The world's best-sounding stereo system?

Gary Krakow Columnist • E-mail

This column has been more than two decades in the making.  Even though there have been times I wondered why I was carrying heavy boxes around the house, it’s been a labor of love.

After testing dozens of stereo components — some of which cost a small fortune — I think I’ve assembled, at least to my ears, a near-perfect sound system.

Twenty years ago, after fiddling with speakers of all sizes and shapes: little square boxes, lime green flat panels that were 6 feet high, 18 feet long — end-to-end — and 1 inch thick I realized I had not yet found the holy grail.

What I longed for was a pair of loudspeakers designed in the 1950’s by a small British company named QUAD. They were unconventional looking — something like steam radiator room heaters — and very temperamental when it came to associated equipment.

In the mid-80’s I bought a used pair of QUAD ESL-57s from a local shop which, at the time, specialized in used equipment.  For the record, ESL stands for electrostatic loudspeakers and 57 for the year they were introduced.

I owned those speakers for less than one day. After letting them warm up overnight (more about that part in a minute) I sat down to listen. It took less than a minute to determine that one speaker was dead. Not completely dead — but I knew that getting it back to normal would be a huge effort. Back they went.

The one good speaker was pretty amazing. Voices, instruments and everything else were perfect. Everything sounding real. That impression has stuck with me until this day.

Not sure why, but I didn’t actively look to purchase another pair. But I did keep my eye on classified ads and then eBay and Audiogon auctions over the years.

QUAD owner and hi-fi expert Ken Kessler wrote a piece for Britain's HIFI News magazine a few years ago asserting that the QUAD ESL-57’s were the greatest hi-fi component ever made. That caught people's attention and prices soared on online auction sites.

Even though I had acquired a number of early QUAD transistor amps and preamps from the early 1970’s I never bought a pair of the speakers. The QUAD gear remained in my closet in case I ever got a pair of ESL-57s.

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