Modern speakers vs Vintage speakers

[Lagonda]

about 14sqm for hardware, LPs and tape

Yes, and you use the bathtub to wash your vinyl, you have gone to audiophile heaven, and you did not even have to die !

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

yes a 450L corner tub takes a lot of LPs and I can take a pee while they´re drying.....

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

and a record cleaning machine and a flattener and I´m all set

 

[the sound of Tao]

I'm listening to about as much electronic music as acoustic based music (classical ranging from chamber music to symphonic) and find that with a vintage based design combined with a few different (super) tweeters the whole breadth is covered.
What's important for electrnic is equally important for acoustic music IMHO, yet the snap of a tweeter vs the finest detail make a difference in presentation. When pushed I probably could live with the tweeter of choice for acoustic music.

There’s probably a range of things around trends factoring in as well… maybe the modern speaker trend to designing less efficient speakers with more drivers and more complex crossovers is less obviously problematic when rendering more electronic/electric based music… or just that those design factors could be more obvious when playing unamplified acoustic music… and though high efficiency and simpler crossovers isn’t exclusively a product of time but it does feed into when the prevalence of earlier less complex designs with a base of different materials technology then later moving towards increasingly complex and lower sensitivity designs integrating more synthetic and composite materials and designs working at pushing the boundaries out on new synthetic technologies and the gear working more often into frequency range extremes. The determination to add super tweeters and subs so that systems are more compelling or more obvious candidates for playing across more genres and more adept at being able to play both acoustic and electronic based music becomes more of a need.

Not that these are all mutually exclusive things but just trends from the earlier period of designs of simpler analogue, high efficiency, low power systems being fitting responses to a time also when recordings were dominantly acoustic music and that then as music expanded more into electric and the electronic the gear design responded with more complexity and higher power and perhaps as an outcome even different expectation of what bass and treble could/should be experienced as… music became bigger and more abstracted and more synthetic, trippier, less confined by natural contexts of scale and acoustic instrument performance context and so suiting systems that were sometimes more about being uncontained and over the top and about being larger than life rather than being more whole, more coherent and reflective of being more contained within the traditional scale of life.

 

[MarcelNL]

Could be, yet I tend to think that NO filters and wide range high efficiency speakers work best for electronic music too.

I've listened to f.e. Trentemoller live a few times, and at home. What I think is good electronic music is layered like classical music. ELectronic music frequency boundaries do not necessarily extend those for classical, I even think that electronic music does not extend to the low end since many bands are used to the limits of current speaker designs. (peak low end energy usually sits arounnf 70-80Hz).

My Trionor design delivers electronic music with authority and unravels the layering, heck my current 'get by for the moment' 8" Philips wideband units from the fifities do great unraveling the layering and details and perform as if they are backed by some seriously larger woofers.

Filtering messes up phase coherence as speaker enclosures do, IMHO its less is more and all that. Phase coherence and time alignment are required to recreate things in osund that belong together, like overtones happen at certain wavelentghs above and below the ground tone ripping those loose from their source makes for a tough job putting them back in the place where they belong.
IMO it's a.o. that what makes modern speakers compare poorly with real music

I rather play reverse judo with the frequency response curves of speaker units, making use of the strengths and avoid the weaknesses rather than manhandling difficulties into a straight jacket using higher order filters, that sort of idea ;-)

Creating ONE decent filter combo of a high pass and a low pass filter for a filtered two way can be difficult enough, adding another filter increases the difficulty of maintaining phase coherence to x^2, a four way to x^3 etc.
Too many speakers use filters that have been calculated for flat freq response (which is something the human brain will compensate for rapidly), and likely most experimentation was done adding dB/Octave, hence complexity and less phase coherence..

 

[hopkins]

Check out Real World Audio's latest video, which is relevant to this discussion:

I am not qualified to have an opinion on the technical aspects.

 

[gian60]

I agree with the conclusion, but based on my limited experience I would say that some vintage speakers offer more resolution than modern speakers and sound more dynamic (which is not the same as simply playing loud). Modern speakers have wider and flatter frequency response.

I was telling in general way,then some exceptions there are

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

most modern speakers makes me suffer

 

[DasguteOhr]

Could be, yet I tend to think that NO filters and wide range high efficiency speakers work best for electronic music too.

