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Whats the most dissapointing speaker you've ever heard?

E-Stat said:
And yet, AR completely abandoned that driver configuration model with the AR9 series.
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I think that the 9 and the LST's were contemporaries.. developed at about the same time .. don't quote me .. my memory's fuzzier than my sound system ..
They were certainly the speakers that taught me that all amps have different sonic characteristics..
And baffle diffraction and imaging weren't even topics back then .. but tonally, they were wickedly accurate..
 
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E-Stat said:
The LST was introduced in 1971 while the 9 replaced it during the "Teledyne" era in 1978.
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Thank you ... I just remembered that you could buy either one of them ... and they did have different intents ..at least according to their marketing ..
The LST was intended to be a monitor and wasn't easily available to the public until they introduced the LST-2 ..
The Model 9 was intended for a home market and if I remember correctly, it was out of the price range of a working teen ....
I liked it .. but $$$
Same drivers but different boxes and crossovers if I remember correctly .
 
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Akustic said:
Thank you ... I just remembered that you could buy either one of them ... and they did have different intents ..at least according to their marketing ..
The LST was intended to be a monitor and wasn't easily available to the public until they introduced the LST-2 ..
The Model 9 was intended for a home market and if I remember correctly, it was out of the price range of a working teen ....
I liked it .. but $$$
Same drivers but different boxes and crossovers if I remember correctly .
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The LST was available to the consumer segment throughout its years of production (71-76). The LST2 was produced for a much shorter time frame...74-76.

Neither were available at the same time as the AR9, which was produced 78-81.

The AR9 is a 4-way, the LSTs were 3-way. Different drivers.
 
spark1 said:
The LST was available to the consumer segment throughout its years of production (71-76). The LST2 was produced for a much shorter time frame...74-76.

Neither were available at the same time as the AR9, which was produced 78-81.
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Advantages of aging ...I get better at forgetting every day !!!
I'll look it up too .. not sure why I was remembering limited availability for the original LST ..
The LST-2 had a 10" woofer rather than a 12" .. and was smaller ..that much i remember ..
There's no advantage to being a broke teen who was totally subject to marketing bullsh*t ..
 
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Ohighway said:
. . . 2) Klipsch Heresy. I've no idea what the appeal of these is. The only good thing I can say about them is that both pairs that ended up in my posession got flipped....... for a profit.
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Interesting that there were a couple of people who mentioned Klipsch Heresy. I had always considered it a very good sounding speaker. A friend bought a pair of Heresies in the early 1980's along with a Thorens TD 147 turntable, Pickering XSV/3000 cartridge, and NAD 3020 integrated amp. With the speakers sited as per Klipsch's recommendation (on the floor in the corners of the long wall of the room and toed in 45 degrees), they sounded amazingly good everywhere in the listening space. I haven't heard the current model Heresy III.
 
I think I've established myself on this forum as someone who isn't a Bose hater. But with the question as presented, I have to go with a friend's 901s. Must have been the room they were in but between the price he paid for them and how they sounded...:oops: They were worse than anything I've heard from anyone else, even worse than other less expensive offerings from Bose.
 
tubed said:
The Polk RTA 8t.
Matt Polk must have been out of the office on a well deserved vacation when the RTA lineup was designed.
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I just picked up a pair of these, haven't listened to them very long, but my initial impression is they sound pretty nice
 
dzkfraser said:
I just picked up a pair of these, haven't listened to them very long, but my initial impression is they sound pretty nice
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Glad you are enjoying them dzk.
I stated my opinion based on that I felt the earlier Monitor 7 and 10 were better and the 8t didn't match or exceed my expectations.
 
I will add my disappoint with a pair of speakers that I purchased, the Infinity Kappa 9.

I won't blame it on the speakers as I think they are capable of sounding really good. But to make a speaker that is so critical on what amp is in the chain is just stupid. I really didn't have an amp that would work well with them, yet my other speakers sounded good with all the other amps. I purchased them years ago, and used them for about one week. They then got thrown into a spare room for storage and they are still there buried deep within. One of these days maybe I will come across a good amp for them and dig them out. I do own a pair of the Kappa 8's and I thought they sounded really good. I parked them next to their big brothers to keep them company.

Photo off the net, not my pair.

infinity-kappa-9_550.jpg
 
Being a Kappa owner, I agree about the amp.

Mine was a Kenwood Model 600 for years and the combination worked well enough I thought. But not so much that I stopped dragging different speakers home. And some power/pre's too.

And then the Phase Linear 700B that lived in my closet for years got the White Oak Audio treatment.

That amp and Kappa's - unbelievably good. .
 
Altec Lansing Model Five. Super dull, mega rolled off, sucked at even elevator tunes.
 
Bodyblue said:
Two days ago a friend of mine took me along to a guy he knows that loves audio. He had two recently recapped and "worked on" (I did not get exactly what else was done) AR 3s. They were in a decently large listening room and were powered by an older Mark Levinson integrated amp.

He played some jazz and some acoustic guitar and some older rock. And they sounded, nice. Nice highs, nicely detailed and yep, you guessed it, nice bass as well. But they certainly were not stunning by any measure. That was my first experience with anything AR and I frankly expected something more. I have been reading on here for years about them and thought I would be stunned.....and I was not. They are a very nice sounding speaker for sure, but not better than my KLH 6s or Imperial 6s.....and maybe not better than my Optimus 5s.

So I guess that would qualify.
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Eh. Acoustic suspension with a 12" woofer and now ancient design. Nothing special. Speaking as a former owner of AR-3as.
 
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