Help buying NEW speakers

[jamset]

Thanks for the kind replies.

Yesterday I was meditating and remembering when I went to this hifi dealer’s house to audition some speakers: as soon as I walked in I disliked the sound coming out of his ALTEC speakers. The sound seemed to bounce of the wood horn as if it struggled to transport quickly into my ears it felt like it was coming out of a pipe or something. I don’t know if this means I dislike horns or could it be the tube amp that was pushing them? if it was the amp I thought why would one want to slow down the music instead of having it reproduce exactly in the speed and way it was intended. Could it be that tubes are the belt drives (TT) of the amps? And does this mean I dislike tubes and/or horns?

(I’ve attached a picture of what the ALTEC speakers looked like, he had the top horns off and the inside woofer was a coaxial, sort of like the woofers in the second picture.)

 

[skywave-rider]

I've not heard them Sky but I have talked to folks that have them and also have had other well known horns like the Edgars and TADs. All the comments were very positive. Looking at the polar responses and freq graphs, I can believe it.

I was going to get in on the group buy but work changed...once again and I decided to hold off.

Edit: There is a group buy for those and many other horns from Europe over on diyaudio. I'll post link when I find it.

Thanks, DJ.

 

[djnagle]

Hi Jam, I don't see the pics of the altecs you were listening too. Old horns with Exponential fairs can be very peaky and when a note hits that peak, it can be much higher in db than the rest of the music. Conversely, were there are peaks, there are nulls. So there will be areas in the freq range that the music is down in db compared to the rest. The new design horns address that so you will get a very flat response across the freq spectrum.

As for what you heard, it is hard to tell without knowing what the whole system is comprised of. And even then, without listening to it, it would be just a guess. I can tell you that the finest systems out there today "generally" use tube amps.

 

[jamset]

sorry here is the pics...

amp he was using waqs SCOTT 296

i want to clarify to everyone that i have never heard horns before that day and my experience with hifi is almost zero.

 

[djnagle]

Yep, those could be very peaky. Those where meant to throw sound across a stadium. New designs will be much smoother than those.