Your personal best, Earth shattering speaker auditions that left you speechless

Every morning when I fire up my 805 D3's!

 

The Mark Levinson HQD system from the 1970s. It had stacked pairs of Quad ESL57 speakers for the mains, with Hartley subwoofers and Decca ribbon tweeters for the frequency extremes. Huge in size and soundstage, it could sound amazingly real.

Back in 1978, a stereo store I ran in Denver had the HQD system set up in our main store in Boulder. It was always something special to hear it play music. As powerful as a jet engine and as subtle as a falling feather, it did it all.

 

I went to the NY Audio Show, no idea what year but it was in the 80’s or 90’s and visited the Ortofon Room. No idea what they were showcasing but they were playing Papa Doo Run Run through a set of KEF 104/2’s. Just kicked ass. I walked out of there shaking my head at the power, authority and richness of tone they delivered.

 

Steely Dan through Ohm Walsh F’s opened my ears to the kind of clarity and openness a good hi-end speaker can deliver.

 

I am looking at buying my next set of towers, and every time I think I have a target in mind, a thread like this comes along and makes me think of 14 other candidates. LOL. My head hurts...

Good info, thanks for sharing...!

 

another Apogee experience , they were just amazing speakers..
maggie 3.5 are no slouch either

 

Sanders Model 10 everyday for 5 years now

 

For me, the most memorable audiotory moments have caught me off completely guard.

If I'm in the listening mode, I have certain expectations as to what I'm hearing. I've mixed and mastered, sat in on recording sessions and moved a few mics around.
I've listened to music in studios large & small...so I'd like to think I have a fairly good idea of how things can & should sound and I take into account the equipment being used.

But all my memorable "earth shattering speaker" experiences have happened outside the studio...because I wasn't expecting anything special.

Early 70's... I would visit the AR showroom on the mezzanine at Grand Central Terminal in NYC. I auditioned the AR3's (because that was all I could afford) and they sounded pretty good to me. I eventually bought them, but not before the salesman fired up some AR9's at a fat volume. WOW!

Early 80's... I was making a delivery to a place in Brooklyn, and as I walked into this loft space I heard music playing...sounding wonderful. There sat a pair of odd looking speakers. I was so impressed at the pristine sound and the way the music emanated not from them, but from around them. That loft was home to the Ohm company and the speakers I stumbled upon were Ohm F prototypes. Right place at the right time I guess.

Mid 80's... I had a friend who was addicted to hi-end audio. He would sell me gear at ridiculously discounted prices. I purchased a pair of Infinity RS III's & some thick MIT speaker cable from. I got them to my apartment and hooked them up. Sounded ok...but not that
good considering the size and price. My generous friend suggested I get ahold of a better amp than my little 60 watt B&K. So I went for a big Counterpoint hybrid and boy did that wake up those Infinity speakers.

But the most amazing sound that left me speechless had nothing to do with electronics or speakers. It was the Count Basie Orchestra playing outdoors in downtown New York. The power of that band was incredible. Talk about macro dynamics.

I realized that no rig could capture that sound...but I keep trying.

p.s. Sorry for the long post.

 

Canton speakers are very nice sounding.

 

It is amazing! Much more so than I ever thought until about 1012.

I had my first pair of Altec Lansing A7, VOTT's (Voice of the Theater) speakers custom built when I was sixteen years old.

My personal "earth shattering" experience was when I finished painting them, installed the wheels and hooked them up to my mighty 13-WPC Pioneer SA-500 integrated amplifier and played Mississippi Queen as loud as I could turn up the volume. My friend, picked the album and brought it over. He pointed some fine print on the back of the album cover that said, "This album was meant to be played loud".

We did, it was!

I later acquired another pair, the "W" model's, which were inside walnut cabinets for home use. They were the top of the line offering from Altec, for home use.

After that, I picked up a pair of Model 19's.

All of these I drove with SS amps. Tubes were long gone and the thing in those days was powerful SS amps. My largest back then was the Crown DC-300A, which was rated at 150-WPC into an 8-Ohm load

At some point I was out of audio for over 20-years, I was into HT, but exited that after a decade.

I have now, three pairs of A7's, One all original, one, with upgraded components and in custom walnut cabinets and the third pair are in my listening room right now. They are heavily customized.

My listening experiences with the A7's go back over forty years, all with solid state amps. Which was not bad, when recreating rock concerts in my living room.

