Quad is going to happen to me?


I recently-finally got around to trying my Quad 988's. I mated them to a Krell FPB 600c. I had always read that the quads were inefficient and double cursed by not being able to handle a lot of power. The result was (supposedly) that they could not play loud. I am happily very surprised by the levels I am getting and even more stunned by the bass. Good, clean, clear bass! I plan to bring on the subs but could live without them. I have not checked the voltage but estimate that I am hitting peaks in the 150-200 watt range. Maybe more, I don't know. The Big Krell was plenty hot and putting off the kind of heat that I would associate (subjectively) with more like 300 watts. The room is large and open with a ceiling fan near the amp and the air conditioner was maintaining the room at 68 degrees. This is the first time that I have used this amp too, but I own other big Krell amps. The source is an Accuphase DP 85 CD/SACD player with volume control. The volume was set @ 11 with 0 being full output. Particularly good was Madonna's Die another day cd. Very clean and dynamic with a pulsating bass line. I never tripped the protection circuit on the Quads. I know from first hand experience that the big Krells are special with a very distinct sonic signature. They seem to get the life out of speakers! I have a large pair of duntech Regents and the FPB 650 monos I use give the impression of the sound radiating from a very distinct, focused vertical axis. More like the acoustic sound of a large string being struck on a grand piano or a harp, than sound coming from a box speaker. You had to be there. Any way my question is, as I am an incurable audiophile (read music lover), has anyone ever experimented with horn loading the Quads or similar electrostatics in order to increase efficiency and dynamics and/or to use them with low powered SET's. The kind of in your face sound that allows you to hear deep into the recording. The best example of this I have experienced was with the Avantgarde Duo's and Trio's with very expensive and tweeked associated electronics including the DCS Elgar dac and upsampler. The upsampler made a HUGE difference, literally, in the sound quality and the sound stage was like nothing I have experienced since!!! If you have a system with REAL resolution you will hear the difference! Beau horns in the same room were very good as well and imaged better than the Trios. I attribute this to the fact that the Beau horns have no X-over and are single driver point sources. Trios need more room to function properly than the Beau horns in my opinion. Back to the point, it occurred to me that if you put a horn on the quads (front and maybe even the back side) that you could/should/maybe get a very accurate, dynamic and LOUD transducer. The horn might have to be VERY large or maybe not. I figure that any reasonable size structure would have to increase the potential output and therefore increase the dynamic range as well. The fact that there is an equal amount of sound coming from the back of the Quads just intrigues me further on this line of thought. If room size was not an issue or a limitation you might just could build something very, very powerful indeed. Any leads will be greatly appreciated as I want to try this! Cheers.
P.S. Could the cool room be a factor in the power handling ability of the Quads???
mrpresident
Large panels do not lend themselves to horn loading. The idea of horns is to load the driver into a fairly small end of a tube, and make the sound come out of a large flared end. If you start with a very large inlet with low pressure, the horn will not work as normally intended. Throat area is too large. It will probably do something, but it may be more colorations than improvement. In addition, you will probably lose the open spaciousness that is a Quad hallmark, and will probably lose some other things too. For a small, possibly negligable SPL increase, you lose alot of what the speaker is good at. I doubt it will be a good trade-off.
I've been hooked on Quad for 25 years now and have
experimented with various "fixes". All the changes I
attempted with my Quads only degraded the sound.
I say leave 'em alone and enjoy the unique sound
they provide.
Some folks have experimented with loading or damping the back wave of e-stats and planars and liked the effects. Only thing is, if you are going to do something like this, you better take reflections into account. I'm not talking just about the room, but firing back into the panel too. Sean
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