HOme Audio - Old School vs What ever the hell they think that STULL is...

OK -
We no longer go tto the store and buy this
Turntable



Tuner       ]  
Pre-amp     }   {Receiver}
Amplifier   } 


Speakers

We now go to store and buy:

Video Display
Disc player
and
1 box containing
an A/V Receiver
5 - 7 speakers
cables for all
I just saw an ad on Craigslist of a person wanting to sell a pair of high end “Stereo” speakers because the family had just gotten a “Home Theater” box and had no further use for the (real) speakers.

Did they really change the specs so you can’t use real speakers on these things - that trying to use your old “rattle the whole apartment building, 400-watt” monster speakers with the new units is a doomed effort?
Do I have to use the (look-like-toy) speakers from the box with the receiver?

Yes, I do know some very nice sound can come out of small boxes - I just doubt that 5 such boxes + receiver powerful enough to drive all of them will retail at $200.

I guess it’s another of the trends away from buying something once (e.g. a TV) to buying it every month for the rest of your life (“home theater” + Cable + satellite ad infinitum).

I’m starting to see end-user grade software “plug-ins” startung at $30/mo.

Sometimes I don’t mind I’m dying…

You can certainly still assemble a stereo or home theater system from individual components. I have a 5-channel amp and a collection of speakers I’ve collected over many years for my home theater system. The home-theater-in-a-box systems are just fine for what they are, and some can produce some impressive sound, but you’re not going to fill a room with earth-rumbling bass unless you go for a separate amp.

You can use regular old stereo speakers with a surround system assuming your amp has enough power to drive them properly. The exception is some cheaper HT-in-a-box systems where the individual speakers all have little amplifiers built-in and take a line-level signal.

You are certainly correct that speaker technology has not changed all that much. You can’t argue with physics. However people’s expectation about how they will set their home up has changed dramatically. The idea that you have a massive pair of “monkey coffins” dominating the living room is long dead. WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is a big part of selling small speakers.
Another big change in lifestyle is that people just don’t seem to listen to music for pleasure like they did. When was the last time you sat down to listen to a full album of music with no distraction? Music has become a background to life. Many people use headphones now as well. Often to provide a background, but when they do listen for pleasure, headphones fed from a iPod or equivalent can provide a seriously high quality experience for vastly less than a full blown sound system. Some of the best headphones on the planet cost less than a quite mediocre pair of speakers. Very very good ones can be had for quite reasonable money.

However there are some aspects to the technology that have changed somewhat. Surround sound for movies does not place the same demands on the main speakers as stereo music. Surround is mixed to only have energy above about 80Hz in the main channels. Lower frequencies go to the subwoofer (the .1 channel, otherwise know as the effects channel.) OTOH, home theatre does make significantly higher demands on peak volume levels. Reference level for home theatre is very loud, and much louder than most people listen to music. Your few-hundred dollar HT systems can’t even approximate reference level of course. But they can take advantage of the lack of low frequencies in the main channels.

If you want to set up a good HT system, using a pair of good quality old style speakers can work very well. But there is devil in the details, especially if you want a good experience for more than one person. A row of people across a sofa is why a centre channel was added, so that everyone perceives the sound direction as sensible. With one person you can satisfactory go for a synthetic centre channel, but the sound stage collapses when you move off-axis and the actor’s voices seem to come from off screen - wrecking the illusion. There are ways of avoiding this, but it isn’t always trivial.

It is worth pointing out that big speakers are not in any way a metric of quality. The only reason you need big is to get lower bass. And even here there are ways of getting the same amount of bass out of smaller boxes. A subwoofer is a very acceptable way of getting your bass, and the small satellite speakers can be made to a very high standard that gives nothing away in quality, or even sound level capacity (this is heat limited, not limited by physical size). But you do get what you pay for. The cheap HT in a box systems are for the most part disposable crud. But you can get very good systems that have similar design goals. You can any amount of money. No matter what your budget, I guarantee someone can spend it for you.

Amplifiers in the speaker box.

My gawds, I would have never guessed that anyone would mistake that technology for something acceptable. Do they come with the batteries?

For those who don’t recognize this - this was the “computer speakers” circa 1990 - one speaker had an ac adapter (I suspect some DID use batteries) to run a $.50 amplifier - you had the situation of one speaker having a power plug and the other getting its feed from the firist speaker, not the computer.

Thanks for the explanation of the function of a “center” channel - I would have guessed that by the time you had R and L in front of you and R and L behind + a damned thumpa-thumpa bass blasting up your butt, you would have had about everything covered.

You folks do realize what we are discussing, right, Quadrophenia is back!

Please lawd, take me now!