Then, out of curiosity, more than anything else, I bid and won a pair of Rogue Audio, M-150 Monoblocks. They used KT-88 tubes and could run at 150-WPC in the ultralinear mode and 75-WPC in the triode mode.

The first time that I hooked them up to the system and played the VOTT's through them, I nearly fell out of my chair! I could not believe what tubes can bring to the party.

Since then, I have tried going back to sand amps with the A7's. I have tried a couple of class-D amps, like the Crown-XTi-2000 which I have in a portable 19" rack, a Peachtree Decco-65. I tried a couple of First Watt designs, the Aleph J and the M2 and an Emotiva XPA-2, which I use to run the front mains for the stereo and HT.

My ears are spoiled (they are also old!). They will just not accept SS amps on the A7's, period. I do use the sand amps, on the HT/Stereo side, with the towers and center channel speaker, and I'm perfectly fine with them. But now, I only use tubes with the A7, including the preamp and the phono-pre.

When you are dealing with highly efficient speakers, tubes are the answer.

I have been dealing with Sound Advice ever since they opened. They first started out in an original Arby's had gone out of business (and the building is still here, it is now a restaurant again called the Whole Enchilada). That restaurant is directly across the street from their main Fort Lauderdale Store.

F.Y.I., The Fort Lauderdale store just closed down, a few months back.

Do you still live in the area?

Though I doubt if any system will recreate the sound of sitting behind a drum kit, or in front of a Marshall stack, or have the bass authority of an Ampeg (although If I was going to attempt to recreate one of the three, I think that it would be the Ampeg, but it would take as few sizable commercial subs to do it.

But, as far as recreating the live sound of a rock concert, the A7's do that very well and would sound the same as a PA system at a rock concert, as listened to from an audience perspective.

Back, in the day, most every rock album was recorded in the studio. Their were not that many live albums that had any decent recording quality associated with them. Maybe some that were captured at places such as the Fillmore, which was an indoor venue, that was specifically built out for rock concert performances. Most of the other rock venues, were outdoors.

The two best "live" albums that I had in my modest collection, were The Who - Live At Leeds, and Stepenwolf - Live, which was a double album with a gateway cover.

My original record collection was long gone and since 2011, I have begun to rebuild it and also replace some of the albums which I owned with CD's.,I have both of these albums on CD's.

While I like them both, for different reasons, if I had to pick only one as being my favorite, it would be the Steppenwolf live album.

I recently learned that it had be released as a "audiophile" quality recording on vinyl. I purchased it and received it from Amazon, only a few days ago.

I put it on that night and it brought me back to memories when I used to blast it through the A7's during my teenage years. Only now, the recording was of better quality, with an absolute black background and my A7's are better, by several magnitudes and include JBL "Baby Cheeks" super tweeters, and a Yorkville US1-1 horn loaded, passive commercial sub, while nowhere the size of the huge Ampeg, it holds its own when it comes to sub base. It is powered bu a Crown XTi-2000 running in bridged mono mode, and can deliver 1,600-Watts RMS.

The UCS-1, can operate at a sustained SPL of 133-dB.

I drop the needle on "Monster" and I'm back at the live performance again, with John Kay at the mike.

 

SandAndGlass - back in the 70’s, the drummer in my band at the time purchased a pair Altec VOTT (A7 if I recall correctly) speakers for our PA system. They were finished in flat gray paint with large ‘The Voice Of The Theatre’ labels on each side. Large multicellular horn sitting on top. Everything about them screamed “BIG!” I don’t remember what amp we used to power them. I do remember the highs sounded so much better than what I was used to at the time (cone tweeters). After that the bands I were in always used JBL’s Cabaret speakers. At some point after that I picked up a Crown DC-300A Series II and we used that to power the JBL’s. Not sure why, but I never got rid of that amp. It’s still in my basement. I should hook it up and blast those JBL’s again!

 

Have you ever heard any Zu audio speakers? They have a reputation for sounding like live music.

 

KEF Reference 107 speakers, 30 years later they are still my favorite

 

I do not know about speechless, but a few of us thought vintage Wharfedale W70s were stunning. We listened on highly modified tube gear- Marantz model 8.

 

I brought these A7's in from the west coast, they are not like any pair of A7's on the planet. This picture was taken back in 2012, shortly after their arrival.

The color that you are thinking of is referred to as theater gray. This is where I placed them when I first brought them in, they have been in the same exact location ever since.



Custom crossovers by ALK engineering. The bass speakers are Emminance Kappa Pro's.



Here is the room today.



