[Vintage-Audio] small speakers

[wolfbob]

Well I gotta get into this very very subjective mess with my 
selection of stuff. I have had access to a very large number 
of very good audio stuff. I bought repaired and sold 
thousands of units and kept a few for my own personal 
office. Realize that I would sell a unit (speaker, 
turntable, deck or whatever) if it didn't sound enough 
better than what I already had to offset the difference in 
value. Yes some things sounded better to me, but they also 
cost so much more than what I had that it just wasn't worth 
the slight improvement. Anyway, here is what developed over 
the years.

Speakers are the mainstay of the sound. They all sound 
different. So they are really subjective and will be what 
frames your sound. I like JBLs. I have a pair of L-160s 
hanging from the ceiling at one end of the office. Yes, they 
are 3-way bass-reflex, but they don't seem to suffer from 
the problems of ported speakers. The rest of my speakers in 
the room are acoustic loaded. I have a pair of big Advents 
for the center and center rear and a pair of little 8 inch 
KLMs for the sides and in the rear corners are a pair of 12 
inch Wharfedales. Yes, I have 8 speakers (and a disconnected 
sub-woofer) in the room. I drive these with the cheapest 7.1 
receiver around, a Sherwood RD7108 with 100 watts/channel. 
The rear center speaker combines the other two rear speakers 
(I am awaiting 8.1). The duties of the sub woofer were 
handed over to the JBLs which handle the lows so much 
better.  The speakers are all about 6 ft above the floor in 
this 10x12 ft room.

I like dynamic range. My hearing frequency response is 
suffering from old age, so I am not too interested in 
anything over 12KHz, but I like low frequencies.  I process 
most everything other than SACD which is run directly to the 
7.1 ports on the Sherwood without any messing.

The first problem is all the compression put into recordings 
so you can hear the quiet places in the music in noisy 
venues. I have two expanders, a dbx 3BX III and a Carver 
C-4000. Between the two I can get back 10-20 dB of dynamic 
range stolen by the mastering people. The dbx is a very 
powerful box and is also fun to watch all the lights flash 
as it works.

Helping the speakers with some good low frequencies and 
again adding some dynamic range is a dbx-120 sub-harmonic 
synthesizer. It is easier to synthesize those parts of the 
music below 50Hz than it is to try to dig them out of the 
recordings. Works good.

Except for the Sherwood, most all of the sound making is 
done with stuff 30-50 years old. I like some of the newer 
stuff, but the old stuff sure can sound good.

I can play source material from CDs (Sony CDR-W33), vinyl 
(Dual 728G+ Olephant something or other+ SAE 5000A), DVD 
SACD (Sony DVP NS-500P), MiniDisk (Sony MD JE-320), reel to 
reel tape (Teac X-1000R), and a cassette tape (Yamaha 
K1020). Not connected at this time is another SACD player 
(Philips 1000) and the heaviest cassette deck ever  (REVOX 
B-210) a real Dragon slayer, and another reel-to-reel deck 
(Technics 1520).

Also in the office is a 5.1 audio system (Cambridge 
Soundworks) tied to one of the two computers, two stereo 
TVs, four TiVos and three video recorders and a rather 
complete Ham station. I sit in my nest and play with my toys 
most of the time. (I am retired)

WBob, WB6JPI

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Salmons, Michael" <SalmonsM at missouri.edu>
To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 
back" <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>; 
<vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 7:01 PM
Subject: [Vintage-Audio] small speakers


> I'm answering Duane's clarion call. How about the topic of 
> small speakers? I'm a bit obsessed with them. Gradually my 
> speaker collection has gotten smaller over time- in terms 
> of cubic volume, not number of pairs!
>
> My favorite pair right now is the EPI M60. The cabinets 
> are 17"H X 9"W X 7"D. I got this from the human speakers 
> site (http://www.humanspeakers.com/e/epi60.htm) but I can 
> confirm it's accurate. My pair is older than the model 
> depicted on the site. The tweeters are the same inverted 
> dome but the woofer surrounds are butyl. The sound of 
> these speakers is just magnificent. Smooth highs and 
> startling present bass for cabs of this size. I guess I'm 
> not totally surprised since I get just as much bass from 
> my older AR4as which are in the same size range; it's also 
> no concidence that both models are acoustic suspension. It 
> isn't a requirement for deep bass but the less 
> resonant-prone, more generally accurate bass that I've 
> heard from smaller cabinets have been that of acoustic 
> suspension models. The cabs are nothing special in terms 
> of looks, it's got the standard vinyl you'd find on 
> virtually any bottom of the line speaker from that era, 
> but the fiberboard is super dense, making a very heavy 
> little speaker for its size. stray resonance is 
> nonexistent.
>
> They are suitable for a range of musical styles. They will 
> thump if you want them to. They will sing delicately if 
> that's what you want. Jazz skillfully recorded by Ahmed 
> Ertegun and played on my Harmon Kardon T55C Turntable with 
> Empire 500 cartridge, powered by a fluoroscan Pioneer 
> SA-6800 amp, makes about the best budget small solid state 
> combo listening experience I've encountered. I'm totally 
> pleased and if the worst should happen and I lose my M60s, 
> I would get another pair in a heartbeat, I wouldn't even 
> want to consider other models.
>
> Okay, I've spilled. Who else loves a small speaker, and 
> which one is it?
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