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We haven't come that far. ADS 400's, circa 1980. AMAZING sound.
These were my main speakers from say, 1981-85.
The LS3/5a's have a slightly better midrange but these are better 'all rounders'.
And still sound incredible all these years later.
I think these were $399 a pair back in the day.
"We are all in God's hands... and God is a malign thug."
-Mark Twain
Follow Ups:
My a/d/s 1230s date from 1983 and still sound great. If there's been any deterioration in the sound, I haven't noticed. They can still compete with some of today's finest in their price range ($1500 list in 1983, which would be how much in today's dollars? - $4000 maybe?).
And drove them with a Denon 60 watt/ch. receiver and they sounded damn good. I have always liked the ADS's from that period (1979-1982), the 710s were especially good speakers and priced very reasonably....
-RW-
Of course, 34 years ago we didn't have the motor technology found in the beastly midwoofers and subs of today :)
I had a pair of Braun LV-1020s and sold ADS in college. They had wonderful drivers, but their recessed front panels still created a bit of diffraction and boxiness.
I think the Polk LSi7s used in a bedroom system and HT would improve on the L400s weaknesses having a denser cabinet (weigh twice as much), no recessed baffle edges, and better crossover components.
As for vintage, I enjoy using thirty year old Acoustat 1+1s with modernized interfaces in the garage system. :)
When I dropped out of college I sold hifi, and the Braun triamps were heaven. Fortunately we had good repair techs, as we blew them up pretty often. (1970's + kids in a hifi shop + recreational chemicals = sudden silence.)
BTW, Sterling Sound kept a pair for mastering until just a few years ago.
Little L300's for the TV in the bedroom still make me smile.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
"1970's + kids in a hifi shop + recreational chemicals = sudden silence."
Thank you for that. Nothing more to say. Just thanks. :)
Kerry
Hi i wonder if some stripes of adesive foam around the domes could cure that
The german domes are unbelievable ... i have seen some mids with a huge magnet indeed
Kind regards,
bg
Ameliorate? Yes. I took a similar approach using felt with double New Advents. All you can do is absorb what should be radiated freely into space.
Hi and i understand and thanks for the advice
I have a friend with a remarkable collection of these dome drivers ... Grundig, Heco, Telefunken ... even Saba
They are very interesting and sound at least nice
Great units !
Kind regards,
bg
Even my friends in the audiophile biz mentioned how real they sound did have to add a modern tweeter. With most modern designed 2 ways using drivers with extreme frequency peaks that require steep filtration and tweeters covering a good deal of the frequency response you end up using a powerful amplifier with such designs and thermal compression is the result. Steep filters over small over worked. I still don't understand what folk hear in such but YMMV.
They want that big RCA sound, but in the size of a box of Pop-Tarts.(former Ubangi and Olson bin owner)
Note the super tweeter on piano wire in front of the HF horns.
Edits: 10/14/14
Sweet I have the top horns about in my piles.
I have been buying and trying lots of speakers over the last few years. Panel speakers, dynamic speakers, horn loaded speakers. I have a rough limit of ca. $2,000. for speaker purchases, so that leaves me in the 30-ish-year-old speaker category. I also bought only well regarded speakers that I was pretty confident I could sell at not too much of a loss if I wanted to.
Last spring, I went over budget ($2,400) for a pair of B&W Matrix 801 Series II which, I believe were mentioned by another contributor to this thread. They may be really old, but they are the best speakers I have heard to date with amazing inner detail, abundant, well controlled bass and smooth, clear highs.
There is a lot of good sound left in some of these old speakers, and you don't have to break your piggy bank to buy them,
Enjoy your music!
George
I bought a set of L300s in 1980 as I was getting divorced and needed a small set of speakers. I had wanted the L400s but they were not in stock. I have really enjoyed them over the years and though I have found newer that in some way bettered them, I have not found any that overall are as well balanced. Positioned right they totally disappear. Sadly, like most small speakers they are best used nearfield in smaller rooms or they sound strained. I do think it may be getting time to recover them considering their age and that the woofer to tweeter transition is not as integrated as it used to be. Still not bad at all but just not quite as good.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
Hi Brian,
If you had a big room, ADS has you covered with 1290's. They sounded very nice drive by a 350 watt Perreaux Amp.
Dave
d
For a long time, Telarc used ADS 1530 speakers to monitor their recordings. Must have been pretty good.
-Bob
BC8s driven by Threshold amplification. I had a pair of similar LV-1020s back in the 70s myself.
How do they compare to the Peachtree D5s?
-Bob
That's a tough call.
Similar.
I'll do some more listening.
"We are all in God's hands... and God is a malign thug."
-Mark Twain
have stood the test of time well.
I'm thinking about buying a nice pair of L400s right now, if fact.
Sure, I've heard recent loudspeakers that do most everything as well, some things better, but almost never the whole package that speakers from that era could do (on a relative dollar cost basis).
Given the appropriate electronics and listening room, I'd say you're going to have a hard time outshining any of the following loudspeakers overall:
Apogee Scintilla or Diva
Infinity IRS Beta
B&W 801 Matrix (or 802 Matrix with good sub integration)
Dunlavy SC4 or above.
PS Audio just used Infinity IRS Betas in their main room at RMAF.
That's pretty telling, and certainly very fascinating!
I've never heard the IRS V (or III for that matter), but heard the Beta on plenty of occasions. Must say, it could sound INCREDIBLE, ok, mediocre, or pitiful. Partly/mostly due to the amplification chain involved, but sometimes due to what seemed like poor quality control or matching with the big EMIM panels. I remember a Stereophile mention of that, and heard it myself at an audio salon in Orlando back in the day.
