 Stereophile described the speaker as having been designed for "serious-music (call that 'classical') listeners who play records more for musical enjoyment than for the sound". Quad launched the speaker in 1957, priced at £ 52, believing that an audio system should be able to extract everything of value that is on a recording, while de-emphasising the irritations of mediocre sound recordings. It consists of a minimalistic, slightly curved, flat panel. The "Quad Electrostatic Loudspeaker" or "ESL", as the designers intended to call it, is variously referred to as the Quad 57 and the Quad 55. Its descendants are still often simply referred to as Quad Electrostatic Loudspeaker as part of the legacy. Walker called the concept behind the ESL-63 FRED, being the acronym for "Full-Range Electrostatic Dipole".
