Todays Speakers vs Vintage Speakers

Blind tests don't necessarily give a good idea of what is better, only what is different between what's being compared. Something that sounds better initially, blind test or not, might not sound so good over time. I've found that to be true on many occasions.

As I understand it a blind test is not to determine which is better, but rather can you distinguish a difference which usually needs to proved statistically that there is a significant difference.
 
You've already gone OT.

The rider makes the biggest difference. Make a RCV213v-s look silly? Bwahahahaha.
Anyone left who has any inkling what a RCV213v-s is would understand how absurd a comparison you've drawn!
But we can blame Ramseybella for taking this OT! :beerchug:
 
I’m all in with vintage speakers (pre-1980) based on build quality alone. Not only are the home theater tower speakers ugly as all get out but they depend on a sub, are made of particle board and vinyl, and are laughably expensive. Speakers of the 90s too were essentially fat tower speakers that were again particle board and vinyl.

For a home HiFi setup the build quality and beauty of vintage speakers cannot be beat (except for maybe the legacy Klipsch series which are essentially newly manufactured vintage speakers). Vintage speakers are truly beautiful and can be implemented with your home’s decor. My HPM-100s are heavy thick walnut veneer. They have real grain. It’s wood. It’s thick wood. The drivers have gorgeous silver aluminum borders and again are heavy. Meanwhile B&W and Klipsch think yellow and copper are cool colors respectively (and expect you to agree and pay $2000+ a speaker that’s made of plastic).

For me, style matters. Build quality matters. History and character matter. Very few of us will ever achieve a setup and space that truly rivals a live performance so why compromise on asthetics and charm? (Side Note: live performance are amplified through speakers anyway and have horrible acoustics in every case except a classical music hall so what exactly are we even chasing? The altered and perfected recorded studio sound?) Music to me is a relationship. It’s an experience. Listening to American Beauty on vinyl on an PL-55x with my SX-3900 powering my HPM-100s only adds to the richness of that experience. Using a media streamer connected to a DAC and blah blah blah only detracts from the intimacy of it all.

While I can't argue with beauty because it's all about taste, there are several incorrect statements in your post. Let me start with the assertion that modern speakers are made of particle board. I'm currently listening to Infinity Primus 150 which certainly qualifies as a budget speaker. It is made of MDF as are most modern speakers and horror of horrors:eek: it doesn't use wood veneer. Instead it has a black vinyl veneer which looks reasonably close to the real thing. If a budget speaker like mine is made of MDF you can assume the more expensive ones are and they're all braced to a greater or lesser degree, something that didn't occur to most designers until the 80's.
 
There's something better out there?? :dunno:

LOL!!!
Go ahead blame me? :whip:
Just used it as an example especially when it come to motor vehicles.
Something better?
Don't want to get off the subject on what's better, we are talking speakers.:beatnik:
 
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Modern speakers (assuming we're talking about quality products and not the modern equivalent of boom boxes) definitely do not produce sound like vintage speakers. They will in almost all cases have flatter frequency response and be more "accurate."

Whether you will like the sound is a completely different question.
 
Don't want to get off the subject on what's better, we are talking speakers.:beatnik:
Despite the limitations of the Internet "conversations", I hope everyone realizes we're all tongue-in-cheek on this OT tangent! Magazine reviewers are paid to sell magazines. The truth is where you find it, which is very seldom in the words of those paid to be "experts". Listen and evaluate speakers with your ears, not your eyes.
 
Why is this fraudulent?
Should they decide the stuff sounds good based upon technical details and theory?

Based upon specs, my Magnavox 9302 amp should be on a shelf, if not in the garbage can. Low power, bandwidth limited, tubes with a finite life span, high THD and IM compared to anything you can buy at Best Buy today... the list goes on.

And yet, it's in my main system because it sounds good. Isn't that what we're doing here?

Your situation is different in that you are not trying to establish that you're an export and that Magnavox is the wonder of all amplifiers nor are you trying to influence people into buying it. You admit to its weaknesses and subjectively like it. That's OK with me and I have no issues with that at all. However, when a vendor claiming to be an SME set's up an experiment where the cables appear to magically amplify audio signals, then that is fraud. Cables conduct but they DO NOT AMPLIFY. There in lies the fraud. Its false advertising design to dupe the unknowing.
 
