This is a review and detailed measurements of the "The New Advent Loudspeaker" vintage speaker, circa 1977. The sample under test was kindly provided by our own @Dennis Murphy. He has looked it over and replaced a crossover capacitor to make sure it has the value it originally had. The woofer has been professionally reconed. Dennis can add more information here.
This speaker is in reasonably good shape seeing how it is made out of fragile particle board:
I didn't take a picture of the back side but there is a 3-way switch to adjust the high frequencies. Story is that this was to adjust for lack of uniformity of the recordings of the era and not to tune the speaker. I measured the difference as you will see later.
There is a site with a copy of the manual which I highly recommend to check out: https://www.theprojectasylum.com/el...adventspkrbrochure/adventspkrbrochurepg1.html
The manual is not just a manual. It is written as if it is an article for a hi-fi magazine! It is very boastful of its design approach without appearing too arrogant. There is also this bit of advertising about it:
As a woodworker, I detest particle board. It is horrible material and seemingly falls apart by just looking at it. Interesting that it didn't have this negative stigma then.
Fascinating that its max power rating was just 15 watts! I fed it a lot more than that.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of about 1%.
Reference axis was the tweeter center or as best I could determine through the grill. I think I was a bit to the right of the tweeter. The grill was left on.
I picked the middle position (red below) in the switch that is marked as "decrease" for high frequencies based on my setup measurements (and later confirmed by Dennis):
The New Advent Loudspeaker Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Bass response is deficient and we have good bit of variations but not as bad as I had expected. Near-field response shows a very slow response for the woofer in crossover region:
That then screws up some of the tweeter response.
I was pleasantly surprised how smooth the early reflections are:
This almost magically transforms the overall response to a flat one in-room:
Alas, we know that such a response subjectively sounds bright. Still, one wonders if this is an accident or by design.
Beamwidth shows lack of directivity control as the large woofer becomes directional before tweeter takes over with its wide response:
Vertical directivity is quite tricky. Stay at or below tweeter axis:
There are two minima in impedance graph:
Distortion was reasonable at 86 dBSPL but then went to hell at 96:
This is to be expected of the drivers of the era. The large woofer doesn't have to move much at lower amplitudes so does well. But when asked to moved, it can't do so with the precision of current drivers. Tweeter also falls apart.
The New Advent Loudspeaker Listening Tests
Oh gosh. I always start my listening tests with female vocals and these were unlistenable with the Advent pointed at me. The sound would be Ok and then one part of the vocal would hit a resonant peak (or something like it) and the sound would be so sharp as to attempt to go through you! I had to stop after a couple of tracks. Thinking older music may do better, I played a few Nina Simone tracks. They sounded terrible as well. Lack of bass is a major problem as it accentuates the highs so much.
As a quick experiment, I pointed the speaker straight out and this helped some but by then my mind was so corrupted that I stopped and started to type up this review.
Conclusions
I don't have a lot to offer you. The Advent is not as bad as I thought it would measure. Subjectively it is horrid in my quick l listening tests. Progress in speaker design is real and I am spoiled by that. I let you all discuss the rest.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
This speaker is in reasonably good shape seeing how it is made out of fragile particle board:
I didn't take a picture of the back side but there is a 3-way switch to adjust the high frequencies. Story is that this was to adjust for lack of uniformity of the recordings of the era and not to tune the speaker. I measured the difference as you will see later.
There is a site with a copy of the manual which I highly recommend to check out: https://www.theprojectasylum.com/el...adventspkrbrochure/adventspkrbrochurepg1.html
The manual is not just a manual. It is written as if it is an article for a hi-fi magazine! It is very boastful of its design approach without appearing too arrogant. There is also this bit of advertising about it:
As a woodworker, I detest particle board. It is horrible material and seemingly falls apart by just looking at it. Interesting that it didn't have this negative stigma then.
Fascinating that its max power rating was just 15 watts! I fed it a lot more than that.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of about 1%.
Reference axis was the tweeter center or as best I could determine through the grill. I think I was a bit to the right of the tweeter. The grill was left on.
I picked the middle position (red below) in the switch that is marked as "decrease" for high frequencies based on my setup measurements (and later confirmed by Dennis):
The New Advent Loudspeaker Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Bass response is deficient and we have good bit of variations but not as bad as I had expected. Near-field response shows a very slow response for the woofer in crossover region:
That then screws up some of the tweeter response.
I was pleasantly surprised how smooth the early reflections are:
This almost magically transforms the overall response to a flat one in-room:
Alas, we know that such a response subjectively sounds bright. Still, one wonders if this is an accident or by design.
Beamwidth shows lack of directivity control as the large woofer becomes directional before tweeter takes over with its wide response:
Vertical directivity is quite tricky. Stay at or below tweeter axis:
There are two minima in impedance graph:
Distortion was reasonable at 86 dBSPL but then went to hell at 96:
This is to be expected of the drivers of the era. The large woofer doesn't have to move much at lower amplitudes so does well. But when asked to moved, it can't do so with the precision of current drivers. Tweeter also falls apart.
The New Advent Loudspeaker Listening Tests
Oh gosh. I always start my listening tests with female vocals and these were unlistenable with the Advent pointed at me. The sound would be Ok and then one part of the vocal would hit a resonant peak (or something like it) and the sound would be so sharp as to attempt to go through you! I had to stop after a couple of tracks. Thinking older music may do better, I played a few Nina Simone tracks. They sounded terrible as well. Lack of bass is a major problem as it accentuates the highs so much.
As a quick experiment, I pointed the speaker straight out and this helped some but by then my mind was so corrupted that I stopped and started to type up this review.
Conclusions
I don't have a lot to offer you. The Advent is not as bad as I thought it would measure. Subjectively it is horrid in my quick l listening tests. Progress in speaker design is real and I am spoiled by that. I let you all discuss the rest.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
