Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

I'm a Geoffrey Horne fan/ conspiracy theorist!

I was a fan of the late Geoffrey Horne, the Gramophone reviewer who was always dissing b&W for having joined the movement to ported designs. He made it sound like they had sold out. And in truth, the last BWs I owned before now, the CDM1s, did display a very un-British sloppiness at the bottom of the spectrum, unlike my sealed JR149s which had all the British virtues (still have 'em and if they didn't look so depressing I might still be using them. The tear in one woofer is inaudible as long as you stay away from organ music!) Horne looks like Nathan Hale at this point:
"I only regret that I have but one career to lose defending sealed-box bass!" I suspect his insolence was a factor in the disappearance of Gramophone's great reviewing team in favor of some woo-woos from What HiFi? when Gram changed hands. But Horne claimed the move to ported bass and polypropylene drivers was motivated by SPL per dollar rather than subtlety of sound and was inappropriate at the "high end." Tend to agree. Audio is a Baby Boom hobby and until we boomers hit our dotage we were into LOUD and while imaging is always exciting there's no imaging in the bass. In fairness, I have heard some ported speakers not from B&W that sounded pretty tight in the bass. My DCM Macrophones for example, did not have a lot of bass but for their size they did pretty well. The new Elacs have pretty good bass.
It's never too late to turn back the clock.


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