D E P A R T M E N T S

---

Bowled Over, Beethoven?
—Editorial by Keith Yates

Ask an audio expert worth his salt to look back over the past 20 years and pick the seminal pieces of audio hardware and most would have to grant that the Quad ESL-63 has been the certified, no-doubt-about-it Classic.

Released in 1981, the year I put out my own shingle, the original '63s still have the power to seduce music lovers as almost no other speakers can.

Long on subtlety and finesse—they positively sing when given chamber music, folk, and acoustic pop, jazz and blues—the Quads stumble when confronting the explosive dynamic range encoded in recent digital source material, and are "too civilized" to assay the driving bass of stadium-rock with anything more than a token effort. Audiophiles have spent 15 years combing dealer showrooms and audio magazines looking for a successor to the Quads. Despite the considerable attractions of the best of the contenders—various Avalons, B&Ws, Dunlavys, ProAcs, Revels and Wilsons come to mind—I usually can't suppress a big smile whenever I hear a pair of well set up Quads working in an acoustically flattering room. It's like coming home after an exciting but tiring road trip. For years I've been wondering when I'd hear a speaker that has the musical seductiveness of the Quads without their fussiness.

That speaker may well be the Audio Artistry Beethoven. A four-piece system designed by Siegfried Linkwitz, the Hewlett-Packard engineer of Linkwitz-Riley crossover fame and one of the patron saints of speaker designers worldwide, the Beethovens, like the Quads, are largely figure-8 radiators, i.e., they radiate sound pretty much equally in the front and back directions, with diminished radiation off to the sides. Unusually, even the subwoofers have a figure-8 or "dipolar" pattern which has the advantage of noticeably reducing the excitation of the listening environment's lateral axial mode. Put more plainly, the Beethoven subs don't drive the room into a muddy drone like other speakers do. Also like the Quads, the Beethoven panels are box-less, meaning there is no trapped sound behind the drivers struggling against a wood enclosure and the drivers themselves to break free.

I recently specified a pair of Beethovens for a dedicated listening room project in the Silicon Valley. According to the good Herr Dr. Linkwitz, the project is the first time a pair of Beethovens has gotten a purpose-built, comprehensively treated acoustic environment in which to spin its magic. While the room is not quite complete, our first listening session suggested that it's all there, alright—the seduction, the dynamics, the physicality.

While the Beethovens appear to be poised to assume the mantle of Reference speaker, it's anyone's guess whether they, or any other future speaker, will ever be able to match the Quad's nearly 20 year run at the top. But for now, the Beethovens remind me of the goosebumps I got when I first hung out my shingle and fired up the Quads in my little demo room ... and went slack-of-jaw in sheer amazement at the promise of what the future might hold. --Keith

---

New Columns & Articles by Keith


"Transparency in AudioVideo Design"
in Archi-Tech magazine

"Immersive Home Theater"
in Archi-Tech magazine
COMING SOON TO THE WEBSITE

"Home Theater Becomes a Stage"
in Archi-Tech magazine
COMING SOON TO THE WEBSITE

"Halcyon Days"
Keith's original, full-length version of the technical sidebar on a Washington DC media room, featured in the September 1999 issue of the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater

Keith Yates Design Group in the News

"The Architecture of Entertainment"
in Archi-Tech magazine

Terminology
New additions to our Glossary section:

"Cocktail party effect"
"Missing fundamental"
"Deep Entertainment(tm)"