Another angle showing the added commercial sub and the front HT/stereo, system. There is a front system a rear system and the tube powered A7 system. They are all independent systems that operate of the same source. Any one can be playing or all three at the same time. The A7's tube amps are located behind the TV along with the 19" audio rack, with a couple of Crown's, one of which operates the sub.



A more southerly view. The preamps, the rear power amp are behind the tan sofa. The vintage Vinyl Nirvana Thorens TD-160 Super TT is sitting on top of a Klipsch La Scala, with the tube phono-pre, to the right of it.



This room is about 450 sq. ft. and we can really create some soundscapes in here.

Your band was quite fortunate to have real A7's for their PA. They used A7 cabinets for the vocal PA's at the Monterrey Pop Festival. Check out some images from the festival, and you will see them clearly.

The PA systems of most bands, were cobbled together and they sounded like they were cobbled together.

You will note the "The Voice of the Theater" labels on the sides of each cabinet. Though these cabinets can handle more power, the A7's back in the 70's were rated to handle 50-WPC RMS program material. But, keeping in mind that they are also rated at 103-dB efficiency, it did not take a large amplifier to run them really full out.

I still have the BIG Rogue tube amplifiers, but lately have been running them off of two different tube amplifiers, one is KT-88 based and can deliver 36-WPC, the other one is EL34 based and can deliver 35-WPC.

My smallest tube amplifier is a Decware single ended pentode design and has 6V6 output tubes and is rated at 3.9-WPS. While it won't be blowing anyone's doors off, it can power the A7's to a decent, room filling volume.

 

Avanti1960, you are correct, they are very efficient, dynamic, forward sounding speakers, which can be powered by either tube amplification or by SS.

And, yes, theycan sound like a live performance, but in that department, the A7's blows them completely out of the water!

But, the Zu's are a better fit for most home stereo's. Kind of like the next best things.

See the last two photos in my previous post. Those are the Omen Difinition's.

 

They are stunning and they still are stunning today.

I have three different pairs from that series. The Wharfedale, W60's, W70's and W90's.

The W90's are the top of the line. My W90's cabinets are polished high quality furniture pieces. They are like having two W70's in each cabinet.

Let's see if you can spot a pair of W70's in one of the above photos?

They still kick some serious butt. I have no issues at all with vintage speakers.

That is, as long as they are the right vintage speakers, that is.

 

Pair of Tannoy Westminster's, purity in the midrange, vocals and horns just sound real.

 

The Pioneer SA-500 is dear to me as it was my first amp. (actually the SA-500a) I currently have the older SA-500 version with my modified Celestion 3 speakers as near field monitors. (an awful speaker in stock form) I'm not surprised you were impressed initially by the little SA-500 powering the VOTT's. It is very tube-like sounding, and plays louder than its 13 watt rating. (Quality Toshiba output device 2SD-130, TO-3 case) When I upgraded to the 40wpc SA-7500 I noticed right off it sounded harder in the treble range, not as airy and musical as its little brother.

 

Indeed, I looked up the images, there they are... super-awesome! The Monterey Music festival was organized by Dunhill exec Lou Alder, John Phillips, and The Mamas and the Papas, first of its kind and a musical historic treasure.

Going back to the era, all of the bands in my local vicinity had the crappiest sounding PA systems. (and most still do) Even then, as I was not an audiophile (not yet) I was sound conscious. I had built in my school woodshop, a pair of mahogany hifi "column speakers" for our vocals. They were never used, and would not have been loud enough anyway with their 12 watt 6v6 RCA amp salvaged from a hifi set. These were traded for an EV-664 mic we desperately needed.. and sounded pretty good through a Deluxe Reverb. But anyway, we soon purchased a set of columns by Coral, 8 x 6 inch with a tweeter horn.. fantastic full range sound and great feedback control.

 

I later bought a 2nd used unit, that the dealer took in on trade, it was the 500A. I never knew what the differences were.

My SA-500 could do a maximum of 13-WPC, but only 8-WPC without distortion through the A7's. Those A7's had an Electro Voice SRO full range organ speaker in the Altec design 828 bass cabinet. I had the 511B horn, but used the 800-cycle driver and 800-cycle crossover.

This meant that that the bass horn was drawing more LF and mid-frequency power, with loud rock music playing (think J.C. Superstar), than the same bass cabinet that was crossed over at 500-cycles. So I could only pull around 8-WPC before distortion set in. I could run it all the way up to 13-Watts, if I turned the bass control, all the way down.