I don’t want a world of Quad - it was tried while music and its reproduction were still being presented in “High Fidelity” - not on a chip driving “speakers” in one’s ears. I was rejected then - who would have guessed that it would return 50 years later - as soon as people mistook crap for desirable audio quality…
I acttually played with the idea of buying a 4 channel open reel tape deck. Fortunately, reason prevailed.

Oh - I have a 2nd set-up in the office with (copies (legal - I also have the original) of) roughly 50 CD’s that I would play on the computer and run as the AUX on the AMP.
I quit only when money dictated taking in a roomie - there are still people who prefer to NOT wear music, just hear it.
In addition to a MP3 player, I also do not have a cell phone. Go ahead, try to parse it…

There is nothing bad about putting the amp in the box with the speaker. Very desirable and very high quality speakers have been doing this for decades. The reasons are good. The most important for the end user is simply that you save on the cost of the box for the amp. Which can be a significant saving.

But technologically you can make a superior loudspeaker. Typically these speakers use a separate amplifier for each driver, and the crossover is done at line level, or nowadays in the digital domain - which affords the designer all sorts of possibilities denied to him when the crossover is after the amplifiers.

A great many active speakers are sold into the professional market - studio monitors from the dominant high end companies like ATC and Genelec are often active. I guarantee you can’t afford speakers from these guys. But music you listen to may well have been mastered on them. Even at the home studio end, Tannoy makes some very nice active speakers as do Mackie and even Behringer.

In the home HiFi market Meridian made the M1 and M2 speakers in the 80’s. The M1 was magnificent, and one of the best speakers available at any price. They still sell active speakers, and they are still very desirable.

Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with The Who. They never went away. I suspect you meant Quadraphonic. Modern use of multi-channel is very different to the idiocy of the old quadraphonic days. It is all about providing a sense of immersion, not about silly pan effects. A well mixed track should leave you never realising the rear channels were even there. Everything should just sound more natural and immersive.

The “Home Theater In A Box” systems you describe can actually be excellent, with audio quality far better than the systems we all used to assemble back in the 70s and 80s.

Here’s why:

The receiver and speakers are designed to work with each other by an engineering team with more test equipment and experience than you, or any number of stereo sales people.

Separating the bass from the main speaker cabinets is an excellent thing. The dedicated amp in the sub-woofer is optimized for the driver and the cabinet, and is much less likely to be over-driven or damaged. And when they have all the parameters at hand, they can design protective circuits that can work without audible artifacts. Leave the bass out of the main speakers, and they can be made tiny, which makes them easier to place in the room.

The better receivers will include a microphone for an automatic setup system. They have different names, my Yamaha system calls it the “Optimizer Mic”. After you’ve hooked everything up and placed the speakers, you plug in the mic, place it where you will be listening and start the optimization system. It sends out a series of tone sweeps, pink noise blasts and impulse ticks. After a minute or so, the levels and time delays for your speakers are perfectly adjusted, far better than even a professional audio engineer with a level meter could.

What I’m describing is a Yamaha HTIAB that I bought from CostCo several years back for $499. I’d consider it a solid, mid-range system with a 10" powered sub, two front thin “tower” speakers (actually small speakers on very nice matching stands), two rear speakers that I have mounted on the wall behind and to the side of my seat and a center speaker - all equipped with a 1" dome tweeter and two 3" midrange speakers.

And you know what? This sounds as good as any system I’ve used. The base quality level has risen so high that any decent system can do a very good job. Careful placement of the speakers has more to do with it’s performance in your room that the number of watts available. And the same thing that happened to computers has happened to amplification. Virtually all the receivers out there use large integrated amplifier circuits that are amazingly reliable. Generally speaking, speakers don’t get blown up with too much power, they get blown up by distortion - trying to reproduce square waves.

One of my jobs is videotaping concerts with multiple cameras. And I mix my concerts on these speakers. In theory, I could spend a lot of money on “professional” speakers, but this is a good approximation of what my end users will be using (although probably better because of the care I used in setting them up).

By the way, I’m a 52 year old person who has been engineering audio since I was 15. I’ve been the chief tech of an audio-video retail chain. I’ve done concert audio, built recording studios, cut records and toured doing sound for a Broadway show. And I listen to a Yamaha Home Theater in a Box. Yeah, they’re good enough.

On preview: Francis Vaughan sniped me on some, but it bears repeating. Forgot to mention, I’m using this in a small room, but if I wish, it can get plenty loud. When testing it, I was able to get it to uncomfortable levels where it could be heard on the second floor from the basement.

Ok, OK,

In addition to my spelling and basic arithmetic going to hell (stay away from triazolam (Halcion, among others) - prolonged use does damage the brain), I find I am on the opposite side of “progress” in all matters technological.

