Chris (ct0517), I believe the RM-9 is no longer available, even as a special order. I could be mistaken however. Roger has relocated to the Bay Area, and appears to be more involved in his Audio Engineering school than in running Music Reference. He has a right-hand man still operating out of his old Santa Barbara location. |
I bought a Bedini 25/25 in the 90’s, specifically for my Quads. Pretty good for ss, the poor mans ML 2! I still want to get a little Music Reference RM-10 for them, which is THE amp for the speaker. But I’m presently focused on my Tympani T-IV’s, which require very different amplification. I’ll be bi-amping them, with the wonderful RM-200 Mk.2 on the midrange/tweeter panels. |
Chris---that's like the music genre defined frequency contours on some car sound systems! Not a bad idea at all. kalali---Another example is separate home theater and music systems, for the obvious reason---the demands placed upon a speaker by movies is far different than is by music. |
The Quad 57 can’t be beat for some music---small Baroque ensembles (well-recorded harpsichords sound in-the-room), acoustic music like Bluegrass and Jazz trios and quartets. And vocals of course! People who say that some speakers are not better for some kinds of music than for other kinds---that a speaker good at one kind will be equally good at another---are imo mistaken. Different musics suffer more from certain kinds of speaker failings than does other music. Sure, a speaker should be designed to reproduce all musics equally well, but a speaker’s strengths and weaknesses will affect different musics differently, depending on the nature of the music and it’s demands on the speaker. A speaker actually excelling in all areas of reproduction will be a very expensive one. For anyone buying on a restricted budget (who amongst us isn’t?), compromises and trade-offs must be expected and accepted, different speakers offering different strengths and weaknesses. As an extreme example, if a person listens only to solo piano, a speaker with even octave-to-octave tonal balance is a priority, other speaker abilities being less important to it’s reproduction. For a vocal music specialist, a speaker with low vowel-coloration will bring the most long-term musical satisfaction. For a Reggae music enthusiast, while those speaker abilities and attributes will benefit the music, they won’t to the same degree as will the speaker’s ability at rhythm and timing, which are absolutely essential to Reggae. If one’s speaker budget requires a choice between two speakers possessing different strengths and weaknesses, I sure would choose the speaker whose strengths are what my primary music requires and benefits most from, and whose weaknesses are what it suffers least from. |
ct0517 (Chris) uses a Music Reference RM10 with his Quad 57's, and he will tell you how well that particular amp works with the speaker. Roger Modjeski designed the amp with the Quad as it's load! Though a tube amp, Roger designs his amps with reliability as a high priority, and for low maintenance requirements and considerations. His amps provide very long tube life, unlike many of the more well-known and owned contemporary tube amps. |
I belief I'll try it Geoff. The fanatic I referred to is master-tweaker Ric Schultz of Electronic Visionary Systems (EVS). |
I, like Geoff, took the metal grilles off my Quads. Big improvement! I also removed the rear grilles with their attached absorptive pads, about which Quad owners have mixed opinions. If done, the speakers must be further from the wall behind them. One fanatic Quad owner I new went so far as to removed the plastic dust covers from his 57's! That leaves the ESL drivers free to attract dust, leading to their early demise it is said. |
Geoff is SO right about the stock perforated metal screens on the 57---horrid things. Jerry Crosby (known for his QUAD 63 mod) at one time made a replacement for it, with much larger holes and much less resonance. |
If a pair of low-watt Pass amps are too rich for your blood, the old Bedini 25/25 is considered one of the all-time best ss amps for the Quad. They show up from time to time, the last one I saw selling for $795 here on Audiogon. |
Chris (ct0517), a man sharing my point of view, both figuratively and literally! I too prefer to look up at the stage, and find many, many loudspeakers to produce too low an image---as you said, a balcony perspective. |
Yeah Bill, Pearson had really high ambitions and aspirations for TAS, sometimes unachievable. Moncrieff had his own unique reviewing and writing style (which was to beat a subject to death, saying the same thing three different ways)---whatever happened to him? I think I heard he was in a very bad car wreck, and hasn’t been the same since. The same thing happened to the Bay Area’s leading Hi-Fi dealer in the 1970’s and 80’s, John Garland, who had the Wilson Audio WAMM speaker in his sound room! Another interesting mag was Art Dudley’s Listener, his publication before joining Stereophile. |
One great way to add bass to the 57 is with a pair of Magneplanar Tympani bass panels. They take a fair amount of floor space, however---each is 32"w x 6'h! That's what Harry Pearson mated with the m/t panels of the Infinity IRS to create his hybrid super-speaker. Another way is with the GR Research OB/Dipole Subwoofer, the world's only Open Baffle/Dipole Servo-Feedback Subwoofer. Very special, and very good with planar loudspeakers. But it's available only as a DIY kit. Worth the effort! |
A "properly" designed tube amp is really the way to go with the ESL 57. Roger Modjeski designed his Music Reference RM-10 amp specifically for the 57, using the speaker as the amp's load during development. If one can't use such a tube amp, perhaps another speaker would be a better choice. The speaker/amplifier symbiotic relationship is, along with the cartridge/tonearm one, the most influential in the chain. |
