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RS 4.5 arrive to take on the QLS-1!

chef free

chef free

Super Member
A friend asked if he could store some RS 4.5's at my house for a while (i said yes of course).

This pair is in excellent physical condition; foam old but intact, all drivers functioning correctly, eight new emim diaphragms from Bob Douglas, fresh woofer foam, all six covers intact, wood well cared for, etc. Only the crossover doesn't work, keeps blowing fuses, I suspect power supply caps... I'm using a DBX 223 for now.

First impressions vs. QLS-1:

The sweet spot is huge, with much less phasing! It's not that "like wearing headphones" sound like the QLS but there's not the head-in-a-vice feeling of the tiny sweet spot either. "You are free to move about the cabin."

The twin Watkins in a smaller cabinet produce smoother bass than the QLS, all frequencies are more equal. Kick drums sound so realistic! They don't seem to have the extra emphasis on the last octave like the QLS.

Using an active crossover really effects the sound of these speakers, moving the crossover point up from 150 to 300Hz, gives more midbass to the Watkins but going too high, over 700Hz, takes away the illusion of height from the sound stage.

Emims match the sound of the emits! Vocals sound very realistic, from Cody Jinks to Patricia Barber.

That's after only two days. I'll let you know what happens...
 
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They look mighty familiar, Interesting. I can tell you from the streaks in the foam those used to be in my possession. Also after reading your post again. One other way I can tell is the shine around the woofer baskets. That’s wire wheel markings from when I cleaned the baskets to do the refoam and forgot to paint them. So I forget exactly, maybe 2019 they were done by me and should be good for quite some time.
 
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7.62 said:
They look mighty familiar, Interesting. I can tell you from the streaks in the foam those used to be in my possession. Also after reading your post again. One other way I can tell is the shine around the woofer baskets. That’s wire wheel markings from when I cleaned the baskets to do the refoam and forgot to paint them. So I forget exactly, maybe 2019 they were done by me and should be good for quite some time.
Click to expand...

Speakers numbers 7002754 and 5. One has the 100uf cap while the other has a 75 and 25 tied together. Both smell strongly of cigarettes. Got them from a guy in LA named Dan...
 
The QLS1 and Q2 were my main speakers till I got the 4.5s and they've been my main speaker since, if set up well, they can bring tears to your eyes, very life like on vocals and true to size as well, the RS1bs are not half the speaker they are.
 
Ahhh yes ! The infamous cigarette smoke !

The wife and I spent a few hours cleaning them and I really didn’t smoke that much around them.

I’d sure like to hear them again with those new diaphragm’s, a good stogie and 60m oxycodone, 30m of morphine ! They were pretty good ! But I always thought the 2.5 had way better bass in my side by side testing.

That smell is probably locked in the foam with the wife’s hairspray product I used to stop it from continued deterioration. Change that and they’ll probably freshen up. From Houston to North Las Vegas to L.A and now the Bay Area.

Love to read your reviews against the QLS’s when you get time. I think the 4.5 is far superior.
 
The RS 4.5 went to their new home today (I helped lug them upstairs!) so I feel like I should post some kind of review of my month with them.

The RS 4.5 was made to replace the QLS-1 and as a proof of concept of the emim midrange drivers. The 4.5 do have greater clarity in the upper mids, an almost metallic sound, great for strings whether guitar or violin. However the stock crossover rolls off the emims all the way down at 150Hz, at that frequency they sounded weak and strained, cello and Johnny Cash's voice were compromised. I used a DBX223 crossover to solve that as the original Infinity crossover pops fuses. Using a crossover point of 260 really smoothed things out.
The arrangement of the upper and lower emits and emims mounted at an angle gave almost as tall of a soundstage as the eight full line source emits in the QLS but not quite.
Bass was similarly impressive, very smooth down to 25 Hz. Bass response seemed less dependent on speaker location than the QLS too. The QLS bass is accentuated from 80-40Hz, not flat but more exciting than the sound of the 4.5s.
The overall presentation was large and stable; anywhere in the room! The dipole design seemed to fill the room with sound. The QLS have a sweet spot about a foot wide, four feet or less from the floor.
The speaker was balanced with the crossover settings at "flat", not like the fussy QLS.
The center image they gave was good and while much more stable, not nearly as convincing as the QLS, providing you are in the sweet spot. The QLS have an almost headphones-like quality to them.
Both speakers sound great with tubes!!! Which ever speaker had the tubes sounded best... That shows just how close in sound these two great speakers from Arnie really are.

I really don't know which I'd choose, I guess RS4.5 for listening with friends but QLS-1 if I'm alone; the sweet spot's only big enough for me...
 
But, like you said midbass seem to be an issue with both…QLS needs a better driver and placed a bit higher…and the RS relies too much on the emim…very interesting…
 
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