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Why so hard on KUBUKI's???

iloveitloud

iloveitloud

Active Member
I know this will start an argument, but I really do just mean it to be fun. Why do so many AK'ers have such a dislike for big 70's era speakers? I know that sound quality is subjective, and everybody has their own likes and dislikes, but I have heard many of these "cheap", "mainstream" packed full of drivers, old speakers sound very good, and sometimes alot better than speakers that are supposed to be the best thing ever. Also, many of the big Sansui's, Kenwood's, and pioneer's were stuff that alot of military guys had back in the day, and many of those guys are big vintage audio fans, and on this site. Let me know what you think!
 
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The term "kabuki" doesn't mean the big speakers from the 70's. Kabuki is a term for a speaker with more drivers than sense. The ones with 7 drivers stuck all over the front in a 5-way are kabuki. Most folks are hard on them because it's generally a bad idea acoustically speaking.
 
What Ray said. Kabuki has nothing to do with size, country of origin, or even with build quality. It's all about having a ton of drivers in a configuration that actually detracts from performance.
 
Well I have a pair of Pioneer cs-99a's and as far as I can tell they reproduce ALL of the frequency range and even, apparently, some sounds that my AR-3a's can't (or dont very well). They need a fairly huge amount of EQing to get good but so what. I think they could have made them better without a whole lot of work i.e. bigger cabinet=deeper bass. I don't hear any comb filtering or anything too nasty at all, and I love the sizzling top end. They sound good to me, and I enjoy listening to them very much.
 
Thanks ojom, I also run a fairly huge amount of EQing as well, but that's what EQ's are meant for! I would like to make some custom cabinets for a pair of my Kenwoods,--about double the size of what they came with, and I bet that would really get the low base pumping.
 
iloveitloud said:
... I would like to make some custom cabinets for a pair of my Kenwoods,--about double the size of what they came with, and I bet that would really get the low base pumping.
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You've underscored the secondary problem with most kabuki class speakers. A huge woofer in an enclosure that provides, at best, 1/4 of the cabinet volume that the driver needs. Some tried to circumvent this shortcoming with sewer-pipe sized ports that introduced shortcomings of their own.

In my opinion, a properly designed loudspeaker system should not require massive amounts of EQ to become listenable. Have you ever heard a pair of Bose 901's without their dedicated equalizer? This is not meant as Bose bashing, but merely to validate my point.

Dave
 
ojom said:
Well I have a pair of Pioneer cs-99a's and as far as I can tell they reproduce ALL of the frequency range and even, apparently, some sounds that my AR-3a's can't (or dont very well).
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Have the 3a's been recap'd? You realize you are comparing 2 vastly differing camps of sound reproduction? As they are vastly inferior, please send me the AR's for proper disposal.

Dave
 
ojom said:
They need a fairly huge amount of EQing to get good but so what.
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That is so true with the CS-88A's I have. Of course I did not pay too much for them and their kind of fun to listen to. But there is a market for speakers with a lot of drivers.
 
iloveitloud said:
I have heard many of these "cheap", "mainstream" packed full of drivers, old speakers sound very good, and sometimes alot better than speakers that are supposed to be the best thing ever.
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Can you specify *what* "cheap, mainstream" speakers you prefer to *what* speakers that are "supposed to be the best thing ever"?

I'm guessing that with a username of iloveitloud, you may have a bias toward speakers with specific characteristics....
 
I liked my Kenwood 888D's. They had, ummm, a bunch of drivers. They would play loud as hell :D
 
Everyones ears are different and there are millions of combinations of compnents and room dimensions that can help or hinder your listening experience with any type of speaker.

In the end its whatever sounds good to you is what you should be running. You can always ask for suggestions from others but its your decision on what speakers to run.:music:
 
Negotiableterms said:
None of the Infinity line-source units qualify as Kabuki. The configuration of drivers does not decrease their performance. Rather, the acoustic benefits of line sources are still acknowledged today.
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bingo :yes:

mtm = good
line array = good
haphazardly placed drivers of all kinds = bad
 
What about the older polk sda series, alot of them have many drivers with slightly different positions and a passive radiator? I would assume they sound good, although i have no personal experience with them.
 
AFAIK the famed SDA's were all 2-way (I honestly don't know of a single vintage polk that was 3-way now that I think about it) with grid arrangements of woofers to prevent the speaker from becoming prohibitively tall (the tweeters if there were more than one were aligned either on a strict horizontal or vertical plane). Nothing wrong with that, and definitely not kabuki. A passive radiator is essentially treated the same as a port (someone will correct me if I'm wrong about that).
 
relaximus said:
In my opinion, a properly designed loudspeaker system should not require massive amounts of EQ to become listenable. Have you ever heard a pair of Bose 901's without their dedicated equalizer? This is not meant as Bose bashing, but merely to validate my point.

Dave
Click to expand...


How does that validate your point?
 
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