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Dick Pierce on Altec, or MM?
(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...
duPont Corian is a cool and underutilized material as well. The
Japanese use it in some of their nifty, but too heavy to
cost-effectively import, cabs for classic coax drivers such as the
Altec 604, which I consider to be the "Marilyn Monroe of speakers".
What, you mean fat, slow and liable to die suddenly? :-)
No, glitzy, flashy but completely lacking in depth and substance.
The Altec is a real speaker with a 15" cone and some real build cost,
not like the stuff they sell at Madisound. We have this fantasy today
you can build a really first-rate speaker out of small drivers and
inexpensive crossovers, and while some of the "Speaker
Builder(magazine)mentality projects" sound pretty good for the cost,
and the high end stores sell very expensive versions of these same
products with little improvement, that doesn't make them the equal of
classic Altec and Lansing and a few other designs that cost a lot of
money to build.
For all the money it costs to build an Altec 604, let's see what you get:
1. A system built before and, subsequently, in effective ignorance
of the comprehensive Thiele-Small model. Thus, as a result, a
misdesigned, mistuned conglomeration of poorly integrated parts
and, well, "concepts" to be generous, that misses the theoretical
capabilities of a cabinet that large and a woofer that big by a
VERY wide margin.
2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.
3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching.
If you like the Altecs, fine. But holding them up as a paragon of
design acumen, as shining examples of how to design a well-performing
speaker in any reasonable objective sense is, well, amusing.
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