Tír Na HiFi

Took a spin down to Tony's last night to finally get a listen to a good set of ESL 57's. Never heard a fully refurbished pair before so I was quite eager to hear their legendary midrange. The amp as most of you know by now was Tony's own Jadis. Didnt have the time or means to get my own Jadis down but that's for another day. Feeding it all was a combo of the Lampi4 and a Merdian CD transport initially. Computer Audio would come later as Tony burned a few of my CDs.
Very very impressed with the sound, easily the best midrange I've heard to date and to be honest I was kinda both hoping and expecting for this to be the case. My now patented 'treble resonance' test using Track 4 from Italian Oboe Concertos Vol 2 passed with flying colours, it was incredibly smooth and life-like. The harmonics and interplay between the Clarinet, Flute and the Oboe sounded stunning.
My usual demo mix of non-classical stuff consisting of Tom Waits, Cassandra Wilson, Hope Sandoval and Ted Hawkins sounded just as gorgeous.

If I had to nit pick it would that I've heard a more extended treble from a lot of other systems but extended treble is something that scares me and to be honest once I adjusted to the 57's I didnt miss it in the slightest. That golden midrange just dominated.

Pearse soon arived with his Lampi Big7. A seriously impressive piece of kit and it sounded just as gorgeous when it replaced the Lampi4.

A few pics below. My HTC phone isnt great with correct exposure with any sort of strong light in the room.





Conclusions....

Computer Audio: What I heard was very impressive but I'll be completely honest, it didnt sound any different to the Meridian CDP feeding either of the DACs to my ears. Now we didnt level match properly, so perhaps not a fair comparison, but all I heard was the Quad ESL sound dominate each time. Not yet convinced that it adds anything above what a normal CD transport can deliver but certainly a test I'd like to return to with a proper level matching kit and test tones etc. Maybe we can arrange sometime?

DACs: Both the Lampi's sounded really good but what did catch me out at one point was when I was listening to a piece Biber Missa Bruxellensis. I thought it sounded extremely good through what I thought was the Lampi 4 but to my surprise it was coming from the analog section of the Meridan CDP. The lads were fiddling around with the Lampi Big7 at the time.
Still not so sure that there are night and day differences between DACs and if they are there they are small and subtle at best in most cases.

My own system: What I heard last night immediately brought me back to that first two evenings I had my Quad989s with the Devialet with that 'real' midrange and timbre that stands out with ESLs. Since then something has been lost in my system and I cant figure out what. Most certainly it's not a source or electricity issue, its either down to a problem in one of the Quads or the Jadis amp. I hope to shed more light on it this coming weekend.

Anyway, big thanks to Tony for the evening. Couldnt stay as long as I wished as I had a very early start this morning but very much worth the trip. Quite smitten with the 57s.

so theres little or no difference between meridian cdp, lampi l4 and l7
well that should make the trips to Cloneys much much cheaper :)

nige2000 wrote:so theres little or no difference between meridian cdp, lampi l4 and l7

just my honest opinion of what I heard on the night Nigel. But as I said, we werent level matched properly so not really a proper comparison. I was more focused on the qualities of the 57s rather than differences between the DACs. That was my main reason for going down. That said when the Lampi7 was in play it was really really good. The lampi4 was certainly no slouch though.

All very interesting! Given your recent comments and preferences, I'm not surprised at all that you enjoyed the Quads, Dave. Did you find them very different to the ones you own (issues there aside)? Did the evening make the path ahead any clearer?

DaveF wrote:

nige2000 wrote:so theres little or no difference between meridian cdp, lampi l4 and l7

just my honest opinion of what I heard on the night Nigel. But as I said, we werent level matched properly so not really a proper comparison. I was more focused on the qualities of the 57s rather than differences between the DACs. That was my main reason for going down. That said when the Lampi7 was in play it was really really good. The lampi4 was certainly no slouch though.

if you think the differences are subtle thats fare enough
its hardly worth arguing
maybe worth friendly debating though ;)

i have a little trouble understanding the perspective
most enthusiasts whether hifi or otherwise are looking for continuous betterment

if all competently made components pre speakers sound almost the same
what is the point of all the chopping and changing of components, experimentation etc if it doesn't matter so much

the extremest view would be instead of hearing 57's you would have heard the room and everything from the wall socket to the speaker terminals as well as the speakers
but i guess 57's would sound exactly the same in your house as they did in tonys

Diapason wrote: Did you find them very different to the ones you own (issues there aside)? Did the evening make the path ahead any clearer?

