Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Not so sure...

I am not so sure there has been any "progress."

I typically dislike "modern" speakers. I don't like the ringing, cracking, quacking signature of modern drive units.

Those few modern speakers that I do like are all "classic" designs such as those from Spendor and Tannoy dating to the 1960s and (in Tannoy's case much) earlier.

In fact, I highly doubt that modern speakers will be considered "classic" 50 years from now in the same way that an LS 3/5A for instance is considered a classic.

I feel that we have entered a speaker "dark age" where old, ill-informed and/or outdated technology (technology considered unsuitable or colored 50 years ago) is being recanted and recast in new bottles to appear fresh, new and modern (when nothing could be further from the truth).

Computer modeling has obviously not improved speaker design and does not replace the kind of tried and true design know-how of the pre-computer era. I fear that speaker design is now something of a lost art and computer-aided design tools are nothing more than a crutch for designers who don't know what they are doing. Not coincidently, 50, 60 and 75 year-old classics by Lowther, Voight, Altec Lansing, Leak and others are making strong comebacks.

I am not a vintage-phile. I just think the older designs sound better...that is they don't really sound like anything...except music...they get out of the way better than more obviously colored modern designs and are much, much, much more satisfying to listen to.



Edits: 08/06/12 08/06/12

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