Your situation is different in that you are not trying to establish that you're an export and that Magnavox is the wonder of all amplifiers nor are you trying to influence people into buying it. You admit to its weaknesses and subjectively like it. That's OK with me and I have no issues with that at all. However, when a vendor claiming to be an SME set's up an experiment where the cables appear to magically amplify audio signals, then that is fraud. Cables conduct but they DO NOT AMPLIFY. There in lies the fraud. Its false advertising design to dupe the unknowing.

You completely changed the context of my comment here.

You stated that giving favorable subjective reviews to gear while ignoring technical flaws is fraudulent. I submit that it is not.
 
You completely changed the context of my comment here.

You stated that giving favorable subjective reviews to gear while ignoring technical flaws is fraudulent. I submit that it is not.

I said "Some Reviewers in magazines with a conscious walk a tight line between stating the truth and giving good reviews. One has to read between the lines and whats being omitted in the review to understand what's being said. There have been instances where products received bad reviews and the company pulled their advertising dollars out of the magazine. The magazines are there to survive and make money so there is definately a conflict of interest between advertising dollars and honest reviews. Then there some reviewers that are just down right fraudulent spewing their subjective opinions giving glowing reviews but somehow ignoring the technical details/theory behind the article reviewed."

You are the one that is changing context here by taking the one line of my paragraph out of context from the rest of the parargraph and even then managing to get that wrong. I maintain my point of view whether you agree or disagree. If reviewers spout on and on and on about the virtues of product X in order to keep advertising dollars into the magazine, then there is an inherent conflict of interest which is fraudulent.
 
I said "Some Reviewers in magazines with a conscious walk a tight line between stating the truth and giving good reviews. One has to read between the lines and whats being omitted in the review to understand what's being said. There have been instances where products received bad reviews and the company pulled their advertising dollars out of the magazine. The magazines are there to survive and make money so there is definately a conflict of interest between advertising dollars and honest reviews. Then there some reviewers that are just down right fraudulent spewing their subjective opinions giving glowing reviews but somehow ignoring the technical details/theory behind the article reviewed."

You are the one that is changing context here by taking the one line of my paragraph out of context from the rest of the parargraph and even then managing to get that wrong. I maintain my point of view whether you agree or disagree. If reviewers spout on and on and on about the virtues of product X in order to keep advertising dollars into the magazine, then there is an inherent conflict of interest which is fraudulent.

"If reviewers spout on and on and on about the virtues of product X in order to keep advertising dollars into the magazine, then there is an inherent conflict of interest which is fraudulent." On this we can agree. Of course this is making assumptions about the motivation of the reviewers who give positive subjective reviews to technically flawed product. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the stuff just sounds good, as crazy as that seems.

In my experience the 'subjective' press has been more useful in gear selection process than the ones based purely upon technical information, within the shallow pool of the high end that I play in.
 
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Despite the limitations of the Internet "conversations", I hope everyone realizes we're all tongue-in-cheek on this OT tangent! Magazine reviewers are paid to sell magazines. The truth is where you find it, which is very seldom in the words of those paid to be "experts". Listen and evaluate speakers with your ears, not your eyes.
I passed on that statement to avoid getting flamed.
But agree, what sounds great to one may sound like Poo to another.
We all have had friends who you didn't want to impose on the sound of their system being not good just out of manners.
But i have listened to some sad set ups and good, that someone else would think it was bad.
My friend visiting says my setup lacks bass, i don't like bottom dwelling bass i stay in the middle with it.
That's my taste on most music.
I have listened to some mind blowing systems but cost more than a house, not in this lifetime could i afford or would i consider the thought.
 
The original post essentially asked if today's speakers have made older speakers and their technology obsolete..

My answer is emphatically "No." ... not even close.

This board and other boards are full of people who are passionate about their gear. Among those folks who care about audio, better than half are actively seeking out older speakers, not selling them off to buy the latest, greatest, whizz bang .. The high end continues to be dominated by planar speakers (improved over the years, but old technology.)... Some old speakers have become absurdly expensive, but that reflects their desirability (and rarity) ..