Have enormous respect for the design of the Beta. Still wonder why Infinity stuck with foam woofer surrounds though?
...that Arnie Nudell was there with the PSAudio people to help set them up :-)
It was a time when the lagest number of people were interested in great sound, so economies of scale prevailed.
Dave
I used Dunlavy SC IVs in my main system and 40 year old BIC Formula 6s for the tv until a couple of years ago. Those 6s still sounded great.
Certainly I've upgraded them since then (external passive crossovers, new EMIM diaphragms from Apogee Acoustics), but I haven't heard anything better yet!
Great pics guys!
I wouldn't give up my ADS 910's for anything (Well almost) I used them with PASS X250.5, Manley snappers and now in my Bedroom with a Nad 3140PE Integrated - A great 80's system.
Hi,going off topic here but I see you listen to those cable music channels. I have to jack my tv's volume all the way up before switching to external speaker.I have a cable from the back of the tv running to the aux input on my receiver. Otherwise there is an extremely low signal going to my audio receiver. Do you have that too?
Nice rig you have there.
Thanks, I'm going from the line out on the cable box, that controls the volume to my system. I then can raise or lower with my system too.
I only use the speakers on the Tv when I don't listen to music channels or big movies..
PS: I think the quality is pretty good coming out of the cable box..
And love them.
It just goes to show that if you start with a 12" inch sealed box and add even five and dime drivers (plus a somewhat complicated crossover), you have the makings of a speaker you can't go wrong with.
You can punch holes in it, do anything you want with it and perhaps improve the sound a bit, but the differences are always small.
These were the general mold of the speakers that hooked all of us years and years ago...no?
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
I wonder if you are hearing a simple difference between woofer sizes. What is the size of the woofer of the LS3/5A, 5"? If so, it appears to the eye from your pic that the bass driver in the ADS is about 8", which would be a world of difference in bass/mid-bass performance. That alone would likely make the ADS far more appealing, larger sounding, more relaxed. Typically when a person has been hearing a smaller bass driver for months/years, then switches to a speaker of any brand that has a larger bass driver, the reaction is much as you have stated, an initial "wow" that suggests it is holistically superior. Regardless of the quality of construction/crossover parts, etc, the initial reaction will likely favor the ADS if its woofer is much larger.
$400 34 years ago was a sizable sum of about an equivalent $1,150 today. I think that today one can get similar sound for a lot less, perhaps half the amount spent on those speakers back then. The point is that performance for the dollar has shot skyward, imo. Even the much discussed Insignia two way speakers from about two years ago, the ones with 6" concentric driver for $50/pair at the time - I still have a set, and gave one set to my son as a college knock around speaker - like the LS3/5A might outshine the ADS in midrange. So, for a fraction of the cost adjusted for inflation, excellent performance can be gotten cheaper than back then.
Another primary difference in sound quality is the prevalence today of bookshelf speakers with far more advanced tweeters. The tweeters today are increasingly ribbons, which are far more pristine than domes, if you want better resolution. So, if you were to remain in the soft/hard dome two-way sector, then, yes, things may not have changed all that much. But why? We have a lot more choice today, and I would suggest with a lot better sound quality for perhaps less than what was spent on the ADS speakers back then.
The greatest impediment to advancing an audiophile system is the audiophile.
resolution or full range. What is magical, and what no tech advance has improved, is a sweet, life-like midrange. Period. This is also true of the early Quads.
It's not hard to better the LS3/5a bass. It's closed box with a bas resonance around 75 Hz. If it wasn't for the around 1.1 making it sound bassier than that resonance would give it would sound like it had no bass at all. This isn't a criticism. The BBC solution is clever and works and it was mainly designed to monitor voice any way.
I'm gonna take this from memory -
The ADS L400 speakers had the typical ADS large frame woofer design, meaning that the woofers had a 7" frame, were spec'd 6.5" by ADS, but actually has 5" cones!
I heard them sometime in the mid 1980's and liked them, but decided to stay with the L710's that I purchased new from the dealer in 1979, even though I had moved to a smaller home where the 710's were a little large for the room.
I stayed with the 710's for several years (mostly for financial reasons) even though they weren't quite my "cup of tea". No reflection on anyone who owns (or owned) them and loves 'em, they were just a bit too "East Coast" for my taste, lacking the kind of punch and dynamics that I crave.
Cheers,
Al
Which is a problem for 2way speakers since ribbons tend to have substantially higher distortion below 5k or so than a good dome.
I am always amazed at how good my old 710's sound in the kitchen/family room area. Not as much detail/soundstage as my ProAc's, but a nice "full" sound that harkens back to analogue. A very nice listen.
Hi, mcondo,
the ADS L710's were my first pair of audiophile speakers and I thought they were amazing. Visitors would comment on how good they sounded; not bright or boomy like many speakers of the day. I eventually upgraded and they ended up sitting in my basement, all boxed up, ready to sell. But instead, I gave them to a young couple that were listening to a cheap pair of speakers and those L710's are once again playing great music. Their friends think those big bookshelf speakers are really "retro".
Regards,
Tom
A good deed, indeed. I also have a pair of L570's upstairs that work well with my HD TV/DVR'd music programs such as ACL, Crossroads, PBS specials, etc. $90 purchase off craigslist!
Nice.
Put some nice caps in the crossovers and enjoy for another 30 years.
I was a vegetarian for 15 minutes, until the main course.......Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
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