But they too sound like themselves in the way that speakers which strive as mightily as they do for neutrality do. They ultimately sounded a bit pedagogical, academic. I often felt they were trying to make an academic point, arguing urgently for the importance of neutrality, somewhat at the expense of other things that came to matter to me more.
There was no need for me to criticize Spendors and Harbeths here to such an extent but I felt I had to be a bit specific about how I hear their differences to make my point. I have enjoyed both from time to time for what they do. And as we know, nobody does everything.
The title of my post above was supposed to mean nothing. It's devoid of content. And I didn't say I liked Spendors, just that there are a lot of people who do like both. I think they're ok good speakers. I wouldn't say fond,
Okay. I guess I made meaning where none was intended. Habits of a former English professor!
Hi i have noticed that in Harbeth they mount the drivers from inside, differently from almost all other speakers manufacturers
I mean the cone drivers are completely inside the speaker
I wonder if this translates in something during listening
By the way thanks a lot for the very interesting insight on Harbeth and Spendor speakers
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 06/23/14
Some are mounted on the baffle, some behind. Each speaker is a different design and the choice is made, according to the designer, to achieve the best relative time alignment between the drivers. There are no general rules here, nothing to learn from the choice of one way or the other, it's just a matter of choosing which way works best in a particular instance. If you really want to know more about it, there is information on the Harbeth website.
Hi and thanks for the interesting reply.
Well based on the Stereophile measurements they should try another way to reach a better alignment .. i mean i have seen better graphs.
But i was clearly wrong ... i was thinking to a way to avoid turbolence between the driver diaphragm and the edge of the mounting hole.
I did not know that they do both ways.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 06/24/14
Sorry I replied. There are a lot good speakers that look the same or worse on that particular measurement. The only way to judge relative alignment, rather than absolute alignment, is with your ears. If you don't like them, buy something else.
What do you mean by "relative alignment"?? Either a speaker is time-aligned or it is not. Or do you mean that the sound is relative coherent to you? I have found that nothing sounds more coherent than a truly time-aligned speaker. I tried to go back to speakers that had step responses like this one but just couldn't...to me they all sound "relatively" incoherent to a good time coherent speaker.
Hi now i know that there are two forms of alignment
For me alignment was only the one in the Stereophile test
Test that i have seen also in other magazine
Thank you
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 07/01/14 07/01/14
I can't speak for the other speakers, but there does not appear to be any attempt to time align the drivers on my Spendor BC-1's. Also, I doubt there would be any benefit with the complex crossovers. The super tweeter is mounted from the outside. The woofer and tweeter are mounted from the inside of the cabinet. It seems logical that they did this because that is how the drivers were designed. When I got the speakers, I thought it was because they were an old-fashioned design. That was how they did it in the 50's and 60's.
Dave
Maybe mounting the speakers from the inside helps give Harbeths their laid back sound! (=:
My comparison of Spendors and Harbeths would not sit well with fans of both. I suspect Paul finds it odd and wrong. Robert Greene would as well. But that's what I hear. I think if you back away a bit from both and compare them with other speakers rather than each other, they sound more alike. But within the British Family of Speakers, I do find them dissimilar, as I say.
I wish I'd had a better and full experience with Quads, which is where this conversation began, so I could offer something useful on that score. I heard what I believe were the second generation of Quads, the 63's. In a largish room many years ago. They left me cold compared with a pair of Swiss speakers (Ensemble by Goldman?) which makes me a party of one and suspicious of that experience. I had a customer here once to listen to my Harbeth Monitor 40's who said they reminded him of his Quads, though I think they were fairly recent Quads. So one of these days I'll have to find a way to revisit my earlier experience to see what the Quad and Quad vs. Harbeth & Spendor thing is all about.
Fascinating note: I once knew Ralph Spear of what is now called Spearit Sound in Massachusetts. Ralph sold all manner of popular contemporary stuff, most of it which made big, bold sounds. He sold me a Krell KSA 50S (best Krell?) which worked with a KRC 3 and a pair of Matrix 805's in a tiny apartment in Brighton, MA. His secret and the point of this note: his personal speakers were Quad 57's.
Thank you very much indeed for your kind and valuable reply
I have no experience of the 57 but i listened various time to the 63 at a friend's home and was surprised by the very natural sound
Especially while watching movies with real sounds effects recorded very well the realism is scaring.
Like a glass crashing ... the shot of a bullet and so on.
Very exceptional speakers.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
You know ...if there were a public demo room, something like the old Acoustic Research room in Cambridge way back when, that just showed off restored 57 or 63 Quads, perhaps funded by some well-to-do nut who restores them for a living, I'll bet he'd be rich in no time. That is, if all of the myths & tales about these speakers are true. I've never heard anyone disparage them other than to complain now and again about their bass and perhaps their being persnickety about amps. They may well be the most beloved and mythologized speakers ever. Along with the Spendor BC-1's. Any rich crazy 'philes out there?
Hi and well i want to be honest.
They were a little too large for me.
I prefer slimmer speakers ... maybe with ribbons ?
But this is clearly OT.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
Well, though my opinion should be of interest to absolutely no one, I do not find your comparison odd or wrong. I suspect the reason you found the Harbeths more transparent is that are less rolled off on top (the 40) or not rolled off at all (the others). No mystery there. I would like them better if they were a little softer on top. Maybe the new versions are.
It seems like I didn't do a very good job in my original post articulating what I was looking for. Forget about my room size. Forget about advising me to keep the Quads. Forget about speakers other than the Spendor SP1/2. I don't need advice about the Quads. I'm looking SPECIFICALLY for comparisons between the Spendor SP1/2 and the Quad 57. If you haven't heard both, your response will likely be irrelevant to this project. If you have heard both, please elaborate in as much detail as you're willing. Thank you
I've owned both. More than once over the years.