Our local audio store was called Hi-Fi Associates, their sign was a large rotating loudspeaker driver, on a pole, with a flat piece covering the mouth of the cone, with the name of the store written across it. They held a McIntosh clinic where McIntosh owner's could bring in their Mac gear. The factory technician would put the customer's amplifier on the test bench and using a piece of graph paper and a pencil, would manually plot a curve of the distortion. They would give this to the customer in a folder to take home with them.

They would allow other, non-Macintosh owners to bring in their gear, to have tested. This was around 1970, so most store customers had tube gear.

They tested the SA-500 for me. The plot showed low distortion levels up to 8-Watts, where it hit 1%. It went up sharply from there and maxed out at 13%.

I never owned a tube "audiophile" amplifier until 2012, some forty two years later, so as to tube sound, I plead ignorance in the 1st degree.

I will say, that for the most part, I never remember the A7's as being harsh, just honest. But, looking back, I'm "shure" that my Gerrard SL 95B turntable had about a $9.95 Audio Technica cartridge on it.

The new, Altec "Symbiotic" diaphragm's, in the 808-A HF (circa 1970's), drivers were tough, flexible and could handle more power than their previous designs, but at the expense of rolled off highs above the 10-kHz. region. The A7's in my listening room today, are the 908 HF drivers, which I believe use the same Symbiotic material's, and are also rolled of in the HF, to compensate for that, there are super-tweeters on the system.

When they sounded harsh, I simply turned down the volume until the harshness went away. Something that I still do today, for the same reasons.

I keep my system volume controls, close at hand and make continual real time adjustments.



I do understand that this is a difficult concept for the average audiophile to listen to. Most people would put on a record, set the volume control, sit down and listen to the record.

Look at things from a different perspective.

The record is mixed for the set it and forget it, listener. No problem with that. "Most" of their systems have speakers, which have average efficiencies that are designed to sound nice and polite, when playing back recordings.

When it is your objective to create the dynamics and the ambience of a live sound experience, things go completely different. Live sound is more dynamic and the type of highly efficient speakers which reproduce it are also more more dynamic in nature. The same record (source), can and will sound completely different, when played through through these two different ways.

On a more dynamic system the loud peaks are really loud and the soft parts are really softer. When you have some areas of a recording that are naturally "hot" by nature, they can become annoyingly "extra hot", by the time the music reaches your ears, in regions where your ears are more sensitive. Where, maybe a deep male voice, at a loud volume is not only not irritating to your ears, the sound becomes more full and powerful, when turned up.

A good example of this, is the overture from Jesus Christ Superstar. Some parts when played loud are powerful and dynamic, other parts will become shrill and harsh. Since I lack access to the original masters, not the final mixdown, but the original multi-track masters, I can't create my own even tempered mixdown, so my work around is to ride the volume control. I realize this method does not have the audiophile seal of endorsement, but it works and is an effective technique when trying to recreate live sound.

Let me take this one step further. Whether it is in a recording studio or in a live sound event, there is no case that I am aware of, where someone sets the sound levels before the beginning of the music, during a sound check, and then those levels are left entirely alone throughout the rest of the recording or live set.

In each case there is a recording engineer or a live sound engineer running a sound board, continuously adjusting the sound level mix, while the musician's and vocalist's are preforming.

Otherwise, the sound levels would have to be reduced, to the the "peaks" are not overly annoying. The obvious downside to this is that the rest of the sound mix becomes buried and you lose all of they dynamics.

@F1nut has an original SA-500, that he modded and he has the tuner.

 

Dunlavy IV towers, heard Abbey Road on them back in the 90s, the presentation was like no other and I’ve heard a lot of other speakers since.

 

Indeed I do, even has remote controlled volume. They are mated with modified Baby Advents and reside in the guest bedroom.

I agree, 8 wpc is it.

 

The last one I've heard: Living Voice Olympian horn speakers and Living Voice Elysian subs. Nothing comes... even the best from my favorite brand Wilson Audio. The Living Voice system is a bargain.... 800K. I will listen to Living Voice tommorrow again... High End in Munich, the biggest audio fair.

When I hear music on my Wilson Duette 2 again, I think I have a juke box in my living room

 

Have fun in Munich.

I have only ever been there once. I was working in Liechtenstein and staying in Feldkirk (in Austria) and drove up to Munchen on the autobahn (fun and delight).

I was unprepared for the scope of the scene at the MOC. Every audiophile should go at least one.