Vintage Speakers still rock

[c1ferrari]

Wow!

Based on looks alone, I'd say these old speakers still rock. I've not seen or heard of these before, they are cooooooooool.

B&W Bowers & Wilkins DM70
http://loudspeaker-repair-service.reromanus.net/refurbish_DM70.htm

Those ARE cool speakers Wonder how they sound!

 

[flez007]

I was very impressed with the Avalon Ascents driven by Rowland amps in the 90s. They are very transparent and open sounding though I have not heard the present models. For some reasons I miss my old JBL 112s and 4311s but when I asked myself the question if I want to own one again today, I would say no. In some ways, it's like an old girl friend. LOL

I just had the opp to re-listen a pair of JBL L300 at a friends place with new electronics (Gryphon and the like) - not bad at all!!! but yes... not as detailed, holographic and fast as my WLMs.

 

[LL21]

i think modern equipment/speakers have focused very heavily on technical improvements...detail, dynamic range, transient speed, power handling, and wider bandwidth...because ultimately it makes sense that improving technicals (all else being equal) should be a good path towards better sound. however, i think that along the way, some manufacturers/designers forgot that these speakers are playing music...not just sound...and lost their way. some speakers have wonderful specs and cannot play music. on the other hand, imho in certain cases, well designed speakers of any vintage...where the foremost goal of playing back music was faithfully maintained...means that even today such older speakers can still deliver a musically satisfying result. my first speakers was a demo pair of Celestion SL6si's...and despite all of their obvious shortcomings, i am confident if i heard them today, i would still find the music coming from them (not necessarily the sound) would be satisfying. (even if the sound coming from them would again have obvious shortcomings).

 

[mullard88]

In my experience, the vintage speakers that have become classics really have a lot of performance built into them. They are way ahead of their time such that even today, when you hook them up with very high end cables and today's high end amplifiers, they do not sound their age at all, and may even put some recent speakers to shame.

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

Let's not be overtaken by nostalgia.. It is true that some of these old speakers were and remain great and would give many modern speakers a run for their money. I can cite the Apogee (Diva, Grand, Scintiallas, etc) , Quad ( ESL 57, 63), Avalon (Ascent) .. Magnepan ( MGIII, MGII, SMG, Tympani) and there are others I forgot .. However as a whole modern speakers are truly and definitively better.. If there is an area in Audio where improvements have been real, consistent and dare I say, measurable, it is in speaker design (I would add digital conversion but we are talking about speakers here ) ...

 

[mep]

Frantz-I would like to see another thread started where we talk about how far we have or haven't come with preamps and power amps over the years. I get speakers and anything digital showing marked improvement.

 

[karma]

HI All,
Please, define "vintage" for us. I recently went through this exercise on Audio Karma and found huge variations from individual members. About the best agreement we could come up with was it meant "OLD". But then the meaning of old was in doubt.

I gave up attempting to get folks to agree to a common definition. I suspect the same thing is happening here. It is for this reason that I avoid these types of threads.

Sparky

 

[mep]

All right Sparky, I'll bite. Why does it even matter how old the gear is? With cars, vintage used to be defined as at least 25 years old. With digital audio, vintage could be defined as something that was made last week. Seriously, if you're that concerned with nailing down a definition (like it really matters in the grand scheme of things), then you could define gear to talk about based on the decade it was manufactured. 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, etc.

 

[karma]

HI mep.
I agree. We could do as you suggest. And which of these decades would you describe as "vintage"?

Or we could use my definition. Vintage would be all equipment after 1958, the start of the stereo era, to 1983, the start of the CD era. Would that be better? Meaning that more people would agree to that. I doubt it.

Understand, I'm not trying to be difficult. I am trying to come up with a common language so we can communicate. And, you are right. The future of the free world does not depend on this. But having a common language would be nice so I would not have to guess what others mean.

Hell, some are calling my circa 1991 ARC stuff vintage. I think you can see the problem.

Sparky

 

[karma]

HI All,
Below, I have included a copy of part of the thread on Audio Karma where I attempted to summarize all the comments and put them into a rational format. Well, it did not work.

HI All,
After sleeping on it and reading what you all have said, there seems some kind of consensus based upon the advent of CD. That would be 1983. So what if we marked the end of "Vintage" and the beginning of the "Modern" era as 1983?

I like the idea of using historical landmarks as pointers to an era because it tends to remove arbitrary personal opinions from the equation. CD certainly was one. Digital Audio may be the the biggest change of all though I think that the coming of stereo was bigger. But, no matter, that's just my arbitrary personal opinion.

Using CD as a marker has the advantage of having a lot of agreement. But is it accurate? Is it accurate enough? I think, yes.

To summarize: If we use the current set of definitions we get the following dates and time intervals:

Ancient:
Dates: 1877 to 1949
Interval: What? About 75 years? Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Others improved the idea quickly but Edison was the inventor. That would be the beginning of the "Ancient" era. We could also use the the invention of the triode amplifier tube by De Forrest. That is certainly a landmark. But I prefer Edison, the father of it all. My Parrot, Karma, votes for Edison and that's good enough for me.