I know better than try to defend emulsion v digital - anybody want a few hundred sheets of Ilfochrome?

And, yes, I did mean Quadphenia - it was a small dig at the great success of quadrophonic technology the first time around - it was the only album I heard of being recorded in it. And yes, it is back - it seems to be a tour staple for the Who these days.

Yes, “The Graduate” - the future IS plastic… or vice versa

quad sound back then was first on tape.

I’m guessing **usedtobe **is one of those audiophile types who believe that audio quality can’t be evaluated by test equipment, or by the human ear.

There is a bias toward modern systems, however there is an issue.

The traditional high quality system is now approaching 30 years old, here was a drop off in the 1990’s in terms of quality for the mass market, although there were still a few very high end systems which were so expensive few folk had them.

Electronic components tend to degrade over time, even transistors and other active devices can degrade, but the main ones that go downhill are the electrolytic capacitors, and also speaker cone surrounds decay and disintegrate.

The capacitors are crucial components in the speaker crossover network - they end to dry out and go low in value, and this means that the speakers elements are being driven by signals outside their optimum range. You can hear this because older speakers lose their dynamic range - punchiness or kick - and also they lose q lot of their top end. If the foam surrounds also go, you get rattle, vibration and also lose bass response.

These can all be corrected, replacing the speaker cone surrounds, and the electrolytic capacitors in the speakers and also the capacitors in the amplifiers. It can be quite expensive to use solid state capacitors instead of electrolytics, so you tend to replace the larger ones with electrolytics and the smaller ones with solid state capacitors.

Once you have done this, there is a marked difference, and I’m sorry to say that the vast majority of modern cheaply made (but not necessarily cheaper cost) speakers really cannot compete with a set of restored high end vintage speakers.

This should not come as a surprise, the costs of manufacture have a significant bearing in old or new stuff, speaker technology has changed over the years, that’s true, but not enough to make cheap modern speakers better than old high quality stuff.

I shall make a couple of other observations, it makes quite a difference to the music you are playing and also the source. Speakers have always be designed to operate effectively with certain types of sound - amplifiers also have this to a lesser extend.

Music has become much more bass and top end driven over the years, so speakers have been designed with this in mind, there isn’t all that much mid-range, and a lot of stuff is over-volumed at these parts of the range too.

Older speakers tend to be more designed for a flat response right the way through the audio range, then in the late 1980’s most manufacturers went with a bit of bass lift in their speakers.

Surroundsound is designed specifically for the low end response, hence the subwoofers and with video and films in mind, its not always the best option for music.

Sources of music make a big difference, if you are listening to DAB radio, or perhaps one of the ‘lossy’ formats such as i-tunes, MP3 etc and you are playing it through a docking system, there is a high chance that you are operating on a reduced dynamic range, your music will not have the kick - unless this is artificially boosted, but then you lose out in other ways. Push this through a set of unrestored high quality older speakers and straight away they are not getting the chance to perform.

Listening through headphones is simply not the same as room listening.

You can buy very very good high end home theatre systems, they come at a high price, but the average mid range system suffers from ‘BOSE’ syndrome, some folk have got used to that sound, I find it tiresome.

Yes that Bose style sound can be measured, it can be quantified, you’ll find a low end emphasis, lots of top end emphasis, no middle. One reason that it is tiring is because of the non-linearity of human hearing. We become less sensitive toward the upper and lower ranges of sound, so this Bose style sound has to compensate in order to sound loud, and that’s why you get this arrangement.

If you have a more even sort of sound, with a flat response throughout the audio range, you would not turn it up as much, because you are operating in the more sensitive part of your hearing spectrum.

I have rebuilt a goodly few speakers, the 1960’s ones are almost stone age in their audio design, they sound boxy - even the highly expensive ones for their day. They are ok on acoustic music - lots of plucked strings etc but are soon left behind when reproducing rock music.

Its not really until the late 1970’s that suddenly the speaker manufacturers seem to have got to grips properly with speaker design, and there seems to be a steady improvement right through to the mid 1990’s, I presume this is because there was improvement to speaker elements and it was also possible to do computer based design.

Since that time, the demands made upon sound equipment have changed, the way we listen has changed, the music hasc hanged. Even so, if you take a number of good quality and restored 1980’s amplifiers and drive each channel independently into restored high end speakers, you would be surprised at just how much better your results are. Thing is, who wants their house with three, maybe four amplifiers, lots of linking cables and 6 or 7 large speaker cabinets in their front room?

You can get more with older stuff, if you can do the restoration work and know how to connect it up, but it takes a certain amount of skill, knowledge and effort.

