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The Mangers were very sharply toed and didn't seem fully capable of properly energizing this large of a space.



Being of the active sort, their rear baffle did afford a plethora of adjustments which all sat at zero to be bypassed.

The smaller -- and very attractive -- Klangwerks were on static display in the highlight exhibit of the show, the Quad Musikwiedergabe room. The active €9.400/pr Ella with its curved Corian baffle and two sidefiring 145mm woofers includes 30 and 40-watt amplification and features in one of our syndicated fairaudio.de reviews.

Confession time. I've heard various vintage and modern Quads at numerous shows and never quite grokked their mythical stature. Instead of glorifying midrange purity and microdynamic reflexes as I'd been promised, I got stuck on lack of macrodynamics and insufficient extension on either end. Silently thinking myself a barbarian, I nevertheless plowed along with my 6moons gig undeterred. My awakening came in Greifensee at the hands of one Manfred Stein.

The ESL 57QA (Quad Atelier) next to him isn't a classic refurb. It's a from-the-ground-up current production speaker with taller feet and a somewhat higher baffle to include all the transformer and network bits 'n' bobs along the lower edge. As Germany's official Quad importer, Herr Stein eventually had opportunity to acquire Walker's original diaphragm stretching machine. And that's how these new classic Quads are made - incidentally in a grill cover color of your choice, standard or high footers and various wood trim. The reborn 57 retails for €7.790/pr, the matching 63 for €9.490.

This speaker still isn't the friendliest load, dipping to a punishing 1 ohm somewhere between 8-12kHz. Yet the Quad 909 amp had no issues whatsoever.

Granted, despite the taller feet, I still had to hunker down on one of the low seaters to fully get into the zone of the panel dispersion. Granted, on my own CDs, I noted a bit of treble curtailing and not the manliest of descents down low. But, this sound communicated with a vengeance to be our flat-out favorite of the Schloss. I finally got the whole Quad allure loud and clear. Despite the (mild) objective limitations in outer extension, emotional projection power was superb and instrumental timbres had that rightness you can't describe but know instantaneously when it occurs. I was a barbarian no more. Our own Stephæn has coined the counter term techno peasant to describe his innate disinclination to get technical. That's a means to an end. Without happy end, who cares about the means? This is a lesson also to the engineering types who might produce good audio -- we're sure it measures well -- but who are clueless about how to set up their own gear to best effect (never mind play music you actually want to listen to). Multi tasking is a bitch.

Needless to say, our Quad fanatics in Germany's Gering also refurbish and sell vintage Quad electronics (and the Thorens TD124 at the hands of the Swiss Jürg Schopper who builds all the usual replacement parts from scratch). If you want new ESL 2805 or 2905 models from the current Chinese IAG production, they sell them too for €7.400 and €9.500 respectively. Asked which was better, his reborn vintage models or the new ones, Manfred Stein looked truly at a loss. "They're completely different animals, both with specific strengths and weaknesses." But I didn't have to ask which he fancies more. As for me, I've never heard a Quad sound like his 57QA. Ivette even loved its looks. If Herr Stein is amenable, I will get myself in line for a review pair. Not that he needs more writeups. He has plenty of customers who know what they want without 'expert' assurances. I'd love to hear one of these in my own four walls to finally calibrate my hearing to the gold standard of years gone by that still has a thing or two to teach all our newfangled speakers. Who woulda thunk that the road to Damascus led past shopping malls to a small Swiss lake village?