I've listened to f.e. Trentemoller live a few times, and at home. What I think is good electronic music is layered like classical music. ELectronic music frequency boundaries do not necessarily extend those for classical, I even think that electronic music does not extend to the low end since many bands are used to the limits of current speaker designs. (peak low end energy usually sits arounnf 70-80Hz).

My Trionor design delivers electronic music with authority and unravels the layering, heck my current 'get by for the moment' 8" Philips wideband units from the fifities do great unraveling the layering and details and perform as if they are backed by some seriously larger woofers.

Filtering messes up phase coherence as speaker enclosures do, IMHO its less is more and all that. Phase coherence and time alignment are required to recreate things in osund that belong together, like overtones happen at certain wavelentghs above and below the ground tone ripping those loose from their source makes for a tough job putting them back in the place where they belong.
IMO it's a.o. that what makes modern speakers compare poorly with real music

I rather play reverse judo with the frequency response curves of speaker units, making use of the strengths and avoid the weaknesses rather than manhandling difficulties into a straight jacket using higher order filters, that sort of idea ;-)

Creating ONE decent filter combo of a high pass and a low pass filter for a filtered two way can be difficult enough, adding another filter increases the difficulty of maintaining phase coherence to x^2, a four way to x^3 etc.
Too many speakers use filters that have been calculated for flat freq response (which is something the human brain will compensate for rapidly), and likely most experimentation was done adding dB/Octave, hence complexity and less phase coherence..

In Trentemøller you probably get the bare essentials down to 70hz, but what's fun is far below that. Then it becomes difficult with small power amplifiers, e.g. set amp. If you have an open baffle, it is better to activate the bass with a separate amplifier because it is control over the driver that is important, not the beauty of the sound. Amplifiers with a lot of power and not too high a damping factor are good. they don't make the bass sound too dry (unnatural the right word maybe) This creates a nice mix with a tube amplifier. And use the best side of set or tube amplifiers to enjoy the beautiful mids and highs without restricting the amplifier with high currents in the bass. sounds much better in my opinion.

 

[bonzo75]

most modern speakers makes me suffer

If those were the only choice I would leave the hobby, buy a small home theatre instead and listen to music as well on it

 

[morricab]

most modern speakers makes me suffer

Well, yours are technically "modern". I think what I find to be quite good sounding are modern speakers based loosely on old principles. Those that take what was great the old designs and tries to build on those strengths rather than throw out much of that valuable knowledge for the sake of WAF and space savings. it is clear that when powerful amps became affordable that people embraced smaller less efficient speakers that were more domestic friendly. The buying public was sold by the industry that it was better when in fact it was mostly just more convenient.

This lead to a general downsizing of speakers and removal of big horns, which generally mean smaller boxes, less efficient drivers, complex crossovers etc. It was believed that power smooths over everything and physics be damned. What was not appreciated then (and I think is still largely not today) is that thermal compression is a real killer to lifelike sound and low sensitivity speakers start to compress at surprisingly low SPL and dyanmics shifts are not accurately portrayed. More power doesn't solve this...the compression makes it irrelevant to a large extent.

However, there is a kind of reversal of this decades long trend as more and more modern high sensitivity designs are becoming available, as well as a plethora of pro drivers to choose from in making a good DIY high sensitivity system...if you have the knowledge to do so. One no longer has to have old Altec, JBL or WE to get a very lifelike performance and often with less of the coloration that plague a lot of vintage systems (horn resonances, cabinets, poor crossover parts etc.).

There are some large conventional speakers, like the Sigma MAAT speaker lineup, that combine more traditional design with high sensitivity and work well with the electronics which can bring the best sound potential. Likewise, brands like Aries Cerat, Odeon, Horning and others are using a mix of horn and high sensitivity conventional drivers to get very easy to drive and highly dynamic speakers without strong colorations. My Hornings are driven easily with a very nice 2A3 amp that I have currently, for example.

So there is conventional modern, which is moderate sensitivity cone/dome box designs but there is also "vintage" modern designs that embrace high sensitivity either with or without horns that IMO combine some of the best traits of conventional modern and true vintage.

