Blast from the past- Stereophile post

[JonMarsh]

I use to set up and sell these systems (or rather, the other way around) back in the late 70's. Something of a surprise to see an article about the Levinson HQD system near the top of the page online at Stereophile.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/mark-levinson-hqd-loudspeaker-system

Definitely a hoot- HQD stands for "Hartley-Quad-Decca"- Hartley subwoofer, and Decca ribbon tweeters mated with a Levinson crossover to an inverted stack of Quad ESL's in a custom oak stand. They took a little care to get setup just right, but you'd be hard put to beat them with any modern speakers, though we sold them with Janis Subs instead of Harley, which were more compact and used some pretty good 15" drivers.

[madmac]

Electrostatics ??

[JonMarsh]

For the midrange- you know, the original Quad ESL from England? With two stacked this way, because of the way they were built with a center ribbon tweeter, you effectively had a near line array source with an HF ribbon in the very center (what looks like a black bar between the quads, it's put right in the middle) . They took a bit of setup to really sing, and the setup as shown in the picture was NOT right - they need to be away from the wall for the mid bass to midrange to treble balance to be setup right.

[Ovation]

Away from the walls? I'd wager the number of units sold to households with married couples (or common-law equivalents) was in the single digits then. :lol:

[JonMarsh]

Away from the walls? I'd wager the number of units sold to households with married couples (or common-law equivalents) was in the single digits then. :lol:

Yeah, well, duh! :W The price tag tended to put it in that range, too!

[Ovation]

Out of curiosity, how much would a pair of those bad boys have set one back?

[madmac]

Away from the walls? I'd wager the number of units sold to households with married couples (or common-law equivalents) was in the single digits then. :lol:

All speakers need to be placed away from the walls to sound their best.........even if it means divorce!

[Alaric]

All speakers need to be placed away from the walls to sound their best.........even if it means divorce!

Sometimes especially if it means divorce...I got lucky for a while. We had a finished basement that became my domain (had to keep the delicate toys away from children , pets , less than bright guests) and my speakers were where they sounded best with no regard for aesthetics. The family had the HTIB in the living room to do with as they pleased. Downstairs was "Dad's room" , pronounced with proper female derision. Fortunately , the large knob on the right side of the integrated provided a nice counterpoint to the negativity. :righton:

[Ovation]

Well, I have the Man-Cave (official sign on the door and everything) and there is nothing "aesthetic" about my room. Within limits for space and necessary furniture, speakers are placed where they sound best, not where they look best (same goes for the 2 subwoofers). I even have visible, rather large bass traps that do nothing for looks but do help tame bass peaks. In the living room, speaker placement has been somewhat compromised, though they are not entirely overridden by "aesthetic" concerns.

Oh and no divorce concerns here--my wife has probably put up 75% of the money for my audio gear over the past decade. :T

[madmac]

Well, I have the Man-Cave (official sign on the door and everything) and there is nothing "aesthetic" about my room. Within limits for space and necessary furniture, speakers are placed where they sound best, not where they look best (same goes for the 2 subwoofers). I even have visible, rather large bass traps that do nothing for looks but do help tame bass peaks. In the living room, speaker placement has been somewhat compromised, though they are not entirely overridden by "aesthetic" concerns.

Oh and no divorce concerns here--my wife has probably put up 75% of the money for my audio gear over the past decade. :T

Wife pays for 75% of audio gear??!!!!!!!!..........a marriage made in heaven!

[Ovation]

I have no complaints.

[Lex]

Pretty cool Jon. I would call those the blackboard speakers. The stands look like blackboard or white board stands. heh.

[JonMarsh]

Yeah, there's more than a minor esthetic resemblance. The stands were made of white oak, and they actually looked pretty good in the flesh, considering.

[JonMarsh]

All speakers need to be placed away from the walls to sound their best.........even if it means divorce!

Unless they're designed otherwise- this is normally the case for built in recording studio monitors. In fact, this whole problem of out in the room has come to a head in GF's family room, as the Isis can be optimally placed, but GF doesn't like the resulting position or the necessary position for the couch.

So it's back to the drawing board. But, to quote Martin Luther King, "I have a dream"... more than that, I have a plan, and a design on paper for a system that might deliver 85% of the sound quality of the Isis nearly everywhere in the room, instead of just in a specific listening zone. Have the rough concept outlined, working on paper, and currently working on individual elements- some driver testing and module testing to do... they will sit flush back in the corner, and be floor to ceiling line arrays. Talk about a flash back to the ten years ago! But most all of the line array systems I've seen built, and the ones I have heard, have been fundamentally flawed because the designers tried to cut corners on the physical necessities, often coupling a mono pole woofer with a partial line array (Selah Julietta comes to mind, as well as the Linus I & II designs and variants I've seen and heard by other builders. Best working example that was close to doing it right was ThomasW's Acoutstat 1+1 with panasonic leaf ribbons; but I'd say the leaf ribbons couldn't reach nearly low enough for an optimal crossover point considering the dual panel spacing. And while the IB sub manifold was clean and deep, it doesn't have the 3 dB/octave fall off characteristic that the line array has, which means balance changes with distance, and the best crossover point for the IB is a little low for the ESL panels.