My Quad989s(at that start with the Dev) had very similar qualities to the 57s last night. Both of them gave me that wow reaction. I would give the 57s the edge in the midrange but the 989s gave a much larger scale and soundstage, partly to do with their height also.
The evening made it clear that Quads are definitely for me but Im not so clear on my next move. Assuming (and I might be wrong) that the 989s need a service, it might very well be cheaper to get a pair of 57s from One Thing. The 989s could be kept for another day.

Comparing dacs and CDP was not on the agenda last night(there is always an agenda!)
The Tom Waits track Martha was played at the start on the Meridian/L4 and a little later on CA with Lampi.
Later on it got replayed on the L7 with CA. My memory of it would be as you have heard Nigel.The L7 has deeper tone,richer but also more depth and detail. What the percentage is and is it worth the money or effort is for each to decide.

Dave has plenty to think about but as discussed last night there is a lot of basic investigation and steps he needs to complete on the Jadis/989's before going off in any new direction. The biggest issue for any ESL owner in Ireland and unfortuantely the larger the speaker the larger the cost can be is access to someone like OTA to just test or check the speakers.

Since you are on a Quad ESL check out journey I think you should contact Peterk. He has Quad 2805's I think with sub woofer in a huge room. Very different to 57's and imho 989's are completely different in presentation than 57's

If you want the Kharma treble at its worst first edition Audiosmile ST's will do the trick but maybe if you want more treble sparkle the Townshend ST's or Audiosmiles new ST offer enough adjustment to fill in that missing bit Dave. JAS ST's are often mentioned also.
It would be interesting also to see how Simon's Kharma's worked in my room.


Thanks to Pearse for popping over with the Big7 luckily I didn't cause any electrical shorts while drooling over it yet again.
We all know how vunerable Pearse is to burnt outs!

tony wrote:Comparing dacs and CDP was not on the agenda last night(there is always an agenda!)
The Tom Waits track Martha was played at the start on the Meridian/L4 and a little later on CA with Lampi.
Later on it got replayed on the L7 with CA. My memory of it would be as you have heard Nigel.The L7 has deeper tone,richer but also more depth and detail. What the percentage is and is it worth the money or effort is for each to decide.

what's worth the money/effort is definitely a personal preference
i would have thought it would be easy to differentiate between the transports after a few runs whether that was part of the agenda or not

servicing in ireland seems to be the esl achilles heel

nige2000 wrote:if all competently made components pre speakers sound almost the same
what is the point of all the chopping and changing of components, experimentation etc if it doesn't matter so much

I certainly wouldnt say ALL components pre speaker sound almost the same. SS amps will sound different than valves. SET valve amps differ from other valve amps in the way they interact and behave with the speaker. For me the and I think a lot of people?, the critical component is the speaker and room combo. Next comes the amp and what type of amp. The further you go back down the chain the less significant differences there are between components. When you come to this point in the chain my own belief is that it's critical to level match in comparisons as even a few dbs of difference can often lead to the illusion that something is better, worse or different. Just my view on things.

nige2000 wrote: the extremest view would be instead of hearing 57's you would have heard the room and everything from the wall socket to the speaker terminals as well as the speakers
but i guess 57's would sound exactly the same in your house as they did in tonys

When I speak of the 57s being the dominant factor in the sound I also include the room in that of course. No guarantee that placing Tony's complete system in my room would yield the same results. The sound immediately coming out of the speaker would be identical but by the time it reaches my ears at my listening position in my room it has already interacted with the room by bouncing off the carpet, walls, ceilings etc. That could make things better or worse.

tony wrote:Comparing dacs and CDP was not on the agenda last night(there is always an agenda!)
The Tom Waits track Martha was played at the start on the Meridian/L4 and a little later on CA with Lampi.
Later on it got replayed on the L7 with CA. My memory of it would be as you have heard Nigel.The L7 has deeper tone,richer but also more depth and detail. What the percentage is and is it worth the money or effort is for each to decide.

That track on the L7 was definitely at a higher volume than on the L4 which is probably the reason why I struggled to hear the difference. I'd really need more time. Back last summer I too thought I could hear differences between the L4, Meitner and Arcam CDP. But then I was fooled when I realised during one particular comparison I actually had the Arcam in instead of the Meitner. It was then that I went back and level matched far more carefully. I found it a lot more challenging then to pick apart the DACs. Differences were there but a lot lot smaller than I wanted them to be. :-(