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RE: The way I would put it is...

> I had a system with that and its mate the Dual 50
> F-1a 50w/ch tube amp feeding Magnaplanar Tympani 1-U

I had, along with the SP-3a-1 (bought new for, what was it,
$795 ? -- anyway, a staggering sum of money for a preamp in
those days) a Dual 75 (bought used). And a pair of
Magnepan MG-IIs.

Years later, I sold the MG-IIs to a friend, and bought
a pair of Tympani IVs. With the ribbon tweeters. Total
overkill! (Buying them was a nostalgia trip. Magneplanar
Tympani (presumably the 1U, like you had) were
my **very first** introduction to "high-end audio" back
in 1973.) I **never** had the space to set those up
properly. They **literally** divided the rooms I had them
in, and overdrove the acoustic space pretty badly.
Had fights with the upstairs neighbor over them, more
than once (not that I ever played them that loudly; they
were just overpowering the small room **and** the neighbors).

So I finally traded them in and bought the Quad ESL-63s
(used). I still have and use the Quads, but they threatened
to be the death of me, twice. Another trip down memory
lane: I knew about the Quads' reputation for finickiness,
going back to the original "ELS-57" firescreens, but
some reviews in Stereophile indicated that the ESL-63s
were perfectly happy with high-quality solid state
amplification. So I bought a Krell KSA-80. Can't get
any higher solid state than that, right? Of course,
I was fronting all this with early-90s digital, through
a modest solid-state line stage (an Adcom GFP-565, which
I also still have and have uses for). Well, after
the initial love affair with the Quads wore off, I started
being plagued by some kind of high-frequency irritation.
Not just the typical digital upper-midrange glare,
but something on the threshold of hearing, like what
Todd Krieger says he hears with upsampling. Like very
high-pitched noise. I thought I was getting tinnitus!
I started going nuts swapping equipment, playing with
cables, etc. I finally had to ditch the (expensive,
even though used) Krells and go to tube amplification
(a pair of VTL Tiny Triodes at first, then a Counterpoint
SA-4 OTL tube amp purchased used -- a major reliability
headache, but that's another story). Before things
settled down with the Quads (and they never **really**
settled down) I was actually in tears over the sound
of that system (**the** system, my only system, at the
time). So that was my first pound of flesh extracted by
the Quads.

The second pound of flesh had to do with the bass.
Quad ESL-63s (unless they're rebuilt by Crosby Audio Works,
or some such third-party outfit) have a structural resonance
around 50-60 Hz that can be excited by just the right
program material. It's the famous Quad rattle. It
doesn't have to be playing loud, and it isn't always
the kind of program you'd expect to hear it on (like
an Enya CD), it can happen, unpredictably, with
almost anything. Very disconcerting, and more and more
irritating, like rubbing the same sore spot,
the longer you have the speakers. I was finally
ready to ditch them 10 or 12 years ago, but at the
same time I **hated** the idea of parting with them, so I decided
(riskily) to throw more money at the problem by getting
a Velodyne HGS-12 woofer to get the bass out of
the Quads. Well, the crossover in the Velodyne wasn't
nearly steep enough, so I had to supplement it with
a Bryston 10B SUB, crossed over at 100 Hz and 18 db/octave.
That took care of about 80% of the problem. But later
I replaced the Bryston with a Marchand XM126-2AA
two-way tube crossover, 24 db/octave and fixed 100 Hz
crossover frequency. **That** finally took care of
the problem, 100%.

My latest discovery about the Quads is that they **love**
digital amps. Who'd have believed it! So now I'm
very green -- I drive the Quads with a modest Little Dot T-150
Tripath amp, and I've retired the Jadis JA-80s and the
AtmaSphere M60 MkII OTLs, and the speakers seem just
as happy as they can be. With a conrad-johnson PV12-L
line stage (ca. 1994) before the Marchand crossover,
and currently sourced by the Cary 306 SACD used as
a D/A converter. It's a good thing the Quads so graciously
allowed me to go green. The previous AtmaSphere amps
(8 triode output tubes and 4 driver tubes per side),
each on its own PS Audio P-1000 power conditioner,
would blow the room's circuit breaker after about
an hour or so of listening, even with all the lights
off.


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  • RE: The way I would put it is... - Jim F. 15:01:48 12/22/09 (0)

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