Most ridiculous speaker design ever?

[Superdad]

Now that you mention taste i wonder if it's a bass reflex design because unfortunately a rear view is missing. If so, I hope they got the port noise under control.

For those here old enough: This is the Portnoy's Complaint...

 

[Jukka]

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Multiple entry horns (MEH) are the pinnacle of horn design, but those are badly implement...

 

[iMickey503]

After the 7th post. I just don't have anything.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I'm stunned at the amount of weird speakers that you guys have pictures of. Most going against any reasonable speaker engineering, much closer to speaker art and forget about the sound. I have to say, I wonder if many of those designs were ever sold?

 

[JP]

 

[G|force]

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Source: https://chrisbuchner.com/portfolio/speaker-sculpture/

Who ever thought of it first and then created it first gets the prize. So obvious to all, yet so taboo to some. I would buy up to the 'upgrade' driver size, even if it means surgery. And that is your allowed one-a-day joke about female anatomies.

 

[DMill]

I’m always scratching my head why designers, of even major brands, feel compelled to literally think outside the box. Maybe in some bespoke designs there is a true practical advantage. But for the most part, the boxes we put in our room‘s are widely accepted after untold many years. Ask any interior designer and they will tell you they plan for traditional speakers in their client’s living space. Or perhaps hide them in the walls. Stick a pair of B&W Nautilus in 99% of living rooms and you are gonna look like a lottery winner on LSD with a seafood fetish to anyone visiting your home. But I do appreciate the fun of looking at these posts. tY.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

In a different sense of ridiculous the plasma speaker which was horribly inefficient and produced a harmful ion cloud in use.

I was thinking of the Hill Plasmatronics, which I'm sure was owned by Wendy O. Williams of Plasmatics fame.

Hill Plasmatronics Type 1 loudspeaker

Dr. Alan Hill, president of Plasmatronics Inc., was previously employed by the US Government in laser research. His assignment: To increase the efficiency of lasers so that they could do something more impressive than produce holograms, mend leaky retinal blood vessels, and punch pinholes in...

www.stereophile.com

 

[mhardy6647]

I was thinking of the Hill Plasmatronics, which I'm sure was owned by Wendy O. Williams of Plasmatics fame.

Hill Plasmatronics Type 1 loudspeaker

Dr. Alan Hill, president of Plasmatronics Inc., was previously employed by the US Government in laser research. His assignment: To increase the efficiency of lasers so that they could do something more impressive than produce holograms, mend leaky retinal blood vessels, and punch pinholes in...

www.stereophile.com

Good point re: W.O.W.

The Hill plasma speaker used a conventional woofer; not full-range plasma. On the plus side, he/they were smart enough to use helium for the plasma rather than air, so no pesky ozone problems.

 

[egellings]

I heard that speaker, and my impression was that the midrange driver simply could not keep up with the plasma tweeter at all. Either that, or the x-over was not done right.

 

[mhardy6647]

The VMPS 'towers' were, in general, pretty ridiculous, I'd suggest.

Rectilinear (among others) had a bit of a habit of sort of sprinkling drivers of various sizes kind of randomly across their loudspeaker baffles.

 

[600_OHM]

Actually, the most ridiculous was my own. Very young.

I couldn't afford JBL or Cerwin Vega. Nor could I afford pre-built RSL. I would pore over RSL's catalog and thought of doing it myself with their individual parts and cabinets. Still out of reach. (70's era obviously)

Solution: with a cabinet made of garage quality plywood, a 6x9 "full range" from Trac-Auto parts store. Horn tweeter from Radio Shack. Some random 2-way crossover. No wait - just an electrolytic cap across the tweeter. Bass-reflex of course - a hole-saw took care of that in the back! Placed with precision, and the toilet-paper tube cut to just the right length.

Carefully cut off the 6x9 inner cone and protrusion - cuz' you know I have my own tweeter to handle those duties.

I actually built BOTH for stereo, before demo'ing just the first one. Confident! Got my sister to give me a new pair of some sort of stocking material and stretched that thing tight!

The guys at RSL would be envious for sure seeing and hearing my handiwork. Um, not the case. Plugged them in, sat back like I was going to be the next Memorex guy, and total letdown.

Never built my own speakers again.

[Update] Memories coming back ... instead of wasting all that effort I removed the drivers and put them in the backyard. The birds LOVED the new groovy bird-houses I built! I'd hear them singing inside of them once in awhile, until the rain destroyed the plywood.

 

[egellings]

The VMPS looks a bit kabuki to me. Never heard one though, so I cannot comment on the sound.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

The VMPS 'towers' were, in general, pretty ridiculous, I'd suggest.

Rectilinear (among others) had a bit of a habit of sort of sprinkling drivers of various sizes kind of randomly across their loudspeaker baffles.

Those were the days............1960's and 1970's. Designers just didn't understand interference effects. I remember when Acoustic Research would publish graphs of the individual driver outputs with the crossovers in place, and match them up to produce an almost perfectly flat line. The actual response of the speaker was usually a mess. I owned a pair of KLH 5's for many years and actually liked them relative to the AR's of the day, but it had two midrange units next to each other that created some pretty horrrfic nulls in the upper midrange, lower treble. There was an upscale version of the 5 called the 12 that had a much larger cabinet and was out of my price range. I always assumed it would be a step up from the 5 but Stereophile recently republished a vintage review of the 12 with a picture of the driver complement, and look at where they placed the mids:

 

[thewas]

Those were the days............1960's and 1970's. Designers just didn't understand interference effects.

Many, but fortunately not all, there were even in those days some loudspeakers with good directivities, same as today there is still a scaringly lot of "high end" mess.

 

[DanielT]

Who ever thought of it first and then created it first gets the prize. So obvious to all, yet so taboo to some. I would buy up to the 'upgrade' driver size, even if it means surgery. And that is your allowed one-a-day joke about female anatomies.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/4mcnju


He he ..

 

[DJBonoBobo]

 

[mhardy6647]

Those were the days............1960's and 1970's. Designers just didn't understand interference effects. I remember when Acoustic Research would publish graphs of the individual driver outputs with the crossovers in place, and match them up to produce an almost perfectly flat line. The actual response of the speaker was usually a mess. I owned a pair of KLH 5's for many years and actually liked them relative to the AR's of the day, but it had two midrange units next to each other that created some pretty horrrfic nulls in the upper midrange, lower treble. There was an upscale version of the 5 called the 12 that had a much larger cabinet and was out of my price range. I always assumed it would be a step up from the 5 but Stereophile recently republished a vintage review of the 12 with a picture of the driver complement, and look at where they placed the mids:

Yeppers.
To date, I've never encountered a pair of the 12s, but I had a single 5 (dump find) and have spent some quality time with a pair of them.
I quite like them -- I don't recall any particularly egregious behavior from the twin MRs, but my listening was done from a single spot.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I owned and liked them for many years. But those adjacent mids did mess things up. It depended on the listening axis, but here's what you got on the tweeter axis:

I've modded the crossovers for two pairs to deal with the problem as much as possible. Here's an "after" shot from the same position. They sound great, but the mod is a lot of work.

 

[G|force]

Oh gosh VMPS at the 1998 THE show at San Tropez hotel Las Vegas, concurrent with CES. They were holding their own while maintaining SPL rules. Classic Audio Reproductions at that same venue and Hales loudspeakers with BAT amplification was very good. I still have my notes. Good times.