|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
92.232.186.234
In Reply to: RE: FAVORITE POLL! Your favorite HE Midrage/Fullrange for front-load / direct radiator use. posted by Presto on September 12, 2014 at 15:56:10
I used Fostex once upon a time.
Was ok but nothing special.
Lowthers are crap. I've heard them at length in a number of cabs (all back-loaded horns) and they were all terrible. I'll never understand why anybody would spend real money on them.
Audax PR170MO are quite nice or use a pro mid like the 18Sound Zaph tested.
Follow Ups:
Lowther are not crap. The Lowthers you heard were crap in your opinion.
I'm sympathetic. I've heard more bad Lowthers than good ones, but there are good ones. Extraordinary ones, actually, when properly implemented.
Best,
Have to agree Most DIYers do not truly understand how to set up lowthers fostex and others fullrange in BLHs and I've heard many of those and they do sound poor but if done right a viable loudspeaker is the result.
I didn't set them up, the Lowther importer did in their specially designed showroom.
I just spent a week of afternoons carefully auditioning all they had to offer.
They were all horrible and vastly inferior to the Fostex I ended up buying or the Coral Beta 10 a friend of mine bought.
All modern Lowthers that I've heard at shows are well below what vintage units, lovingly cared for and properly implemented, are capable of. If you've only heard new ones, at shows or in audio showrooms, you don't have a proper reference for Lowther capabilities. Not to say that the new ones can't be made to sound good, I've just never heard it.
Best not to damn the whole brand based on limited experience. Honestly, I thought they were 'crap' too, until I delved a little further. Now I wouldn't live without them. Sure, you can't just hook them to any amp in any room and expect nirvana, they're fussier than that. If you don't want to bother with them, that's one thing, but to dismiss them as 'horrible' is simply incorrect.
Please define 'vintage'.
It wasn't just any showroom.
It was the demo room of the Lowther importer in the country I lived in at the time.
The two guys running the place sold nothing but Lowther and both held appropriate master degrees.
If they couldn't set them up properly nobody can.
All that happened in the late '70s.
May be Lowthers could be used as a mid if one were to slice that whizzer cone off but there are better choices for me for less cash..
I've heard many whizzer-coned drivers over the years and they were all bad. The best by far was the aforementioned Coral but I still wouldn't spend money on them.
Finally since pretty much all posts here are completely subjective and basically are just the opinion of the person posting it is in my view everybody's prerogative to roundly praise or condemn any brand or type of product.
For example if you don't like Technics or DD turntables you have the right to say so in as strong a language as you deem appropriate but I also have the same right to voice my opinion on whizzer cones in general and Lowther in particular.
The whole point of fora like this is to collect individual opinions, good or bad.
Personally I find negative opinions more useful than positive ones since most magazines in this genre aren't exactly forthcoming with anything that deviates far from gushing praise.
OK...sure. By 'vintage' I meant Lowthers from the 1950's through maybe the early 1970's.
The Lowthers produced in the late 1970's and through the 1980's are probably my least favorite iterations. I'm not surprised you didn't like them. The ones they make now sound better to me. You don't mention the associated equipment, but I can't imagine any of the 'in vogue' amplifiers (particularly SS) of the late 1970's doing much justice to a Lowther.
Look, I'm not trying to flame you or anything, I made a snarky rebuttal to your statement that 'Lowthers are crap' because it just landed wrong--it seemed to me to be a subjective pronouncement couched as an objective truth. From your explanation, I now see that it was a reasonable conclusion based on a limited experience with an inferior Lowther 35 or more years ago.
My initial comment might have been taken wrong, but I was assuming from your rather devilish nom de plume that you wouldn't mind a little sportive antagonism.
Regards,
P.S. What kind of Master's degree did it take to sell audio in the 1970's? ;-)
Just kidding! Different listeners create their aural reality in different ways with different priorities. When I sold audio equipment, I saw it as my job to find out those priorities an match them. Most salespeople simply sold what they liked, or what had the best SPIFF. Perception is an act of creation, not passive reception. heard
Dave
I recall that several years ago a Lowther-based open baffle system was rated one of the best of the audio show by the various listeners who heard them. So maybe b.l.zeebub would not care for a Lowther system, but perhaps 70+% of those who hear a properly set up Lowther system would.I had Lowthers in backloaded horns (Hedlund Horns) and when I switched to open baffles, I found that the Lowthers sounded significantly better. I think that open baffle and front horns are the two best speaker layouts for using Lowthers.
Finally, I found in a listening test that the EnABLe treatment to Lowther cones makes a significant improvement to the sound of Lowthers.
Retsel
Edits: 09/18/14
Can't like everything toss in near infinite variability and....I myself prefer Some Fostex full ranges over Lowther but still enjoy the PM4A and PM3a. A pm4a in modern front + BLH design sings.
lowther enclosure I've heard was the rethm II
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: