Torpedo

Doug, first decide if the speakers are to your liking, then see how they fit your room. Just then, start hunting the power amp. Those speakers, as long as they sound like the Apogees and other planars, will reveal you too much of your upfront components. More than raw power, I'd be concerned about sound quality. Bridged to mono amps aren't exactly a candy in my experience.

Yep, for point to point wiring you need the chassis, otherwise the thing would be a mess of huge proportions

Brooklyn Funk Essentials - Make them like it

Point taken. Thanks Deepak

Which one did you like better? Would you elaborate those differences a bit, please?

Hahahaha that'd be great. The "problem" is casing the PCBs and having something decent to look at. If I don't have the place to fill a PCB with parts, imagine to drill holes, mounting connectors, soldering wires and all that stuff which is the hardest to do when DIYing

Congratulations to both. It's a pity that having it converted to 230V operation needed "some" time to be effective. Maybe I should have waited Some regrets here...

Yes indeed, the newer 2xxx series, building quality issues apart, are an improvement over the 9xx. However to my ears they are still handicapped dynamically. It's quite clear that they can't go any louder than 95-98 dB, so when listening classical music decently recorded/produced keeping dynamic swings of 50dB or more, by pumping up the volume you can hear soft sounds louder, but the loud ones can't go higher, which I find a personal deal breaker. That's not and issue with average recordings and pop, rock or jazz, which is compressed at mastering.

LOL, you're right, sorry, looks like I need new glasses

Grawk, I was referring to the 2805 which from their introduction, were made in China. Maybe the late production 988 kept the build standards set in UK. My friend who sold the Apogees, ordered a pair of 2805. They sounded OK for a couple of days, then one speaker died. He talked to the distributor, and sent another pair right away, so that the first pair was still at my friend's. The second pair arrived and this one from the very beginning, didn't sound right in one channel. He talked to the distributor, and both agreed to let my friend open both pairs and see what was going on. He found that the first pair died because of a bad soldering. The second pair didn't sound right because a resistor was of the wrong value. Looks like they not even listened to that pair when just built. He was able to see the very poor soldering and internal wiring quality. He managed to rebuild a working pair using parts of both and redoing all the solderings and wiring. This was about two years ago, perhaps a bit more, a few months after the 2805 was released. Maybe things have changed and after this (and I bet others) fail they've improved their building quality and control. Another friend had the 988, not sure if they came from UK or China, but those sounded great and had no issues. The only "problem" with those is the frame not being stiff enough to keep the panel steady, so at high SPLs they tend to comb and make sound a bit undefined and diffuse. This is improved on the newer series using a more rigid frame. I hope this puts in clear the basis for my previous comments about the newer Quads

I'd say the second. Funnily enough a couple of friends came to my place two days ago and we were comparing the PS1 to the HF2, using the B22 and the Gilmore Reference. The HF2 with bowls on the Gilmore sounded with way less bass and impact than the PS1. Not bad, but not great either. Then using flats both came much similar. OTOH when moved on to the B22, the HF2 with flats to my ears became plainly unlistenable. Too much bass for my taste, and what's worse, muddy and tending to distorting. Moving to bowls, things fell into place and the things sounded damn good again, not PS1, they just lack the last bit of resolution, midrange warmth and treble delicacy, but to my ears, much more enjoyable than any other John Grado I've tried before. They even can sound a bit more open, I mean for stage width, than the PS1. Both are rather flat sounding though, at least compared to HD800, O2 and R10. To each one his own

Funnily enough he tried as many things as his imagination and availability allowed, but with little success. At least not as much as needed as to live safely with the Duettas

Hahaha, then wait until I tell you the beginning of the story This friend has one of the finest pairs of ears I've met in this hobby, not just for the hobby alone, but also for his professional practice. He suffered a heart attack about ten years ago, which left about 60% of his myocardial muscle in use, and a severe arrhythmia which spontaneously went into ventricular fibrillation. That's why he was implanted the pacemaker with the defibrillator. At that time he already had a pair of Duettas and they produced on his pm the same effect, though at larger distance, so he sold them. Years passed and he needed a new device for the old one being dated and also running out of batteries. So as soon as he had the new pm working, he decided he should try again the Duettas so perhaps this time he could enjoy them. Unfortunately the new device is still too sensitive to strong magnetic fields. It's a true story of impossible love

Pitiful, my condolences

Have a great one!

Cool, never listened any Soundlabs. Look very interesting. Let us know the outcome

Hehehehe, no worries, he can use Quads -2805 IIRC-, which aren't the same but get close and are more amp friendly, and some other dynamic speakers. The problem isn't the pacemaker as such, it's more for the built-in defibrillator which kicks in when he was too close to the ribbons magnets. Close as in holding the speakers to position them in the room. An awful experience being defibrillated when there's no need of it. He needed that to happen twice before deciding to sell them. That good they sound

Happy Bday

It all depends on the "bass needs" your dad may have. If he's going to listen mostly to chamber music, vocals and such, then the ESL63 are a great option. Otherwise, newer Quads would deliver more bass which makes them more suitable for other music styles. You may think that a subwoofer may solve the bass issue with the ESL63, but IME, the midrange of the ESL63 is so special, clean, natural, etc that matching a sub to that sound and getting a good blend, is a really tough task. No <1000 euros sub would qualify. The 988 doing some rework on the frame to make it stiffer are very good speakers. The even newer series are crap. They're made in China and the guys mounting them not even know how to put the right component into the right place , so forget about soldering in a proper manner. Once reworked sound really good, but as with all planars, you need a lot of room (6ft or more) behind them to the front wall. Another great option IMO are the Apogee Duetta, which can be found used from time to time. Their only problem is they need beefy amps, but I'm quite sure you may find in the UK a used Audio Synthesis Desire Decade for well under 1000 GBP, which drives them gorgeously. A friend of mine had the Duettas and I loaned him my AS. It was an excellent system, but he had to sell the Duettas for his using a pacemaker. The huge magnetic field from the Duettas interfered his device, which wasn't a great idea

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like they're visiting Madrid in November, I'll try to attend

Yum yum, that sounds like a very interesting meet. I kind of hate you, but just a little bit

Hahahaha you replied faster than I managed to edit my silly question Saw the price in the Woo website Thanks Al.

Woah! Impressions as soon as possible please

That'd be fantastic Dreadhead

Me too, why not? Looks interesting in the least