Classic:
Dates: 1949 to 1959
Interval: 10 years?

Vintage:
Dates: 1959 to 1983
Interval: 25 years?

Modern:
Dates: 1983 to current
Interval: 28 years to current?

As Robinhawaii said, this set of definitions may not hold forever. Time does march on. But for the forseeable future maybe our timeline will work. Future folks on this forum may have to come up with additional adjectives to describe the total disappearance of physical media by downloads. This would be like modern art where they seem to keep running out descriptors like Dada, or Post Impressionism, etc. God, I hope not!! Modern art is in total disarray.

What do you think?

Sparky

 

[mep]

Sparky-Riddle me this: Why does it matter what adjective you call the gear as long as you know when it was made? Once you know when something was made, you can put it into whatever pigeon hole that makes your mind happy. You were having a hard time gaining concensus on the word vintange, and now you want add two other catagories. One thing we could probably agree on is that vintagae means something that is no longer in production. However, there is certainly gear that would be classified as vintage that is still in production. The Orotofon SPU would be one example. Some people would argue that all current production tube gear is vintage because it uses vacuum tubes. Ditto for LPs and turntables.

It's all much ado about nothing. Vintage means whatever you want it to mean.

 

[karma]

HI mep,
The problem is we don't always know when it is made. In fact, except for specialists, most don't know when it was made. Take the McIntosh MC275. When was it made? Which version? Which version of which version? And even that is not definitive. Some folks base their use of the word on how something looks. It's a total mess.

But, I'll accept your conclusion that it makes no difference. Not to you. But I'll remind you that having a commonly accepted vocabulary is the very basis for language and communications. So, it does make a difference.

Sparky

 

[FrantzM]

Sparky

I am not sure there is much of a debate in what can be labeled "Vintage" .. You know ... just like Porn .. You know it once you see it ...

 

[mep]

HI mep,
The problem is we don't always know when it is made. In fact, except for specialists, most don't know when it was made. Take the McIntosh MC275. When was it made?

The original MC275 hit the market in May of 1961 and they were kept in production until 1973. The reissue MC275 came out in 1993.

Which version? Which version of which version? And even that is not definitive. Some folks base their use of the word on how something looks. It's a total mess.

Now your asking a whole set of different questions that I don't see has anything to do with defining the word vintage.

But, I'll accept your conclusion that it makes no difference. Not to you. But I'll remind you that having a commonly accepted vocabulary is the very basis for language and communications. So, it does make a difference.

Sparky

I think your beyond splitting hairs here. We are into picking fly sh*t out of pepper. The word vintage is just a generic term used to describe *older* stereo gear. How old is old? How vintage is vintage? I still like my idea of dating gear by the decade it was built in for those that it matters to.

And by the way, I would classify your ARC SP-11 as vintage because depending on what version you own, it's between 24-26 years old. Ditto for your D-250. And if we have any doubts on how old a piece of gear is, we could always section one of the feet and count the annular rings.

 

[karma]

HI mep,
The discussion is not how old my stuff is. No question there. The question is where vintage starts. You are simply reinforcing the problem. What is vintage to you is not vintage for me. Ask any 50 people on this forum and you will get 50 different answers. Point made!! I'm not going to discuss this anymore because there is no good answer. Not yours, not mine.

Sparky

 

[JackD201]

25 years. It pretty much applies to everything.

 

[FrantzM]

25 years. It pretty much applies to everything.

Agreed ... and should not be equated with inferior either in my book. Apogee Diva for one would put to shame several modern-days speakers. SO would Krell Reference amplifers the KRS-200 or the orginal VTL-300 and 500 or ...the SP-11 for that matter or ...

 

[microstrip]

(...) Ancient:
Dates: 1877 to 1949
Interval: What? About 75 years? Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Others improved the idea quickly but Edison was the inventor. That would be the beginning of the "Ancient" era. We could also use the the invention of the triode amplifier tube by De Forrest. That is certainly a landmark. But I prefer Edison, the father of it all. My Parrot, Karma, votes for Edison and that's good enough for me.

Although I would also vote for Edison, I would like to remember that the earliest device for recording the sound , the phonoautograph was patented is 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Although at that time it was not possible to listen to the "recordings"recently scientists of LBL (Berkely, Carlifornia) developed some software that allowed us to listen to several of this recordings dating from before 1860.
You can listen to one of them at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Gi6j4w3DY

 

[karma]

HI micro,
I had not heard about that. Pretty interesting.

But all this shows, like James Burke demonstrated in his classic series Connections, the great ideas very rarely just pop into existance. Rather, it is a series of lesser discoveries that are built upon. Like you, I'll still vote for Edison. My parrot is adament about Edison and I hardly ever disagree with Karma the parrot.

Sparky

 

[JackD201]

Sparky

I am not sure there is much of a debate in what can be labeled "Vintage" .. You know ... just like Porn .. You know it once you see it ...

That would make the cut off1986. Definitely easy to tell. I will not elaborate as this site carries a PG-13 rating.