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vintage vs modern speakers

beansprout

beansprout

New Member
Within the last year, I've greatly improved my audio by purchasing new McIntosh amp and preamp along with a new Marantz CD player. I love the sound and was using vintage JBL L150 speakers.
My local audio store got in trade Paradigm signature S8 V3 speakers which I auditioned in their special music room and really liked. I bought them and put the JBLs in the attic. Initially I didn't really warm up to the modern sound of the paradigms and was feeling a little blue that I laid out the bucks for what I thought would be a big improvement. You can read reviews of the Paradigms, and all seem to be very positive. Fast-forward several months and I've really warmed up to the Paradigms. Not sure why. I initially thought if it weren't love at first sight, I'd probably never warm up to them, but it has happened.
I do want to put the JBLs side by side with the Paradigms for comparison sake. I wish I had that special music room where I could have two sets of speakers for the different sounds I desire, but I guess I'll have to lug heavy speakers around when I desire the JBL sound.
While I'm not nearly the audiophile that a lot of you are, I have learned a lot as of late and am realizing vintage vs modern is not necessarily that one is so much better than the other, but rather it can be a different sound for a certain mood or style of music desired at some particular time.
 
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It's all got its own sound ( or voice ) vintage or modern , and I'm sure you heard this before "what really matters is what sounds good to you" myself I prefer vintage , not allways for its sound ( some do sound spectacular ) more so because it's easier on the pocket book ( and I really enjoy the hunt ) and I've yet to run by a set of vintage speakers that didn't need some Sort of repair ( yeah , I really like that too)
 
Bots got it right , I'll bet you swap the Paradigms out for the JBLs , now that you know their voice , you'll notice a lot of things the Paradigms did that the JBLs aren't doing , no good or bad just a different voice .
 
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As a side note, I've always wondered which side of the sound equation has made the most improvement, the speakers or the gear? I think in a way you as kinda asking this same question. I've read in several sources that not a lot of change has taken place since the '90's. There again where does "vintage" stop and "modern" begin...with the demise of the tubes which are now found in top enders today?

I have a rather weak background in audio design for the gear side, with some basics in the speaker endeavour area. However, electronics also come into play esp with the active crossovers, so the worlds are interrelated.

I know these are open ended questions, but might be relevant to your intent in this thread?

Q
 
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Not old for me , not yet at least , I don't have a lot of time to piddle with wonky old stereo equipment , so when I do find time I really enjoy it . Recent ally picked up some Polks (rta-12bs and 7bs for under 30 all 4) never heard Polk monitors , yeah they need work but they look good , not beat . Got magnet shift , looking forward to straightening that out so I can hear what all the fuss is about without having to drop a lot of coin that I don't have in the first place .
 
f0427ea said:
Not old for me , not yet at least , I don't have a lot of time to piddle with wonky old stereo equipment , so when I do find time I really enjoy it . Recent ally picked up some Polks (rta-12bs and 7bs for under 30 all 4) never heard Polk monitors , yeah they need work but they look good , not beat . Got magnet shift , looking forward to straightening that out so I can hear what all the fuss is about without having to drop a lot of coin that I don't have in the first place .
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You won't hear what the fuss is all about until you recap those speakers and do a couple of easy mods to them.
 
Botrytis: The JBL L150's have had the crossovers rebuilt and the speakers were refoamed :thumbsup:(by previous owner) so a side X side will be interesting for me.
It took me a while to warm up to the modern metal tweeter in the Paradigms as well as a different sounding bass with the ported design. The L150's had a sealed passive radiator enclosure that makes bass sound particularly nice to my ears.
In regard to the bass, I would like to get some sort of vintage sealed cabinet with woofer only, no passive radiator for comparison as well.
 
For Quadman2 , sorry must have hit a wrong button can't even figure out how to remove alert from inbox much less send you this message with inbox For darkblue94 , I plan on giving them Polks the workover , the 12b's got toasted tweeters , I'll shelve them for now till I find some scratch for peerless tweeters , the 7b's drivers all worked except the mid woofers being locked up they ohm'ed ok before I sent them some signal and they produced week sound when tried ( would be magnet shift I guess?) once I get that sorted out only 3 caps per speaker , no problem , I'd like to get them back to what they were when new and give em a good listen before doing any mods
 
Well, actually I got the Paradigm speakers used for $3400, but even so I've spend a boatload of money on my system this year. I'll call 2017 "The year of audio" so next year I'll be on an audio "diet".
It's been so nice though and I have no regrets on the $$$ that flew out of my wallet. I've never been a big television person, but now my wife and I hardly ever watch the thing prefering to listen to music in the evenings be it streaming, CD's, tuner or the occasional vinyl.
Until this post, I've pretty much been an Audiokarma lurker. I've really taken away a lot of good information from the site and a lot of what I read seems to hold up to my personal experiences.
 
This is an age old argument for some of us.......my personal taste is a well designed (and now restored due to the age of them) acoustic suspension design speaker. KLH Six and Large Advents are my "go-to" speakers. I just enjoy how they sound with the types of music I listen to in my listening space (which is small). I've had the modern 2.1/5.1/7.1 systems which sound ok, but I always seem to go back to "that sound" for me. Acoustic suspension designs have fallen out of favor with the mainstream now in lieu of smaller multi speaker systems, so they are harder to find as a new product. To my knowledge, Human speakers are the only ones currently offering acoustic suspension designs new.