Nothing sounds like a Quad 57. The presentation of the music... listening 'through' the speakers.... that's a 57 thing only.
In terms of musical tone.... they're very similar. The midrange in particular will sound a lot alike. In terms of dynamics... the Quads have the edge in pure dynamics... 'loud to soft' in that kind of scary sort of Quad way. The Spendors will play louder (a bit) and have not as good bass, but a little lower.
They both sound amazing on classical music, jazz, and vocals.
Spendors sound good with tubes but I find they actually work better with a good solid state amp. I'll bet the swiss made 'Job 225' that has a 100+ page thread at audioshark would be amazing on them.
BTW, Spendor S3/5R2's with a little sub (think Totem) would probably work better in a small room than 1/2's. Just saying.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
I too particularly like the dynamics of the quad as well as that of other electrostatics. They do dynamic changes at lower volume levels much better than do most dynamic systems. They are criticized for not being dynamic because they don't do high volume very well (macrodynamics). The 57s will sound great for someone who doesn't require high volume capability or extemely deep bass.
I like the sound of the older classic line of Spendor. These have a lower midrange/upper bass response that is perhap more full and rich sounding than other speakers, at a cost of the speaker sounding not quite as clear and tight, particularly in the bass. But, this sound serves classical music quite well, much of which is recorded with not quite as much weight in the upper bass as needed for realistic sound. The "woody" sound of Spendors makes lower stringed instruments and lower woodwinds sound particularly good. The Quads will sound more open and airy but the Spendors will deliver more "weight" to the sound.
On the Harbeth vs. Spendor issue discussed elsewhere in this thread, I find their house sound to be quite different even though they share a lot of the same design philosophy. Harbeths tend to "sound" more transparent, clear and articulate. But, to me, this comes at the expense of a slight bit of exessive prominence in the upper midrange that makes them a bit rougher (mass strings will sound a touch steely and thin). I find the sound to be different, but, I like them both for different reasons. The Harbeths, because of that midrange projection, might be a little bit harder to match with other components, but, they can sound very good.
Thank you for your reply. Thank you for addressing my actual question.
I first heard the ESLs at Harmony House in New York. Harmony House was tiny. The Quads were magnificent there.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
Size matters for something and it is relevant in this case. Exactly how "small" is your new room?
Edits: 06/21/14 06/22/14
Perhaps you're right, this is a ridiculous question.
I was just trying to keep you from going down the road I did. I did not compare them to the current Spendors, but back then I auditioned in my home Spendors, KEF, Celestions, and Rogers. I purchased KEFs and Celestions. All these were great speakers, but none were Quads. The first speakers that came close were the Audio Notes, and even better the Teresonics.
Beatnik's stuff http://web.me.com/jnr1/Site/Beatniks_Pictures.html
Why won't your ESL 57 speakers work in a smaller room? I suggest you try them out in the new room before making any judgments.
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
The Quad 57 becomes less and less of a dipole as the frequency increases. That's the purpose of the damping pad behind the drivers that Peter Walker put there. In fact ads from the 60s showed this affect and used it as a sales point.Putting the above together with the relatively small size of the Quad 57 compared to most planars it should be easier than most planars to use in a smaller room. If you love your 57s then they deserve a shot in the new environs before doing anything else.
I also recall that British rooms tend to be much smaller than American rooms. So the 57 was already designed for use in a typical, smaller British room.
Edits: 06/20/14
The original Quad ESL (popularly called the ESL-57) is quite a different animal from the Quad ESL-63 and later Quad ESLs. I have heard them in a variety of placements, and they do not seem to be nearly as sensitive to placement as the ESL-63s.
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
The 63's and later models need a lot more room to breathe than the 57's.
Ditto on Maggies.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
I second the idea of trying them in the small space before you part with them. I did this many years ago and never found a small speaker that would have been as good as the 57s even if placed closer to the wall than was ideal.
I do think a pair of Teresonic Magus A55s would make you happy, but they cost around 8K new.
Beatnik's stuff http://web.me.com/jnr1/Site/Beatniks_Pictures.html
I'll third that, too.
Let it prove itself unsuitable! :-) Who knows? It'll prolly work out great!
============================
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
The 'Quads need to out in the room' camp is loud, but wrong. If you angle them so that they are not paralell to the wall you can get by with the near end at 19" or so from the wall.
Spendor 1/2 is a classic. If I had to get rid of my Quads it's something I could live with.
But nothing is a Quad.
"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them just are just made up."
-Abraham Lincoln
The 'Quads need to out in the room' camp is loud, but wrong
That is certainly the case with my Acoustats and Sound Labs, but they are dipoles while the 57s are not.
...being a Brit and therefore having used '57s in rooms that most Americans would consider small to very small you are absolutely correct. Just as long as they are not placed parallel to the wall and, therefore, if some space if left behind them even if it isn't much. One end of the speaker can virtually touch the wall without too much of a problem due to the dipole dispersion. Keep away as far as possible in the circumstances from the room corners too.
I guess it would have helped if Mr. Blue Sky had given an idea of how small his new room is or if there is anything that may force the speaker to be wholly against the wall.
OK, it won't be ideal but all audio systems are some kind of a compromise and the inherent and unique abilities of the '57 will probably outweigh any losses compared to perfection.
Incidentally I think that the Spendor SP1/2 is a wonderful small speaker (my friend runs them and I hear them regularly) but, as you indicate, it ain't a Quad 57.
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