ROTFLMAOooooooThat's what you live by. I live by prunes and ibuprofen.
Jim
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Old vs new speakers
- Thread starter Hart
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No doubt, it was that (clearity - revealing of inner detail) that made them a stand-out to me.
A trait they closely shared with my La Scala horns.
But where my horns suffered from poor linearity in FR, the beta's suffer from an inability to play loud or go Chernoble'd if driven too hard.
Only the guys with deep enough pockets to get the RS V's could have their cake and eat it too....
OK, let the flames begin. LOL
Sokel
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Aerial T10 was my first love,they were a true experience (and still are in some aspects).
But then I met with much bigger and nicer,so...
What differentiates old speakers vs new one is the amplification of the time they were around.
It wasn't easy at all to get 300-400-500 watts easy for music that requires as much,it required a serious investment.
So I'm not sure where their boundaries would be if todays cheap watts were available and the designers wouldn't have to compromise about it.
But then I met with much bigger and nicer,so...
What differentiates old speakers vs new one is the amplification of the time they were around.
It wasn't easy at all to get 300-400-500 watts easy for music that requires as much,it required a serious investment.
So I'm not sure where their boundaries would be if todays cheap watts were available and the designers wouldn't have to compromise about it.
Last edited:
Very true.
When Acoustic Suspension speakers became all the rage, they brought relatively flat FR and lower distortion bass to smaller sized speakers.
But no one told folks they had a sensitivity of around 80db and required a kilowatt to produce a sound louder than a mouse fart.
Thankfully we've come miles in new bass reflex and other higher efficiency design improvements for todays speakers.
Not to mention, tons of power is a non-issue today.
A few weeks ago I dragged my Vandersteen Quatros out of the closet where they've been for a few years (original cloth model; bought these well before the the wood or "carbon" models became available).
The basic design principles of these don't seem to have changed much from the 70s. In fact to this day in their promotional material, Vandersteen says that the most important measurements are: Impedance, step response, and waterfall. Always good to have a benign impedance curve, but the other two would seem to be irrelavent according to the Toole/Olive research.
Atkinson's measurements are kind of hard to interpret, but they don't look all that great either on or off axis:
These are 4-way speakers with first-order crossovers. So they have a ridiculously narrow vertical sweet spot. Get the vertical tilt wrong and they sound muffled (a common complaint about Vandersteens).
To add to the fussiness, they require an expensive 6 dB/octave @ 100 Hz high-pass filter box that goes before the amp. This filter box requires a 9V battery that's soldered in. The idea is that the built-in subwoofer amp "undoes" the highpass filter and this takes a load off the amp. Which is good because they have a sensitivity in the low 80 dBs. I do the highpass in the digital domain now.
However... if I set them up well away from side walls and in an 8 foot equilateral arrangement (you don't want to get much closer because of the first-order design) so that the reflected sound is minimized, they are quite satisfying. Part of this must be the built-in subwoofers which give much better integrated bass than I was able to get with a subwoofer and 2-way bookshelf speakers. Also, I think the midrange drivers must be very good. And maybe there's something to optimizing the step response at the listening position.
They also take much better to full-frequency room correction (with Acourate) than I would have assumed.
The basic design principles of these don't seem to have changed much from the 70s. In fact to this day in their promotional material, Vandersteen says that the most important measurements are: Impedance, step response, and waterfall. Always good to have a benign impedance curve, but the other two would seem to be irrelavent according to the Toole/Olive research.
Atkinson's measurements are kind of hard to interpret, but they don't look all that great either on or off axis:
These are 4-way speakers with first-order crossovers. So they have a ridiculously narrow vertical sweet spot. Get the vertical tilt wrong and they sound muffled (a common complaint about Vandersteens).
To add to the fussiness, they require an expensive 6 dB/octave @ 100 Hz high-pass filter box that goes before the amp. This filter box requires a 9V battery that's soldered in. The idea is that the built-in subwoofer amp "undoes" the highpass filter and this takes a load off the amp. Which is good because they have a sensitivity in the low 80 dBs. I do the highpass in the digital domain now.
However... if I set them up well away from side walls and in an 8 foot equilateral arrangement (you don't want to get much closer because of the first-order design) so that the reflected sound is minimized, they are quite satisfying. Part of this must be the built-in subwoofers which give much better integrated bass than I was able to get with a subwoofer and 2-way bookshelf speakers. Also, I think the midrange drivers must be very good. And maybe there's something to optimizing the step response at the listening position.
They also take much better to full-frequency room correction (with Acourate) than I would have assumed.
I recently pulled my home theater equipment out of storage and setup a 2-channel listening area from a subset fed by a freshly purchased streamer/DAC and Tidal subscription.
Currently loving the simplicity of streamer -> (2) Marantz MA-700 -> Vandersteen 2Ci's
In the process of learning REW and purchasing room treatments but I think it sounds great already.
As an aside (because I already have upgraditis) I found a local Revel dealer to audition the F208, they were steering me towards KEF but when I insisted and helped them hook the Revel's up and attempt to position them I was able to tell they sound fine but it will take more for me to replace my Vandersteens. Maybe a home trial period, not sure they allow that.
Anyway, glad to be back in the stereo listening hobby and love this site!
/Carl
Currently loving the simplicity of streamer -> (2) Marantz MA-700 -> Vandersteen 2Ci's
In the process of learning REW and purchasing room treatments but I think it sounds great already.
As an aside (because I already have upgraditis) I found a local Revel dealer to audition the F208, they were steering me towards KEF but when I insisted and helped them hook the Revel's up and attempt to position them I was able to tell they sound fine but it will take more for me to replace my Vandersteens. Maybe a home trial period, not sure they allow that.
Anyway, glad to be back in the stereo listening hobby and love this site!
/Carl
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Generally speaking, speakers have gotten better, but there are some older ones that are good.
www.soundstagenetwork.com
SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - Loudspeakers
Welcome to ASR, very glad to have you here Carl.
Mark Levinson HQD…
Caveat: Limited SPL due to fragile Quad 57’s
Caveat: Limited SPL due to fragile Quad 57’s
DSP and wave guides for better off axis FR! That's why I would buy the K&H O500C any day despite it being 20+ years old, or one of the older Genelec 3-ways.
Digital_Thor
Senior Member
Going to listen to an old pair of renovated AR9 soon. Data shows promising sound from these 1970' speakers - fingers crossed
They look fantastic!Going to listen to an old pair of renovated AR9 soon. Data shows promising sound from these 1970' speakers - fingers crossed
Here they are being measured back in a world before Klippel:
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