Speakers from last century that you love

[Omar Cumming]

Polk Monitor 10 and 10a's, they still sound great, but they are quite large and wide.

Cheers

 

[MattHooper]

That said, there were some great 20th century home speakers. My first thought when we moved to a house with a separate formal living room was to add a pair of ESL-63s revamped by Sheldon Stokes, with commissioned OB bass modules.

Can you tell me, what are the OB bass modules?

When I had Quad ESL 63s I used the Gradient dipole subwoofers that had been designed specifically for the 63s. Still the best sub/stat blend I've heard.
(Though the gradients didn't really go that low in to real subwoofer territory, just extended the bass response some more, and took some of the load off the panels which purportedly made them work better too).

 

[jhaider]

Can you tell me, what are the OB bass modules?

I never got that far. I would’ve designed them had I been able to fit ESL-63s in the room in the first place. The Gradients are old and woofer motor linearity over long stroke is one area that has markedly improved.

The setup ended up being Revel Gem2’s on their pedestal stands against the front wall, with 5 subs integrated using Dirac Live Bass Control.

 

[CDMC]

IMF Reference Monitors, my brother in law had them, loved them, asked he let me know when he was going to sell them, then he just sold them for $400. Also loved the Snell D speakers from the mid 90s.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

I own or have owned all but the ESL-63

 

[Waxx]

I'd love to hear a pair of early 70's B&O Beovox 3800's again which I think were UK market only? 12" Goodmans bass driver and I think the midrange too, with Philips tweeter. Back then, the tweeter output was slightly exposed but bass and mids were very good indeed. Looks were clean and pure and with a recap and checks on driver adhesives and so on, I'm hoping they'd still have some validity.

Those were based on the Goodmans RB65, the same drivers (goodmans 12" and 5" and philips AD 0160/T8 dome tweeter), but in a different cabinet and with a different crossover. Goodmans moved away at that time from their longtime favorite Philips tweeters to Seas tweeters like in the Mezzo SL where they use the infamous H087 tweeter from Seas (also used in the Dynaco A25 and many others).

 

[OldHvyMec]

Very fun speakers.

 

[misureaudio]

Quad ESLs, Ohm F, Dahlquist dq10, B&W801, B&W DM70i, M&K Sat1 + VW1, EV interface A, KLH 1 + ABC, DCM Time Window, Apogee Duetta.

 

[Carlton80@0]

Still in love with my first love. The Apogee Scintilla.

 

[DSJR]

Still in love with my first love. The Apogee Scintilla.

Lucky you that you may have a room big enough. The pair I heard were all bass and little else (top Krell mono amps and two mono Krell preamps) as the room was far too small for them.

 

[Deleted member 58722]

mine…

 

[Burning Sounds]

Magneplanar MG2.5R from 1988. The original MDF frames were cracked so I had oak frames built. They are active and supplemented at the bottom end with my Linkwitz LX521 bass units. I'm not sure if there any other speakers being made today that have a true ribbon that has a x-over point of 1kHz. If I want a relaxing but grand scale listen to female jazz vocals these are outstanding.

 

[Carlton80@0]

Lucky you that you may have a room big enough. The pair I heard were all bass and little else (top Krell mono amps and two mono Krell preamps) as the room was far too small for them.

Big speakers in a small room equals Sonic Nightmare!

 

[SIY]

Nowhere to store them either.

My house. Problem solved. Now get them.

 

[DSJR]

Big speakers in a small room equals Sonic Nightmare!

It doesn't always, but experience tells me it depends on the loading or 'damping' of the bass drivers. Huge ribbon bass drovers flapping around isn't a good move andneither is excessively porty boxes and un-damped drivers relying too much on the ports to bolster or peak up the bass rather than control the bass driver fundamental resonance (I'm not skilled enough to explain properly, but hope you get the drift). Not for this thread really, but I think I'd rather have a slight bass excess and tone it down, rather than a smaller squeaker eq'd to high heaven to give some kind of 'woof' lower down, said 'woof' being distortion.

 

[MattHooper]

Big speakers in a small room equals Sonic Nightmare!

Depends. My room is 13’ x 15’ and I’ve had a variety of floor standing speakers, some pretty large and going down to 25Hz, and I usually have sonic bliss

 

[fpitas]

Big speakers in a small room equals Sonic Nightmare!

That's one reason I went to MTM, to settle down the vertical image. It worked.

 

[kemmler3D]

there have been no groundbreaking advances in speaker design.

I would argue that DSP-corrected actives are somewhat groundbreaking, and were rare at best in the 90s. There was no such thing as a speaker with onboard FIR until somewhat recently.

You might argue that Purifi's surrounds are groundbreaking in how they reduce certain kinds of distortion, but that might not be big enough to call it "groundbreaking".

 

[fpitas]

Not sure that MTM and vertical line arrays are ground-breaking, but they are certainly a 21st century thing.

 

[Waxx]

The evolution in speaker design the last 50 years was minimal, mainly fintuning of old principles, and the invention of dsp processing. But on transducers and cabinet design, everything of the basic principles was already known in the 1970's or even long before. DSP, altough already a few decades arround, is only now recently getting on a level where it should be that it's totally sonic transparent, even in the (scientificly) most high end setups.

But on the speakers themselves, even Transmission Line speakers (for most but the insiders a novelty) were already made altough the math behind it was still not clear untill the 21st century. The first generation, the labirinth speaker was made and patented in 1934 by acoustic engineer Benjamin Olney. At that time it was more a deliberated guess how to design it. Martin J. King and George Augspurger made the mathematical model independently of each other arround 2000. All modern design software is based on that model, but before that, it was guesswork and trial and error. Tapped horns, transflex designs and some other newer designs are all based on that principle and mathematical model of "quarter wave resonators" like they called it.