Transitioning from Vintage to Modern (speakers)

Is this your setup? Awesome. Don't know what they are but when I see big 15" cones for the low end I know I'm likely looking at a full range speaker that'd I'd have to enjoy to some extent

 

Not mine. I've heard the ~1986 Polk SDA-SRS in person playing vinyl, but at an age when I was putting Kickers in trunks and less appreciative of finer things. Made Michael Jackson's Thriller sound great.

The bottom driver is a passive radiator, which functions similarly to a port, a tuned mass that is excited by the back-side pressure of the enclosure.

At 150lbs and over 5 feet tall, they are a bit larger than practical, that's the joke. Also awesomely excessive of that vintage is the Carver amazing loudspeaker:


The "A" speakers on my my receiver are thin towers, but with some bass capability:

 

Pioneer SX-980.

 

I am trying out a transition from modern back to vintage. I've been looking at some AR 4x and Dynaco 25 and 10's, and even a nice looking set of AR Connoisseur 19's (is mid-80's vintage???).

My room is kinda small 10x10, but there is a bookshelf with odd-sized books that absorbs some bass and keeps it from reflecting back, and a stairway to right that will allow some bass to escape. I currently use a pair of Peachtree D4 speakers with 4" woofer and 1" tweeter.

I think an 8" woofer may be too big for my room.

I decided to try a set of Dynaco 10's: at 8 ohm with 6.5" woofer and 1.5" tweeter they might perform better than Peachtree D4 at 6 ohm with 4" woofer and 1" tweeter. We'll see when I set it up next week.

Why? Seems it's hard to get good performing smallish modern speakers for listening to classical and jazz, and that vintage (at least the kind of vintage I was looking at) will provide a more musical experience.

 

It will be a challenge to get any speaker setup to perform in a small room. Have you thought about going the high quality headphones route?

 

I did yes. I'm enjoying some HiFiMan headphones. Listened to Miles Davis last night it was wonderful.

 

According to Pioneer SX-980 | Classic Receivers
I'd say the 80 watts is a solid rating. So you have roughly as much power as today's receivers. That thing looks cool, like what I'd see at the Arts District open house lofts (a lot of those folks are into vintage stuff, turtables, old cheap Panasonic speakers, cassettes. Retro cool but also CHEAP)

 

- What are those speakers by the way? They look like something a friend had-in his bedroom!!!

As for "nothing for the everyman" I dunno. I think that is exactly what ELAC is targeting, and Polk seems to have decent models. There's also NHT and others, plus newer brands that maybe we don't know very well (Fluance and others I see mentioned in threads). Yes, the middle is thin on the ground, that is simply becoming true across all kinds of categories of goods because it is hard to make money in the middle, therefore products become either inexpensive or crazy luxury.

Celestion I agree, what the heck happened to them?!? JBL, well, JBL in consumer has been nothing but a brand sticker for decades. To be fair to JBL, though, the kind of speakers they made that were considered great are just pretty much out of favor with the public now. Then again, like 1990s Advent, I consider their product planning to have been lowest-common-denominator unimaginative and ultimately brand killing. Failure to evolve for sure, to the point of going out of business and sold to Samsung, where my JBL buddy now works.

 

The 980 will make mincemeat out of just about any of today's receivers. Assuming it's been tested, bias and DC offset properly set, and it's operating on spec.

 

You recommend modern Polk, but don't recognize a Polk original? Shame!



Of course, they were all about marketing too... below "A skilled Polk quality assurance engineer checks every speaker"

Lab coats to protect against dangerous speaker spills...

Google "white van speaker scam" and it can be hard to tell the difference between the Polks you posted at first glance...

 

He's making sure they don't have a case of Wooferhhea.

 

A beast

 

Love those moments!

 

Dude that 980 has plenty of beef! And I mean dilithium crystals warp speed beef. Engage!

 

Sonic steamroller

 

LOL. I was looking to see if anybody had been talking about these speakers recently and I stumbled on this thread. I had to register just to reply... Because I figure most don't do this, but I have a pair in my bedroom.

(It's sublime)

Old pic but whatever..

 

Yes they are very pleasant listening speakers. I used to pine for these when I was in high school.

 

Thanks for the link!

 

I'd look for ugly speakers. KEF ref1 or 2 maybe. I saw a pair of b&w 802 matrix for 600 bucks with soundanchors recently. Maybe vandersteens - all of these could sound legitimatly good with proper amplification.

 

I'd like to hear a pair of these old Paradigm 7SEs. They look like a Canadian Spendor BC-1.

 

Hopefully a pair without mushed-in dust caps...

I don't have any idea how those hold up in the long term, but there are a good number of surround repair kits available online for them - and a speaker repaired with an aftermarket surround no longer has the original sound characteristics.

(because they remind me of Infinity's short run with transparent driver cones, like in the RS3000, which will all be looking like this these days)

 

They look to have a pretty standard surround design. If installed carefully, i would think a reform kit like this one would do them justice:

Paradigm Speaker Foam Edge Repair Replacement Kit, 8", FSK-8

 

Shirley, these Wharfedale Diamond 250 3-ways can move some air with 2 X 8" (7.9)on the low end. One does get 60 days with them, though return shipping would of course involve some money and hassle.

Wharfedale - Diamond 250 Tower Speakers | Shop Music Direct

 

I didn't remember that SDA model having a tweeter array shorter than the woofer array. It looks kinda odd. And I couldn't tell the scale-the speakers my friend had which I thought they might be (RTR?) had 25" woofers, no, that's not a misprint, 25"...ah, must be RTR Studio Master 2500 says the Internet, which since Al Gore invented it must always be true albeit sometimes inconvenient...

Who came first solving a problem (interaural crosstalk) that's not actually a problem at all? SDA, or the Carver Sonic Hologram? (which my brother loves, and I'm like "dude, as long as you realize it's like an effects box, and not anything accurate, enjoy!)

 

Not only do I agree, I concur. Klipsch Forte does old school better than almost anything, and they are so cheap on the used market. Forte I or Forte II. Another is the Chorus. I have a set of Forte Is that I quite like. I alternate between them and my ProAc Reference D2 speakers. They are a dichotomy, but I get bored easily.