 

[bonzo75]

Well, yours are technically "modern". I think what I find to be quite good sounding are modern speakers based loosely on old principles. Those that take what was great the old designs and tries to build on those strengths rather than throw out much of that valuable knowledge for the sake of WAF and space savings.

TAD and JBL are not modern drivers.

As a design, a Dual FLH is not modern, the WE mirrophonic started dual FLHs, which were reflected in RCA shearer, Altec 817, JBL 4550, etc. Leif's is a slightly different design of dual FLH for the horn structure, similar crossover levels to an 817 at 550, and uses 300b. Adding a sub is the only "modern" part, if at all.

Bionor is also dual FLH but unlike the above uses a lot of open baffle addition in the design, or biamping the woofers with a class D.

 

[bonzo75]

However, there is a kind of reversal of this decades long trend as more and more modern high sensitivity designs are becoming available, as well as a plethora of pro drivers to choose from in making a good DIY high sensitivity system...if you have the knowledge to do so. One no longer has to have old Altec, JBL or WE to get a very lifelike performance and often with less of the coloration that plague a lot of vintage systems (horn resonances, cabinets, poor crossover parts etc.).

Ok, false reporting, given your lack of experience with these.

There are some large conventional speakers, like the Sigma MAAT speaker lineup, that combine more traditional design with high sensitivity and work well with the electronics which can bring the best sound potential. Likewise, brands like Aries Cerat, Odeon, Horning and others are using a mix of horn and high sensitivity conventional drivers to get very easy to drive and highly dynamic speakers without strong colorations. My Hornings are driven easily with a very nice 2A3 amp that I have currently, for example.

Ah I see, agenda based reporting that finally comes down to your gear.

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

guess we need some popcorn again......

 

[MarcelNL]

I hate popcorn, may I bring some crisps?

 

[Robh3606]

TAD and JBL are not modern drivers.

Are you talking about the drivers or implementation. The basic 15" 2 way goes back to the Iconic. To say that drivers have not been modernized is simply not true.

Rob

 

[bonzo75]

Are you talking about the drivers or implementation. The basic 15" 2 way goes back to the Iconic. To say that drivers have not been modernized is simply not true.

Rob

There is a massive difference between modernized and modern. TAD 4003 is not a modern production by today's standards, it is by WE standards.

Brad's initial paras were just a segue to discount some great stuff to plug in his agenda.

 

[Robh3606]

Gear that is best at phenomenal synthetic music may also not always be equally good at rendering more intimate scales of more acoustic based music. Chasing bandwidth might bring its own challenges… certainly the audio gear measurements war brought with it plenty of casualties along the way. Maybe experiencing more synthetic sounds has changed our expectations about what sound should be sensationally.

What bandwidth are we chasing? It is still the same 20-20K with sub 20Hz for the organ aficionado. There should be no difference between playing Stravinsky's Firebird, Tchaikovsky's 1812. Holst the Planets as opposed to any modern synthetic block buster.

I don't think the move to improve has made speakers more in line with Synthetic music. If anything music itself has changed. Bandwidth use may have changed but not the bandwidth.

Rob

 

[Argonaut]

@bonzo75 … Ok , where do the following transducers fit into this topic scenario ? hORNS Universum MK4 , Cessaro Gamma II , AVG Trio III , Acapella Cellini ( Plasma tweeter ) , AER Pnoe , Tune Audio Anima , All Modern Transducers, in the main constructed from modern materials not utilised or available back in the Golden Age .

 

[Robh3606]

There is a massive difference between modernized and modern. TAD 4003 is not a modern production by today's standards, it is by WE standards.

Brad's initial paras were just a segue to discount some great stuff to plug in his agenda.

Hello bonzo75

Ok to say that the JBL Everest 2 doesn't use modern drivers is incorrect. The difference between modernization and using modern drivers is semantics. One is the process the other use of the modernized drivers. You are not addressing the new TAD coax drivers.

There are so many changes in JBL drivers since the original alnico drivers I couldn't possibly list them all. With the goal of lowered distortion levels and increased power handling and reducing power compression.

The drivers are night and day a late 50's alnico vs a dual differential drive neo.

Rob