Modern music consumption trends mean that its not the all important thing that it once was and high quality reproduction does not get the priority it once did - musicians hit the headlines for anything except their music, its all about getting into the celebrity magazines. The music is no longer the earth changing (it it ever was) set of social and political statements, it means rather less than it did.

  • far easier just to buy a mid range set of boxes, its about good enough for today’s usage, if you want you can spend vast amounts more.

I also have to qualify all this with adding that during the ‘hifi golden age’, there was an immense amount of meaningless babble, with isolation feet, platter turntable clamps, and crazy priced speaker cable. High quality stuff is high quality, no matter how new or old, within reason of course, a 1950’s set up is never ever going to be as good as modern kit. Stuff can be made that is better than the 1990’s audiophile gear, there is little demand for it

Electrolytics are the bane of old gear. Indeed replacing them is often all that is needed to get the gear going again. Foam speaker surrounds are not too hard to replace, and there are kits available for most good drivers - often with original parts.

Nitpick - “solid state” isn’t really the right term here. Usually you want a foil/film or metallised film capacitor - cheap being mylar, better being polypropylene. Really good gear will use these in the signal path anyway, leaving electrolytics for the power supply. The big killer of electrolytics is heat. Older gear often used electros only rated to 85C.

No, it isn’t. Some people can’t abide headphones at all. Headphones have a set of issues that make some recordings sound very unnatural. OTOH listening to some binaural recordings can be quite astounding and provide a sense of realism you will never achieve with speakers.

Worth mentioning that the most critical thing when listening to speakers is the room. So many people have a less than happy sonic experience simply due to poor room acoustics, and poor placement of the speakers. Getting this wrong can make the best speakers on the planet sound wretched, and getting it right can lift quite pedestrian speakers to remarkable heights.

This is very true. The history of speaker design is very interesting, with some fundamental strides being made in the early 70’s and things accelerating from there. Cone materials were a big feature, with bextrene, then polypropylene, both with various additives - especially internal damping - a long and tortuous path to eventually get metal drivers to work, composites, and now ironically, paper drivers making a resurgence at the high end. But indeed, computer design systems have allowed optimisation of the magnetics to reduce distortion substantially, Overall design of speakers has improved dramatically, with vastly better understanding of the requirements and the ability to optimise towards them. In some ways, right now is a golden age for designing speakers, with very high quality drivers and very advanced design tools. But you can’t fight the physics, and it is trivial to make a very expensive and mediocre speaker, but also now possible to make a very very good speaker for not a lot of money. It is nowadays more about the ability of the designer to integrate the drivers in the speaker. The crossover design and box design can dominate. They can also dominate the cost.

How come nobody ever invented a spherical speaker? That would be the ultimate!

I work in pro audio, concert and event production. The changes I have witnessed in the appx 17 yrs I have been in the business have been amazing. Everything is lighter, louder and more durable. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) has changed my life, I can build a program with delays, x-over points/slopes, limiting and eq, then save it. No guesswork when I use different speakers and amps, same DSP does it all.

I know my world is different than home audiophile world is, but I don’t want the “good old days” back, never. Stuff is too heavy and doesn’t sound as good. IMEO
Capt

Check out the Electrohome Apollo, kid. Electrohome apollo - Google Search

I hear you, my Brother Soundman.

The automatic adjustment system in inexpensive Home Theater in a Box systems was first available for concert sound systems, and cost thousands of dollars. I first heard it used before a Rolling Stones concert back in 1976.

Most sound professionals seem to be immune to the nonsense that consumer audiophiles are prone to believe. This is not to say they are not prone to a different bunch of nonsense, but few people are willing to haul around “vintage” speakers like straight horns and W bins, when they can get better results with a line array and digital processing.

Please never make me fly an array of 12 EAW 850’s ever again and those were considered light in their day.

Quick story, needed some cheap out door spkrs for an install. Go to XXXX’s with Partner In Crime. Found what I want 80 watt pair 50$ give or take. Enter salesman

S. “you don’t want those, I have something better”

M. “thanks but this is what I need”

S. “but you see I have these digital speakers, they are much better”

M. “so they put out ones and zeroes?” PIC almost chokes

S. Visibly confused “huh, you don’t understand”

M. “No son its you who don’t understand”

S. “But Sir they are digital!”

PIC. To S. “you don’t want to have this discussion with him”

S. “They are digital” rather meekly

M. “So they do make ones and zeros”

Exit

Capt

“…and when you die, they can bury you in it!”

So Gaffa how many rolls at your house right now? Me, 2 partial white, 2 brown part and whole, 3 black 1part 2whole.

:: sorry for the hijack::

Capt

I’m cheap. I just buy the four packs of gray at CostCo these days.