The New Advent Loudspeaker Review (Vintage Speaker)

[Robin L]

ADS speaker always sounded great to my ears but I could never afford them back in the day. I recently lucked out and found a cheap set of ADS L400 bookshelf speakers (the miniature ones with metal grills) at GW. They are the best sounding bookshelves I've heard. I definitely would be interested in how any of those 'heyday' ADS speakers measure.

My a/d/s 400s in their current location. Not seen: a Sonance subwoofer. I don't know if these are the best bookshelf speakers I've heard, but these are very good by any reasonable standard. Don't expect much bass from these unless you've got a sub. These were intentionally designed with a steep rolloff in the bass to facilitate use with a sub:

 

[Dennis Murphy]

http://baselaudiolab.com/ADVENT_LA_XO.html

That article is mostly correct, although the tweeter cap value for the New Advent is listed as 13 uF, and it was 10 uF on my sample. Woofer Zobels were very rare on vintage speakers. There were usually no ground components--just a series inductor or no low pass filter at all. The crossovers for the AR3 and AR2ax were more complex, although not particularly successful. Back in the day interference effects between adjacent drivers were not considered audible, and if a manufacturer published measurements, they were for the individual drivers and not the system response. The problem was compounded by the haphazard placement of the drivers on the baffle, particularly for the AR 3-ways. Here's what the AR 3A's one-meter response looked like on the tweeter axis:

And here is the KLH 5 on the tweeter axis--the two adjacent midrange units are mucking things up:

 

[GWolfman]

Thanks.

 

[Jim - where is The Abyss]

I worked in HiFi from 73-76. On days I worked in the warehouse, when we got in a shipment of these it wore us down. We got them in about 200 - 250 at a time. Could not keep them in stock. I always liked them back then, but what the hell did I know! Double systems sounded pretty good when they had enough power. They were pretty decent for the price back then but I'm not surprised at these results. I would hope stuff is better all these years later.

Me, too, a few years later. I would put a double stack of these on either side of the sound room and crank the J. Geils live album through a NAD 3020/Bryston 4B. The wailing harmonica closed the deal and we sold tons of these Advents, although I did blow the occasional tweeter.

 

[Freeway]

This speaker is in reasonably good shape seeing how it is made out of fragile particle board:
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.

Particle board was a precursor to MDF. MDF probably wasn't readily available when this speaker was made. There are a whole lot of buildings with floor joist made of particle board. Still being used I believe, at least when I retired.
MDF is nasty stuff. Most lumber yards around here will not rip MDF for you. Wear a really good mask when working with it.

 

[Aperiodic]

I owned the six's as well--until I traded them in on a pair of KLH 5's. The Six's were way less bright than this sample of the NLA. I tried to score another tweeter to make sure this one wasn't out of spec, but couldn't find one. I do recall seeing a measurement of the tweeter someplace else, and it looked like mine. I'm sure the reconing job didn't do the bass response any good, and this speaker didn't go as low as I had recalled. But The Fs was 21 Hz, which is close to the original spec of 19 Hz.

Just to be clear, are we talking reconing or refoaming? Foam surrounds of that era routinely rotted out after ~7 years (the reason 5 years was the typical warranty?) but hasn't reconing always been unusual except in cases of damage?

One other thing, refoaming kits I've seen all seem to involve replacing the dust cap with a different size and composition one, and wouldn't this change the 'voicing', perhaps significantly?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Just to be clear, are we talking reconing or refoaming? Foam surrounds of that era routinely rotted out after ~7 years (the reason 5 years was the typical warranty?) but hasn't reconing always been unusual except in cases of damage?

One other thing, refoaming kits I've seen all seem to involve replacing the dust cap with a different size and composition one, and wouldn't this change the 'voicing', perhaps significantly?

Now I'm getting confused. My bad for the first mistake--I meant refoaming. But I'm not following why a refoaming kit would involve a change in the dust cap. Did you mean reconing?

 

[Labjr]

Refoaming seems simple but I bet it could quickly turn into a disaster.

 

[Remlab]

https://www.parts-express.com/speaker-components/Speaker-Surround-Refoam-Repair-Kits
Yes, they all appear to come with dust caps

 

[Robin L]

Refoaming seems simple but I bet it could quickly turn into a disaster.

You just need to be careful, patient and follow the instructions carefully. I've done it a number of times, it's not really all that hard to do.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

Would be amazing if you could get your hands on a pair of Yamaha NS1000(M) to measure.

Nah, I am sure Amir won't like them. Bass volume traded for bass precision. And frequency response is not adhering to harman's target, although one can alter sound closer to it in HF.
But overall, ns1000m can be ultrafast with details rivalling electrostatics.

 

[SKBubba]

Refoaming seems simple but I bet it could quickly turn into a disaster.

I can recommend this company:

https://www.ebay.com/str/nashvillespeakerrepairbygeoaliwil?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

 

[rdenney]

Dennis said he tried to make a lot more complex crossover for it but at the end, it didn't do any better.

I started to EQ the peaks and it made a decent difference but then thought no one who owns one of these would want to use EQ so stopped.

Wrong. I used a pair of Advent NLA's, and then two pairs driven by two amps, for quite a long time (45 years for the single pair), with EQ.

The cone breakup and distortion is not surprising. But that's why I used two pairs with two amps--that added 3 dB SPL without adding the distortion that would come from just increasing the voltage by 6 dB.

The weakness of these is in the tweeter. Kloss designed the tweeter to radiate effectively at lower frequencies so that he could get away with a two-way design to keep the price low. But a lot of water has gone under the tweeter bridge since that time. The Advent's predecessors mostly used paper-cone tweeters.

