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In Reply to: RE: Pinging Davidl: utah as2a tweeter response posted by DavidLD on March 13, 2015 at 12:34:33
Utah didn't have any kind of following. Neither did Fairfax, Criterion, or any number of cheapo products. There weren't significant groups of people who swore by Utah speakers. Ridiculous. They were just el cheapo speakers, who's more expensive offerings attempted to compete against the much better products of Altec Lansing [at it's height in those days, especially with the Voice of Theater series], and the much, much better products of James B. Lansing, aka JBL.
Secondly, to call anybody an audiophile prior to the early 1970's and the appearance of the true high end, togetther with the catalystic journalism of The Absolute Sound is to skate on thin ice. You could make a case for it. Certainly, people who dedicated a whole room to a full blown Klipsch setup, with two corner horns and a center channel, and/or powered their gear with McIntosh electronics could be considered audiophiles. But, even then, their values, their approach, and their perceptions, were worlds apart from the generation of the 1970s.
Indeed, they weren't even called "audiophiles". They were called audio buffs.
It's important to get the story straight, cause otherwise things become muddled, distorted, not quite correct, and eventually totatally lost.
Follow Ups:
We must have run in different circles. VoTTs were not in any way a better home product as they were designed for theater and pay use. While today there are some who love these monsters in their home, the number is miniscule.
As for the laundry lost of brands persons did not follow back then, you are might lost totally or mightily confused. These brands and many others had raw drivers made for other companies and were nothing outstanding as there was no need for a radio speaker to need so and the same company made some very decent home audio drivers and systems. I am scratching my head at your hit on Fairfax; you must be thinking of a different company. Fairfax, though a small was well respected and was a consistent maker good speakers and Criterion incorporated a range of very good drivers in the systems and even their drivers that were rebadged from major companies. Your reference to JBL and Altec, is laughable as neither had either significant market share or a large following in the market as both were primarily in sound reinforcement.
In fact JBL' so major break in the home audio market did not happen until the 4311 when kids starting buying them and JBL decided to capitalize on this oddity by producing the L100.
Today, Altec and JBL are sought almost more for collecting than using. And many being bought and just resold to the export market. If these are your ideas of audiophile products, I feel sorry for you.
BTW, an audio buff was anyone with any focus on a stereo system to an extent where he or she knew something. An audiophile was someone whom made it a serious hobby and focused on attaining a high quality system that reflected their individual sonic preferences. A JBL L100 lover who had tl have a Crown DC300 to drive them might attain the title of audio buff but never audiophile in the professional home audio industry circles. As a member of SAC, NH-1, I had to understand both the definitions and connotations.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
Altec VOT's have more than a "miniscule" following these days, since they work so well with low powered, single ended tube amps. Lot's of people use them.
Fairfax was a manufacturer of mediocre speakers that were part of the semi-private label market. They were similar to others of tha ilk, such as Bolivar Speaker Works of the 70s, etc. Such companies didn't offer superior product choices for the consumer, nor were they up to the standard of name brands. They existed for one reason only: to provide the biggest possible profit margin for the dealer. NOT the best possible product for the consumer.
It really boggles my mind that people today stare at me with utterly blank incomprehension, or similarly respond in chats, when I try to explain private label goods. Back when I was in audio sales, it was damned hard to sell private label dreck. You may see how we've entered bizzaro world today, when guys are jumping like bonobos in heat for private label garbage.
Semi-private label companies differed from fully private label ones by being avialable from more than a single retailer. However, the businesss, model worked by restricting sales to a single retailer in a regional market. That would prevent consumers from cross shopping, and thereby getting discounts, which would drive the "street" price lower and lower and erode store profits.
In the 60s [and the 70s, for that matter], salesmen hated AR and KLH. They were national brands, available natioanally. Their prices had been driven down so low, that nobody could make money selling them. When I was in audio sales, we hated Pioneer for the same reason. No margin [profit]. We bad mouthed it all the time. We'd tell customers that Pioneers "failed the Telarc 1812 test", without bothering to mention that every other receiver probably did too. Then, we'd steer the PPT to a private label Project One [Playback's private label lower-than-dreck dreck].
Fairfax, as I recall, offered nothing in terms of sound quality. Muffled, boomy sound, they were, from what I remember, highly colored TV/Radio sound alikes. They even had fancy grill work, so they looked more like furniture. The sound, emerging from deep within a cave, buried somewhere behind that furniture fretwork baffle, was hardly of even mid-fi calibre.
But, even that might've been better than the private label of the Lafayette Radio store chain: Criterion. Those things weren't even up to Allied quality. Let me put it another way: in 1968, you could buy a air of KLH, Advent, JBL, Rectilinear, or even Fisher speakers - all name brands with good engineering behind them. Or, you could pop for someone's inferior private label slop, such.....oh...Criterion. Hmmm, what to do....
JBL
You're off on your evaluation of JBL and Altec. They were hardly limited to the public address market. JBL offered expensive, superior products from the very beginning. The systems tended to be large and expensive, and they formed what could be regarded as the high end prior to the actual high end that we know, which emerged in the 70s. They were part of the same expensive market segment as Bozak, Electrovoice, Hartley, and so on. The JBL Paragon was regarded as the best avialable speaker system by many.
More than that, JBL was absolutely number one in the way they designed and manufactured their raw drivers. Nobody could touch them. I was fortunate enough to read some of their non-consumer engineering forms. OMG - even today you'd have a hard time finding that kind of quality. Voice coils - 4 inch, edge wound [meaning expensive ribbon wire, not round wire]. Sand cast steel or aluminum frames, not cheap stamped [one of the thing JBL could critisize and even sneer at AR, KLH, et al, was that they used cheap stamped baskets]. Unlike most speaker companies, JBL made their own drivers. They were a real speaker company, not merely an assembler, or a re-badger. JBL did gain a foot hold in the recording industry, movie theaters, etc. because of their absolutely top quality products.
Whether you liked the sound or not is personal matter. From your comments, it seems that you've echoed the 1970s audiophile vendetta against JBL. In those days, it was a war of the West Coast sound vs East Coast sound. With regard to the 4311/L-100, I might point out that Mick Jagger preferred it even now.
Finally, I don't know about SAC NH-1. I just don't recall anyone saying, "well now, good buddy, Joe Schmoe over there's just a low-ball audio buff, where as I...I am a real rootin' tootin' audiophile!".
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