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Having recently run some experiments with these budget 5.1 home theater audio systems typically with 5 cube speakers and a subwoofer featuring a 5 1/4- 6 inch driver, the thought occurred to me that while many vintage buffs tend to dump them all in the category of unlistenable garbage, could it be that...
1. every one of these systems is quite different?
2. Some as serious designs are far more successful than others?
3. Price may or may not not have that much to do with sound quality ie a $400 setup from manufacturer A may sound better, the same or worse than a $100 system from manufacturer B ?
4. These may vary as much as, say there are differences in various vintage budget speaker systems from the builders in the 60s and 70s?
5. Lets say the year is 1969, say late 1969. I have saved some money for two speakers, $140. I could buy a. a pair of small Advents, or b. Something for $69 from Allied Radio. Lets see that would get me the 2330 AK in thew 1970 Allied catalog ($59 as a kit, $79 assembled) One of Allied's famous Utah clones with the 12-inch cloth-roll woofer, 8-inch cone mid and 3 1/2 inch cone tweeter, all in a quite large ported box, at least in comparison with the small Advent for the same money or about the same.
Suppose then that it's late 1969. Which of these options would you choose for a similar budget? For starters the Allied/Utah system is going to be a LOT more efficient. I'm not sure where I would come out on the low end response as the small Advent is going to do pretty well in that department. The 4-ohm Advent is going to present a more difficult load in the easy to drive dept. Those big 12-inch cloth-roll Utah woofers aren't slouches in terms of deep bass either. But the Advent is gettiong all the magazine buzz as its a brand new design from an even-then well-known guy. Utah/Allied designers in contrast are namelass.
We would not have concluded, even in 1969, that despite the near identical cost, these options were not in any way similar speakers. About the only thing the two options share is that they are both boxes with drivers inside.
OK now fast forward to 2007, and the various stores have all sorts of "home theaters in a box" at various price points, $100, $200, $300, $400 up to maybe $800 if I want my unit to say "Bose"
All of these units contain some sort of 5 channel amp often with a built-in DVD/CD player and increasingly even an AM-FM tuner. Claimed advertized "total" wattages range from 150 watts up to several hundred. It's never quite clear whether this number includes or excludes the wattage of the subwoofer amp, typically alone 50 to even 100 watts, tho it might be possible to sort this out from the detailed specs. This reminds me of amp advertizing in the 70s prior to the FTC rules when we dealt with peak power, and IHF power which was higher than continuous (RMS) power. THen again, if the bass is largely handled by the woofer, is that much wattage really needed to drive a single drive in 4-inch cube only above 250 Hz or so?
AND these come in various "brands"
Some I saw in my digging included a unit with most of these features at Wal Mart for $59 under the no-name "Durabrand" label,
$100 (Best Buy "house" brand "Insignia)
$100 (Wal Mart branded "RCA")
plus units in the $159 to $400 price range with familiar and not so familiar brand names from Pioneer, Sony, LG (that's actually GoldStar, guys), Phillips
and of course at the top price point a Bose setup, or various Bose setups.
More money seems to buy a slightly larger subwoofer, physically at least and a little more advertized power, and as the price goes up the built-in DVD players seem to disappear in favor of a simple 5.1 receiver w/o the DVD. (This is funny, just like the old consumer-grade electronics from the 70s that had built-in 8 track player versus the serious stuff (aka receivers) "audiophiles" bought sans the built-in tape player. A DVD player is the 8-track unit of the 21st century.
BUT can the consumer in any way be confident that the amount of money spent here is any gauge of sound quality, any more than we understood this as applied to speakers in the 70s? that is, a higher priced setup is undoubtedly "better" sounding.
Of course a lot of guys here would reject the whole idea that ANY of these all-in-one theaters in-a-box (including the rather expensive Bose) are at all listenable (for the same reason they would reject the idea that any all-in-one compact stereo with built-in 8 track and maybe a record changer on the top from the 70s is listenable too), so maybe my entire question is silly on the face of it.
OK lets go back to my $69 Advent versus Allied dilemma. I don't know of any magazine that did a comparison of these two similarly-priced speakers. The major magazines (aka SR and HF) simply refused to test or comment on any speaker made by Utah or Allied period, tho they tested the small Advent over and over and over (go figure!)
Meanwhile now we have all these theater-in-a-box systems and we are all still clueless as to what is really going on here. The brands and models on them change faster than the numbers on Allied's Utah clone speakers changed over three decades ago.
Of course, I bought the "real" Utahs, tho an acoustic suspension version with similar drivers on sale at Team Electronics in Lafayette IN in 1970 for $49 each. A couple years later, a pair of $116 ea large Advents in walnut veneer came home with me. Both pair are still right here, and hooked up in the living room.
D
Follow Ups:
There's no question that there was a brand premium to be paid in 1969. AR, KLH and Advent all commanded them, and "Suggested List" was for real in those days.
McIntosh would simply drop dealers who didn't stick to the price sheet.
Dynaco offered the entry-level person a little more flexibility, which is why it was so popular.
I think you can put together a better system for $400-$500 now than then, especially on the front end. That leaves more for speakers.
David,
Welcome back!
I'm not sure your comparison is apples to apples. For one thing, the Smaller Advent was not around yet in 1969. Second, the HT in a box is probably closer to the all-in-one systems of that era, with the KLH Model 20 leading the pack--kind of the way Bose leads the HT-in-a-box today. H-K, Zenith and others made similar package systems. And, of course, they did vary all over the map and price was not a good indicator of quality. But then, it never has been.
One of the lessons of the KLH Model 20 is that if the pieces are engineered to work together, the whole far exceeds the sum of the pieces. We talk here at AA about matching being a key to getting a really good system and we're talking about nuances among high quality individual pieces. But it's really in the cheap stuff where matching is most important and most fruitful. So it's not about the pieces, so much as it is the skill and dedication of the people behind the HT-in-a-box that counts. If brand X-Y-Z is building only for price and appearance, and somebody at brand R-S-T has some skill and cares, it will make a huge difference. How do you sort that out? You listen!
My Bose AM-5 series II speakers cost me $600 about 12 years ago. Given the pieces in that and the quality levels, you could probably make something similar in China or Thailand and sell it for under $200. If it's a cobbled together look alike clone, it will sound like crap. If it's a careful copy with attention to detail, it will probably sound pretty good.
Jerry
by maybe 2 years.
The Stereo Review review of the original (aka 1st Gen "Large" Advent tho not called that till after the Small version appeared. Kloss preferred not to refer to them as large and small, but rather claimed that they were just two versions of the SAME speaker, that happened to have different box sizes and impedences) was March, 1970, and the review on the Small Advent appeared in May of 1972. Generally SR did not review pre-production versions, but bought items off the shelf, so that means the intoduction of each of these occurred some months prior in order for Julian's operation to do the review and get it printed. The May 72 issue would have appeared in mid April 72.
Anyhow Utah was building speakers as I described as well all through this same period, and the list pricing was very close to the Advent prices, typically $100 ea for one (AS or ported) with 12 inch woofer, 8 inch cone mid and 3 1/2 inch cone tweeter in a 23 or 25 inch high box.
David,
I caught that as I was working just up the street from a hi-fi shop that handled Advent from 1970-June 1972. The Smaller Advent appeared on their shelves toward the end of my stay at that company. I'm not sure if the original ("large") Advent came out at the very end of 1969, or the very beginning of 1970. I do know it was before I worked at that company near the shop.
However, the date makes little difference in your posting. Your points are independent of that, give or take a few years.
Jerry
Everything from Feb 1969 (When my Green Camaro I ordered arrived at the dealer) and August of 1973 (when I finished my grad work at Purdue) has merged into a single glob LOL. Come to think of it, it must have been the at least the summer or fall of 1971 when I picked up those Utahs. My Large Advents say Sept, 1973 on them. I remember driving over to Logansport, IN about 40 miles away in the Green Camaro to pick up my first Allied system must have been late fall 1970, as there was no Radio Shack in Lafayette at the time. I was supposed to get two Realistic MC1000 speakers with the system, but the dealer had none in stock so he gave me two Allied 3004's instead. Both were oiled walnut two ways, with 8-inch woofers and cone tweeters, but in retrospect I think the Radio Shack MC1000 was the better of the two speakers. Radio Shack had just bought out Allied, they were selling stuff under both house brand names and the expansion of retail outlets as RS franchises had started. But then Team Electronics was walking distance to the grad dorm. Team was the source of the JVC 5521 receiver too, tho the little Allied 426 receiver did had enough power to drive the Utahs. I still have all of this stuff except for the 3004's which I sold to a grad school friend who wanted to use them as extension speakers off his big Zenith console in another room. We hooked them up and they worked pretty well.
What I never liked about 5.1 systems regardless of price / quality / features, is they are intended for one primary use, recreating a cinema hall in your living room. These units will do a fine job at that too. However, I have found listening to music on these systems to be undesirable. Some systems have bandpass subwoofers that are way to boomy for certain types of music, like classical. I like bass a lot, but I like bass that is tight, defined, and natural sounding. I like being able to tell different bass tones apart from each other. 5.1 is also great for movies and off screen effects, but do you sit on stage with a musical performance or in front of of the stage? For music, two channels is enough for me.
My 2 cents. :-)
if we zoom ahead to 2040, which of these will still be operational? The Advents and Utahs?
Other than that, you lost me. ;)
Is the number of supositions the scary part or am I missing the whole point?
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