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Quads miraculously heal selves


I had a problem. All of a sudden one of my ESL 63's was louder than the other. Swapped the speakers out to rule out an amplifier problem and, sure enough, the problem moved with the speakers.

Ken was good enough to offer some advice on detecting a panel that failed to sufficienly charge - pry off the rubber boot by the power switch and look inside. Endless glowing flashes would indicate a charging issue. I looked - no flashes. Hmm... what to do now? Shipping them off to be repaired is not an option given my budget. So I started thinking about a DIY project to inspect the panels and replace a defective one. But at 3 to 4 hundred bucks per panel this would not be an easy fix.


Now, let's back up. A couple of weeks back my wife had made what I considered a trivial change to the decor - rearranged a sofa that had served as my listening position. It went from the center of the room to the side. Didn't have the chance to really listen for a couple of weeks and when I did - that's when I noticed that one speaker was louder than the other.

After a week or two of agonizing, just for the heck of it, I pulled out from the wall the equipment stack that stands between the speakers and.... got perfectly balanced sound.

There are apparently no problem whatsoever with the speakers

What made this so baffling to figure out is that in moving the sofa I ended up with a room that was - at least to the eye - more symmetrical. You'd expect a more symmetrical room to be better for listening. But nope, somehow in making the room more symetrical, I upset the acoustic balance. Now, the Quads sound great - even better than before because with the sofa being moved, I now have sufficient space to pull the speakers well into the room. In addition, they are now sitting on inch high concrete pads rather than directly on the carpet.

After 20 years with them, you'd think by now I'd've figured it out - placement is critical!

Thanks for your help.

- Bob



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Topic - Quads miraculously heal selves - Mickey Bob 11:47:53 11/21/06 (0)


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