New, vintage, whatever floats your boat! :)
 
It's definitely a "preference" situation. Speaker technology hasn't really advanced much since the 1970s - it's more commonly known now that vented and sealed boxes can be designed with confidence instead of cut-and-try (my senior project in 1973 involved the design of a vented, tuned speaker system, back when few people outside of the industry knew about Thiele-Small parameters), so box speakers are a mature technology. Designers understand how to specify drivers much better than they used to, so it's not uncommon to see vented boxes exploited much more effectively than in the 60s. Maybe some materials have been improved, adhesives and foams have more longevity, etc. but unless you're building a truly exotic speaker it's all about what can be manufactured with consistency and accuracy. Electrostatics, horns... all mature tech. I have 40-year-old speakers using 1960s technology (Magneplanars) which were recently refurbished by the factory and they saw no need to change any of the design parameters or materials. Even their modern speakers are built almost identically to the older ones - they just have 50 years of experience in knowing the limits of what they can reliably assemble. Also, high-end speakers are still a very small percentage of the market, so the price tends to climb even when no new theories or technology are involved. If they're hard to manufacture, they're often hand-assembled and that drives the cost up further. I'd argue that the last real innovation in speakers was the Heil AMT driver, and that stalled decades ago because apparently it was too difficult to manufacture a full-range version or to integrate the small ones effectively with conventional drivers. Anything being made today is just a variation on older designs, often with improved manufacturing capability or better materials. And speakers all sound different - every designer seems to have their own view on that, which means you will gravitate to the ones which appeal most to your taste.

Electronics haven't advanced noticeably since the 1970s. Once you have a competently designed amp and preamp, there isn't much you can do except build it out of more expensive parts and charge more. :biggrin:
 
I find it easier to hear "through" frequency-response colorations than other distortions.

In an old high-school science film, they strapped lenses to this guy's eyes that turned everything upside down and backwards for him. He was completely flummoxed at first, but kept up with the experiment, and one day his brain made the adjustment and everything looked normal through the lenses. He could catch a ball tossed at him, again. Then when the subject took the lenses off, he was screwed up again, upside down and backwards. They said it was difficult for him, and not to try this at home. :eek:

I think the first post in the thread is less about modern vs. vintage, as about getting used to a strange speaker's presentation.
 
I was listening to vintage B&W DM 6 (Pregnant Penguins) for about 5 or 6 years and loving them. I recapped the crossovers and braced the metal feet and they sounded great.

I recently got modern Acoustic Zen Adagio's. The Zen's were immediately impressive and I put the B&W's away. After about 3 months I pulled out the B&W's and did a side by side A/B test of my own. I put the B&W's away within an hour.

The DM 6's are mid 70's technology. They still sound good but I think well designed modern speakers like the Acoustic Zen are very impressive.
 
Much in speaker technology and understanding has changed since the '70s. However, speakers are very much a matter of preference, much like tubes vs solid state (another debate that will never be resolved).

You will not get agreement on which is best and whether new or vintage speakers are better. Specifications do show some of the improvements, but since the specifications really don't show much (frequency response is the simplest and most basic factor in a speaker's design, look at professional speaker specs with 3-D graphs, phase distortion graphs, etc., etc. and see all that is missing) you are missing much of what has changed in the past third of a century (or in some cases longer). Measurement abilities have also changed a great deal so not all of the improvements are captured by specs.

Add to that the simple fact that no 40-year-old speaker can possibly operate at its original spec, ... magnets change, pulp cones swell over time changing their mass, surrounds get stiffer or softer, surrounds are replaced which changes the mass and/or the termination distortion & ringing, crossover capacitors change (and there's no way to know what the exact spec of that capacitor is, only capacitance and voltage which is again not all that is important in this application), people without the proper knowledge of the original design decisions alter crossovers and wiring thinking that they know more than the entire company that designed them, ...

I love vintage speakers (and audio in general), as a hobby and for the music. However, I know that there are compromises and listen to my modern more accurate system frequently, and the added detail, imaging, overall sound quality is obvious every time.
 
Since not old speakers sound the same, nor do all new speakers sound the same a general opinion of whether old or new sounds better seems senseless. Now comparing particular speakers is different, for instance I'd probably prefer any new speaker, even a JBL Best Buy bluetooth speaker, to an AR 3. But on the other hand I'd prefer an Altec 19 to most new speakers.
 
Kinda had me wondering about high end vintage vs today's modern speakers. I mean when you look at say a Yamaha NS-2000 (Onkyo, Diatone etc) with it's use of Beryllium and carbon components with excellent crossovers (update them obviously) how much better can today's speakers be? Would today's speakers be that much superior? Comparing apples to apples obviously. Same price points.
 
I would only consider vintage speakers based on my knowledge of them. If a friend or family member had a great set of speakers that I was aware of, and if those speakers were in excellent to acceptable condition, then I would take a chance and buy them. Most scenarios, however, I would buy new speakers of my choice.
 
One advantage that Vintage have for me is decades of reviews and comparisons by informed folk like you all to help me sift through the thousands of choices. I like speakers that has stood the test of time and still have fans!
 
mr_light said:
One advantage that Vintage have for me is decades of reviews and comparisons by informed folk like you all to help me sift through the thousands of choices. I like speakers that has stood the test of time and still have fans!
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Excellent point.
I've had good luck from the many members who have given their expertise on speakers and for the most part they are in the ball park. Based on that I'm 3 for 3. Woohoo.
 
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