Vintage speakers, are new ones better than the old ones?

Me too!

 

BS. Every room's acoustic signature is different so what standard does a speaker manufacturer attempt to manufacturer too? Like I said, neutral means equal emphasis of frequencies applied across the audible spectrum and not compensate for room boundaries such as you suggest. Most people can't stomach neutral speakers. Just because you or I may prefer a speaker with rolled off highs in a particualr room does NOT make it neutral. Its been colored to roll off the highs so that we may enjoy them.

 

I'm not arguing personal preference. That would be pointless. What I'm argueing is the incorrect definition of the term neutral.

Recording engineers use monitors whose frequency response is as close to neutral as possible becaue they need to know the true source of the sound, not some colored rendition of it. They can then adjust the frequency emphasis/de-emphasis as needed to achieve the sound they are looking for.

Neutral is flat across the audio spectrum and not some emphasis/de-emphasis of frequencies.

 

It's lower than that. if I had to guess, by my own ears I'd say its around 2-7kHz that humans are most sensitive (peaking around 6kHz), not 5-10kHz.

 

A good article on human hearing...

http://www.dspguide.com/ch22/1.htm

and taken from this article...

The range of human hearing is generally considered to be 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but it is far more sensitive to sounds between 1 kHz and 4 kHz. For example, listeners can detect sounds as low as 0 dB SPL at 3 kHz, but require 40 dB SPL at 100 hertz (an amplitude increase of 100). Listeners can tell that two tones are different if their frequencies differ by more than about 0.3% at 3 kHz. This increases to 3% at 100 hertz. For comparison, adjacent keys on a piano differ by about 6% in frequency

 

I still use The Advent Loudspeaker to this day, every day. The only loudspeaker I ever bought twice. My current pair are the Utility variant and they date from 1973. Powered by a Sansui 4000 receiver. They still sound magnificent to this day and give pleasure.

 

Yes. 1-4 kHz covers the dip in the Fletcher Munson curve.

 

I suppose it depends upon what you are looking for in a speaker. If you want booming bass and ear burning treble then the Harbeths are not for you. If you listen to a lot of live acoustic music and enjoy tonal accuracy then you might find the Harbeths to be just your cup of tea. The Harbeths are monitors and their function is to tell you what exactly is on the recording for better or worse.

 

Bingo. I concur 100 percent.

 

I've heard enough "accurate" speakers myself and read more than enough reviews of them since the 80s to come to the same conclusion.

And......I've heard speakers that were tested & found to have a "drooping" high frequency response (along with the reviewer bemoaning the existance of it) but when I heard them in person found no evidence of dullness, too much warmth, whatever.

For some reason more and more manufacturers seem to be designing their speakers for accuracy but seemingly not bothering to check them in a room built/decorated like a typical living room. And before anyone jumps on that concept, I KNOW there is no such thing as a typical living room but I am 99.9% sure no one builds a living room with its interior walls covered completely in acoustic absorption foam like an anechoic chamber uses. But I *do* know of a lot of homes over the years with living rooms with hard floors, either wood or tile with only a small throw rug or no rug at all, with windows on 2 or 3 walls.....bare walls - talk about a reverb chamber! And unlike an anechoic chamber, this one will take all those reflected higher frequencies and drill them right into your ears.

I also see this a lot on certain DIY speaker forums, where someone proudly proclaims their project was completely designed using nothing but mathematical formulas and open-air testing but when a speaker fair comes along (or whatever such a gathering is called), I've seen more than a few people comment later how tinny, "sizzly" or overly-anayltical such speakers sounded. Even the designer agrees but they use terms like ultra-detailed or "revealing". And many of them almost never seem to use anything but audiophile recordings to exhibit their speakers, ignoring the fact that if you listen to rock or pop with all those genres' typical recording problems - especially an overabundance of treble and compression* - those speakers could sound even more unpleasant. Here's someone who shares that opinion.

This is why I lament the disappearance of level controls for tweeters and mids if equipped - that way you could help the speaker better match the room's acoustics (these controls appeared at pretty much all price points until the late 80s or so).

So in other words, ignore the effects of the end user's room - the LARGE effects - on a speaker's output at your peril.

* I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is another reason people, especially younger people listening to music with modern mastering, don't care to own a modern home stereo system

 

Very interesting post, but then, can you (or anybody) tell about some modern speakers that are not so revealing on the bright side... ? Because it is very difficult to find modern ones that don't have that problem.

 

One of the most popular mods people do with Klassic Klipsch is to provide a small autoformer for attenuation on the tweeters. That really helps even with the stock T-35 tweeter-maybe especially with them.

If a speaker is to "sound good" in any room inhabitable by humans it has to be either accidentally or purposefully deviant from neutral, or EQ has to be employed somewhere. That's a truth that is unpalatable to some.

 

+1 for Dynaco A25: lots out there and still cheap, no foam rot, replace the one capacitor crossover and fun sound that goes low for a small box, actually sounds good on a bookshelf on a wall (sealed enclosure).

 

Exactly!

 

Those are just painful to listen to for me. Even if you roll it off, it still sounds like crap. It isn't the HF extension as they don't even go very high, it's the outrageous HF level and mid peaks that push ice picks into your brain.
-Bill

 

The problem is not one of resolution nor of extension. Those are wonderful traits. It is of excessive energy at 1-5khz, overall distortion, and resonance in the audio band below 20khz. Some of the greatest sounding speakers have response out beyond 30khz. Some generally warmer sounding speakers that still have great accuracy are the better models from Tannoy and Dali, both of which have a smooth top end with plenty of warmth in the lower mids as well.
-Bill

 

Of all stereo equipment, speakers have had the most significant improvements over the years. I wouldn't buy a vintage speaker, unless I was a collector with money to burn.

Sonically, you can do much better with a good new speaker than pretty much anything vintage.

 

15 degrees off-axis here, but can someone tell me what the AR/Teledyne speakers (ex: AR8b, AR18b etc.) sound like? I see them on Craigslist occasionally, and they look nice. The 18b looks like it might be in the same camp as the Dynaco A-25 ...

 

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I prefer new speaker designs. Two of my favorites are the PSB Alpha B1 and Rega RS3. I have owned old and have very little interest in repeating the experience. I do have an old looking speaker on my vintage system. Cambridge Soundworks Model 6, Mine are of the Massachusetts variety.

 

Yeah, no idea why I said 6kHz. Today I would definitely say 3kHz is the most murderous. When that range is exaggerated even in the slightest, I can literally feel myself going deaf.