When to buy Phantoms?

[superstock]

Superstock, very curious to know how you would rate your phantoms against your ESLs? I'd expect them to be a fair bit louder, more interested in whether they can match in the aspects that the ESLs do very well.

They are very different animals and I would describe the the Quads unsurprisingly of having limited dynamics and scale, and switching from one system to the other takes a while to adjust. I do however still enjoy what the Quads have to offer but you need to choose your music carefully, when you play the right music they excel with vocals and the finer nuances of music. The flat panels and sound radiating pattern (both forward and backward) doesn't seem to be affected by the normal room interaction that I get with other point source (normal) speakers. 

The phantoms are polar opposites. I personally consider them as "very large speakers". They interact with my room like any large standard speaker and despite their small physical size sound spectacular, and I can play stuff on them that I wouldn't even dream of playing on the Quads.  I'm surprised by the depth of "good" bass and clarity and speed across the whole frequency range. 

I am starting to believe Deviates claims regarding their response, distortion and accuracy which is quite a relaxing proposition when playing some challenging content.


I'm a happy customer.