Here's another long buried topic dug up from the grave...
I went back to the Quad dealer again today prepared to bias his Manley Snappers to get another crack at absolving the Quads from the previous lousy audition. The biases were WAY off. The highest to lowest bias currents between the 8 tubes were about 30% apart from nominal current. I can hear the difference when mine are only 5% out of adjustment. After adjusting, the sound came alive. These are great speakers. The dynamics were still tame, something I am hyper sensitive to from my Legacys and recently the Ushers. The quads sounded flat on crescendos at lowish normal listening volume. I turned up the volume, and everything came up perfectly the same, the dynamics were exactly the same, and the sound was still fast and pure. So that tells me that the dynamic limitation is not caused by the speaker. I get the same feeling when I put the Manley Shrimp into my system, so I suspect that is even more audible with the quads. I treeid the minimax last time, but without bias set properly there was no center to the music, so focusing on even more subtle things like micro dynamics was not possibe. Mid range DHLabs wires are not up to the Grover Huffman standard either, so a bit of fog, but even with that the detail was really amazing, and how effortless and gentle, not aggressive at all, just like real sound.
I played a lot of classical, big brassy stuff down to solo violin, and it all sounded good. Solo Cello was very revealling of the smooth bass response. There is no mid bass suckout as with a dynamic bass driver with floor bounce. Even organ music was perfectly listenable into the low notes, even though the house shaking amplitude was not there. The 2905s are supposedly even better in the low end.
The biggest thing I loved was the perfect tone. Relaxed and effortless, the instruments just sound real. Listening to Miles playing a fast high note solo, I could feel my embrouchure reacting to his notes, subsconsciously making the motions of playing triggered by the realism of his sound. I could hear the squeezing lips and twisting moutpiece, or at least feel the feeling of it from the detail in the sound. I only get that feeling listening to trumpeters live in concert without PA. Cool!
Jazz bass sounded pretty good, but the audition room is tiny, and untreated for bass, so detail was hard to hear below 50Hz, eventhough I cuold feel the woofy power they were making into those low notes. It could be the tube amps with 5ohm output tranny is not low enough, or could just be the bad bass response from the small untreated room. I got a good price quote from the dealer on the 2905, now the consideration begins. The Snappers that I already have sounded great on 2805, not hyped at all, good match for the Quad. Jon Valin, my fav reviewer, recommended the 2905 as the best value of all the over 10k speakers he heard at CES 08. To me that only means that it has natural accurate tone, low distortion and natural feeling music flow based on his other articles and preferences which I share. I wuld need to hear it first, of course. I assume there will be no bass drum thud impact on rock tunes. I gotta hear it to see what's the compromise. The imaging isn't as good as a tweeter, but the high frequencies are much better than any tweeter I have ever heard. rollo is right,this is a great classical speaker.
Quad warehouses all US speakers in my old hometown of Norwood, MA. We used to do donuts and drink beer in highschool in that parking lot. haha
Has anyone heard the Quad 2905? I have been reading asylum OTL forum. Low feedback Circlotrons (atma-sphere) are supposed to be great with Quads.
Thanks
Rich
