Question:
How does ESL 57 stack up against other classic modern speakers like Maggie,
Martin Logan, Apogee, etc
Answer:
Quad's ESL 57 does not compare. They sound very -different- than
any other electrodynamic speaker.
I think they sound different because they are pure. It actually
is nothing more than the music you hear. Other system make you
listen to music >coming out of a speaker<.
I am not going to talk technicalities here, and enough trying to
describe how they sound, others will probably do.
I will rather tell you how I feel about Quad ESL, if you are
interested, in 3 easy steps;
It took me several years, yes years, to get used to mines.
I got the full set almost 20 years ago, with ModII amps and the
old tube preamp which I later replaced by the Quad 22 preamp. At
the time I was mostly listening to pop music, on expensive crappo
Technics-Sony-JVC and the like stuff, fitted with graph EQ and
noise reduction boxes, but now I know I was only tapping my feets
to the beat of "Slade" and "Supertramp"
I was raging trying to adjust those 3 filters knobs on the Quad
preamp, and got tired of getting up at every song to "correct"
what was perfect. I ended up leaving them at zero, because I
figured that something was wrong with my ears, not with the
system.
The first step was to clean my ears of years of incorrect
reproduction!
That Quad stuff also actually helped and contributed to my
musical education;
This sytem makes you want to try what you would never listen to,
just for the sake of hearing what it's like.
Is it a coincidence that I registered at two different libraries
to rent discs soon after I got it ? I used to randomly pick
records, at the surprise of the clerck.
I remember at a certain time I explored contemporary music, and
altho most peoples would tell you that Oskar Salla and his
"Mixtur Traumatorn" (kinda like the Diplodocus of synthesizers,
circa 1950 AD) is only a collection of screeching noises, it was,
and still is, music to me. Then I turned to Jazz, because after
understanding that -sound- is only part of the whole thing, I had
to "tune" my ear to more -sensible- harmonies.
Then came classical, industrial, opera, ambiant, bluegrass,
electrobody, diphonic, speed-trash-metal, Baroque, and the list
goes on and on, and will never stop.
That's the second step, opening my ears, it is still going on
nowadays!
Now the fun part;
I only have goosebumps at live events or when listening to my
Quad system.
A friend of mine, who records silence in churches with a Nagra
and a Neumann mike told me, when listening to the tape, that he
was hearing God. He's a Mystic yes, I admit, but it is not a
joke.
My cat looked at the ceiling for the birds she was hearing, not
at the speakers.
Altho one of my bass elements is defective, I still -enjoy- the
whole thing.
People used to ask, looking at the ESLs "Why do you have two old
and ugly electric heaters in this room ?"
You can't put them in a corner, or against a wall.
After a decade, I stopped touching the volume knob.
I can't (I tried hard tho) listen to the TV sound on Quad. It
doesn't work, I'm distracted by the moving images I see.
This is the third step: the magic. I can't find any better word
to describe it.
Quad cleans, opens, and mesmerizes ears.
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