VOTT overkill at Blue Bottle Cafe in North Oakland

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SFBayArch

SFBayArch

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Stopped by the Blue Bottle Cafe in North Oakland across the street from Oakland Technical High School (Clint Eastwood's alma mater, among others) this am on my way to a Dr. Appt and noticed these behemoths over my head at the counter

08AF9D98-497E-4395-92FE-F55405481C69_zpswfvwg6ws.jpg


They sounded rather lousy playing some ambient chill music, probably from Pandora. I asked what was driving them, and the girl brought me to the cupboard on the right and opened the door to show me some vintage late 70s Luxman separates that included what looked like an M-4000 dual mono amp (couldn't read the model numbers)...

Nice gear, though it might not have been the optimal setup for this space and at that particular volume.

I certainly appreciated the vintage effort....
 
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Yeah man, good effort and looks really cool. Blue Bottle is soooo 2005 though. Heh.

xo, Biggles
 
I woulda put the horns on the bottom to be closer to listening height.

Wonder if they have the original horn drivers, and what they're using for crossovers? They could be losing the entire top end depending on the combination...

Looks cool though!
 
With all of that glass and hard floors, it must have reverberated like a huge shower stall!
 
SFBayArch said:
Stopped by the Blue Bottle Cafe in North Oakland across the street from Oakland Technical High School (Clint Eastwood's alma mater, among others) this am on my way to a Dr. Appt and noticed these behemoths over my head at the counter

08AF9D98-497E-4395-92FE-F55405481C69_zpswfvwg6ws.jpg


They sounded rather lousy playing some ambient chill music, probably from Pandora. I asked what was driving them, and the girl brought me to the cupboard on the right and opened the door to show me some vintage late 70s Luxman separates that included what looked like an M-4000 dual mono amp (couldn't read the model numbers)...

Nice gear, though it might not have been the optimal setup for this space and at that particular volume.

I certainly appreciated the vintage effort....
Click to expand...

VOTT's are assured a place of high honor in the history of loudspeakers. However, let's be real: they are among the worst sounding speakers ever to be called "hifi." And yes, I have heard them in the home systems of several of the well-known writers who promote them.... with just about every reasonable combination of power amp and front end imaginable. While they do a great job turning Watts into dB's, and over-emphasizing the 2KHz to 3KHz region so that speech intelligibility is very high, they are highly inaccurate and distorted, no matter how one coddles them with equalizers and triodes.

Is the Blue Bottle worth checking out?

-k
 
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ken kantor said:
VOTT's are assured a place of high honor in the history of loudspeakers. However, let's be real: they are among the worst sounding speakers ever to be called "hifi." And yes, I have heard them in the home systems of several of the well-known writers who promote them.... with just about every reasonable combination off power amp and front end imaginable. While they do a great job turning Watts into dB's and over-emphasizing the 2KHz to 3KHz region so that speech intelligibility is very high, they are highly inaccurate and distorted, no matter how one coddles them with equalizers and triodes.

Is the Blue Bottle worth checking out?

-k
Click to expand...


Worth checking out, definitely, if you fancy $18 for two drip coffees and two morning buns... :scratch2:
 
ken kantor said:
Is the Blue Bottle worth checking out?

-k
Click to expand...

I love Blue Bottle coffee, but as noted, the prices are pretty darn high

Forget the pastries, you can pay $12+ for a coffee there, and people line up outside the door to do so...

Coffee beans start @ almost $20/Lb. & go up.

Very good coffee, but the cost benefit ratio seems off to me..
 
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I think they should swap those VOTTs for a pair of these?

B1B2D568-2892-46CD-94C6-69BC8D71BF9C_zpszncshfzu.jpg



Improve the sound quality and help make the prices easier to swallow ;)
 
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VOTT sound great hooked up to a Kodak Pageant projector.

I sat in front of one for four years and watched some very good films and they always sounded as they should through the VOTT but I never thought I'd want them for HiFi duty.

Great for 16mm soundtrack reproduction though.

You don't want the Voice of The Theater you want the Voice of The Music Hall.

Enjoy

Eric
 
Ballylongford said:
I love Blue Bottle coffee, but as noted, the prices are pretty darn high

Forget the pastries, you can pay $12+ for a coffee there, and people line up outside the door to do so...

Coffee beans start @ almost $20/Lb. & go up.

Very good coffee, but the cost benefit ratio seems off to me..
Click to expand...

I'm not a coffee nut, so I'll just wait for now. Thanks...

-k
 
Altec Best said:
Looks like 311-90's with large format 288's on them... I'll take them ! :D
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805's AB.

Bring the image into a decent photo editor, and jack the contrast. 8 cells will pop at you plain as day. Plus, you can see the mounting straps in the original image.

.............. and yes, i'd much prefer 311-90's over any of the multicells.
 
Article here:

http://sprudge.com/sick-stereo-setups-sf-cafes.html

They're JBL ... wait ... say what?

During a recent tour of Blue Bottle’s roastery, I also spied these bad boys up above sitting in a corner. According to Mr. Freeman, they are a “late 1960s pair of JBL Voice of the Theatre speakers” that they are planning to hang from the ceiling of their new Morse Building location, “powered by an exquisite Luxman M-2000 amp and preamp from the late 1970s.”
Click to expand...

SF-Misc-1020020.jpg
 
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