ashley
Member
Quad announced a speaker line called Elegan and the framing is a revival of the old L series, aimed at what the coverage calls accessible hi-fi. No pricing, driver count or cabinet detail in anything I have read yet, so treat all of this as a reaction rather than an assessment.
Quad is one of those names that carries weight for reasons which have almost nothing to do with what you can walk into a shop and buy today. The electrostatics built the reputation, and they are magnificent at exactly one job and awkward at several others, including the job most of us here care about, which is filling a room with a film soundtrack at a level that does not make the panel unhappy. The L series was the sensible box alternative to all that, so if Elegan really is that idea again, it is a conventional cone speaker carrying a badge that costs something.
The question for anyone building a cinema rather than a stereo is timbre matching. A pair of nice bookshelves across the front is the easy part. Finding a centre from the same family that does not sound like a different brand when a voice pans across the screen is where these accessible lines usually come apart, because the centre is an afterthought or simply does not exist in the range. If Quad has only announced stereo pairs, that tells you who this was designed for.
Has anyone found real specs or a price? I would rather not build an opinion out of a launch headline, and accessible from a legacy British brand has historically meant anything from two hundred to two thousand a pair.
Quad is one of those names that carries weight for reasons which have almost nothing to do with what you can walk into a shop and buy today. The electrostatics built the reputation, and they are magnificent at exactly one job and awkward at several others, including the job most of us here care about, which is filling a room with a film soundtrack at a level that does not make the panel unhappy. The L series was the sensible box alternative to all that, so if Elegan really is that idea again, it is a conventional cone speaker carrying a badge that costs something.
The question for anyone building a cinema rather than a stereo is timbre matching. A pair of nice bookshelves across the front is the easy part. Finding a centre from the same family that does not sound like a different brand when a voice pans across the screen is where these accessible lines usually come apart, because the centre is an afterthought or simply does not exist in the range. If Quad has only announced stereo pairs, that tells you who this was designed for.
Has anyone found real specs or a price? I would rather not build an opinion out of a launch headline, and accessible from a legacy British brand has historically meant anything from two hundred to two thousand a pair.