I'm standing with the guy that said "There's only so many ways to move air in a room".. If it sounds good, buy it !!
 
Agreed there as well! :) Spec sheet says -3 dB I believe. I don't think they probably hit that either, in-room. Still, they are "full range" and to get that from a new speakers these days means $$$. All I know is I can't afford BRAND NEW speakers that can do what my KEF's can do. New-ish, sure, probably (if I stretch the budget). Vintage, yeah. Brand new, no, not a chance.

Lots of ways to get to audio nirvana, and I haven't heard even half of them yet, so take my opinion for what it cost ya.
OHM has a speaker in Beta testing for $3000 that go 20-20k+/- 3 dB where the top is a WALSH radiator with a wide dispersion tweeter and the bottom cabinet is a powered sub (I know only the OHM A &F's were true WALSH radiators ) their current offerings still image better and have a much wider sweet spot and sound stage than anything near their price.Thought it's worth mentioning HHR Exotics can repair the old A & F's and make vastly improved versions ,for a true 20-20khz the TLS-2 (OHM A) may once again be rated best speaker at any price and the TLS-1 is an updated F. Also all WALSH type speakers have proper time/phase coherence of all frequencies something only MUCH more expensive speakers do.
 
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The High End continues to be dominated by planar speakers? Really? What is that observation based upon - other than wishful thinking that is. Maggies - which I call Magoos - are all DOA - no life, highly colored, homogenize all signal to sound the same, no bass, and NO dynamics. The darn things cannot image - no matter how they are setup - a really cheap speaker that sounds really cheap.

Electrostatic speakers? Can be quite nice - but again they struggle with producing bass - unless one uses a hybrid approach such as Martin Logan - and while the BIG SOUND LABS can produce bass they darn things are as large as a barn door - and really visually are over powering. Hardly worth having - unless you live in a barn of a room. Then when you consider the rising impedance of a 'stat you have a situation that can end up with highly colored sound - as though the tweeter is at times dead - and at other times somewhat working. Good midrange, acceptable imaging, nice soundstage - but the rest? Missing in Action.

For the record - planar speakers don't dominate anything - they are niche product at best and their adherents are all zealots with very selective hearing.
 
The High End continues to be dominated by planar speakers?
Agree. Monkey coffins have always been more prevalent with either point or line source radiation.

The darn things cannot image - no matter how they are setup - a really cheap speaker that sounds really cheap.
Warren Gehl of Audio Research who evaluates every component before it leaves the factory would most likely disagree regarding the 20.7s.

Hardly worth having - unless you live in a barn of a room.
A well proportioned large bedroom works, too. I find their unique mix of transparency, coherency and realistic image size well worth having. Measured flat in room response to just below 30 hz is good enough for me. :)

Then when you consider the rising impedance of a 'stat you have a situation that can end up with highly colored sound - - as though the tweeter is at times dead
The impedance curves vary widely depending upon the design. What you describe regarding a rising impedance at the top is truly the case with later Quads, but not others. The Innersound hybrid's curve (now Sanders Sound) looks like the Six Flags Scream Machine with its huge 20x rise and fall at both extremes. Sound Lab's use of dual trannies exhibit a more progressive curve that varies by about 3x across eight octaves or so and likewise dips at the top. They work quite well with high powered tube amps.

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Maggies - which I call Magoos - are all DOA - no life, highly colored, homogenize all signal to sound the same, no bass, and NO dynamics. The darn things cannot image - no matter how they are setup - a really cheap speaker that sounds really cheap.
My most diplomatic reply would be that you hear much, much differently than I do.
Then when you consider the rising impedance of a 'stat you have a situation that can end up with highly colored sound - as though the tweeter is at times dead - and at other times somewhat working.
My 'stats have impedance that is lowest at high frequencies. I call the supposedly dead tweeter as a lack of gratuitous hash.
they are niche product at best and their adherents are all zealots with very selective hearing.
Prejudice is an unfortunate thing.
 
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