I'm surprised by the rolled-off response in the bass, however, making me wonder if the the foam surrounds were replaced correctly. Mine provided good in-room bass response. I measured mine with REW but the file has been lost and the one graphic I captured from it looked great--except for the 20 dB grid divisions on the graph (which will make any speaker looked great). But I do have this crapomatic RTA-app screen capture from my Advents made several years ago, which is reasonably well calibrated to the Apple internal iPhone mic:

(Edit: My speakers were up against the wall in their placement--high and horizontal on a shelf.)

At this low level of SPL (nominally 70 dB SPL unweighted), response was pretty good down into the 30's, playing pink noise.

But at 100 dB, they became uncomfortable and that's why I added the second pair.

All that said, I don't listen to female singers, and the use of female singers' voices to judge speakers is something I shake my head at. I do listen to brass instruments, and the Advents preserve the timbre of those instruments well--better than a lot of newer, more highly rated speakers.

But, except for a ring in the low range I have not yet addressed, the Revel F12's are really much, much better speakers, and were not much more expensive in real dollars compared to the Advents of old.

Remember that we were comparing these with Radio Shack speakers with those faux-walnut expanded-metal-look grills with diamond-shaped openings back in the day. These were the first experience many of us had with good sound.

Rick "thank you for doing the measurements" Denney

 

[fordiebianco]

Grunding RTV 700 receiver (10 W/ch on 4 ohm!)

I raise you my SABA HiFi Studio 9100

 

[m8o]

My opinion is every speaker in this era ( I was in my formative years in its era ) needed the help of a receiver's "loudness" button/switch in addition to bass+treble tone control boost. Not to make them flat but to sound pleasing.

My brother had this speaker. While I had the Infinity bookshelf w/an 8" woofer and EPIC, whoops, I mean EMIT tweeter. (I'm pretty sure the years I had that ribbon tweeter of one of the pair pointed at my right ear is one reason I have diminished high frequency hearing in my right ear.)

 

[Dennis Murphy]

You just need to be careful, patient and follow the instructions carefully. I've done it a number of times, it's not really all that hard to do.

The job appeared to be well done on the test Advents. I took a nearfield measurement of the woofer and it shows an F6 of around 36 Hz anechoic. This was taken with the crossover in place and the mic about 1/4" from the dust cap. There won't be any baffle step in a nearfield measurement, so what appears to be a small peak in the bass response is just the action of the small woofer inductor. The bass is getting rolled off slightly as you move up in frequency, and that looks like, but isn't, a bass peak.

 

[rdenney]

I had the Large Advents a couple of times, the Smaller Advent once. The original Advent had plenty of bass as I recall. I think some of Advent's brain trust left over time. The "New Advent" is from the late 1970s, the other, original Advents were from about a decade earlier. I also had the original AR 3 speakers, my first "serious" speakers. They went way down, but had a hole in the upper mid/treble range that filtered out surface noise at the expense of everything else. I recall that the Advents did similar things, no doubt for similar reasons. And yeah, stacked Advents did sound better.

Kloss had left Advent, but was still around when the NLA was designed. The change in design tried to increase treble response to account for better recordings and sources of the day, according to him. The NLA's were designed only about 5 or 6 years after the OLA's were first marketed.

Rick "who bought NLA's in 1977" Denney

 

[Robin L]

My opinion is every speaker in this era ( I was in my formative years in its era ) needed the help of a receiver's "loudness" button/switch in addition to bass+treble tone control boost. Not to make them flat but to sound pleasing.

My brother had this speaker. While I had the Infinity bookshelf w/an 8" woofer and EPIC tweeter. (I'm pretty sure the years I had that ribbon tweeter of one of the pair pointed at my right ear is one reason I have diminished high frequency hearing in my right ear.)

AR 3s didn't.

 

[Robin L]

Kloss had left Advent, but was still around when the NLA was designed. The change in design tried to increase treble response to account for better recordings and sources of the day, according to him. The NLA's were designed only about 5 or 6 years after the OLA's were first marketed.

Rick "who bought NLA's in 1977" Denney

Thanks, maybe I'll look at the 1976 and earlier audio magazines. I'm not sure my second pair of Advents were the originals, the treble of that pair was anodyne, one of the speakers least obnoxious features. The trouble with the Advents is the crossover. In fact, that problem was directly addressed with the Powered Advents with very good results, at least sonically. $1000 a pair for speakers was real money back in 1978, haven't seen powered Advents for decades, but the passive versions of the Large Advent are still floating around. The crossover problem is that there's too much crossing over of each driver and the two drivers predictably don't sound similar. So there's lots of confusion in the frequency range that coincides with female vocals. I was working on several projects involving women's and girls chorus. There were multiple systems to check out the sound of recordings, one happened to use a pair of Large, walnut veneered, Advents. It was obvious that there was confusion/blurring with female vocals with the Advents. Mind you, my default monitor was a pair of Stax Lambda Pro earspeakers. Maybe a little too revealing, albeit great for editing.

 

[rdenney]

That article is mostly correct, although the tweeter cap value for the New Advent is listed as 13 uF, and it was 10 uF on my sample. ...

Mine had 13 uF caps in the crossovers and that's what I used to replace them, though I had a stack a couple to attain that value. The resistors were for cutting the tweeter in the Normal and Decrease positions, as I recall. I always used the Decrease position, which was supposed to emulate the OLA's.

Rick "laughing at the notion of 'state-of-the-art factor'" Denney