Never noticed that. Again all my Radio Shack speakers are from the early 80’s…so not sure of the quality after that.
But what I bought way back when was of excellent quality. Durability… Not so hot. Good for 10, 15 years and would blow from age.
As much as it pains me to say anything positive about that Hell Hole, the earlier “Mach” series speakers were pretty good. I’ve got a set of the Mach Threes, and while they ain’t no JBL, they aren’t too shabby.
Good call on the other audio stuff however. All crap, with the exception of one real nice dual cassette deck. Of course, it was manufactured by Aiwa. :rolleyes:
Been very disappointed with Radio Shack in last few years. All they seem good for anymore are cables and adapters and such.
Was a time long ago when shopping at Radio Shack was a wonderful audiophile experience. Latest of the latest stuff. No longer. Very boring store.
I still own a set of their very old Mach speakers (blown now of course like all the others.)
Great powerful sound with no distortion. One of the ones I’d like to install replacement speakers in…if I could find a good match.
I probably should just junk all those old speaker enclosures with blown speakers and opt for newer technology. But they make pretty good end tables for now.
But the newer style speakers, no matter how good they can sound for their diminutive size…to my ears anyway … Just lack something in depth or something or other.
The only actual working set of old speakers I still own are those amazing USA made Magnavox ones from the mid 60’s. As old as they are and original, they still put out amazing sound that still sounds better to me than my son in laws’ latest of the latest speaker technology.
You blew up some Machs? You’re doing something wrong…
Didn’t really blow them from high volume usage. Like all the other speakers (except for the Magnavox) they just deteriorated from old age.
Okay. I’ll buy that. I had some Jennings Research woofers that cracked and fell apart. More or less turned to dust.
All my stuff now-a-days is kept out of the sun.
Really? Wow. Seems to me there have been steady improvements all along, especially for stage speakers (incredible difference, really) and nearfield studio monitors. (I’m less familiar with home stereo speakers, for the last 30 years, but I assume they’ve seen similar improvements.) Not that there aren’t some classic old speakers that are still great speakers. But isn’t xmax significantly higher in many speakers these days, allowing better bass response with a smaller driver, reducing tip-end distortion? Improvements in cone materials and design to do the same, allowing better fidelity in bigger drivers, and permitting a wider frequency range for a smoother crossover? Improvements in magnet design?
I remember vividly in the mid 70’s when Polk Audio and several other brands started making speakers with long-throw drivers, and what a revolution that was (admittedly, with tradeoffs). Trying to remember the other brands, especially one from Ireland, but can’t recall the name.
No question about this, though.
I don’t doubt that you’re honestly reporting your impressions, but your impressions are unlikely to be reliable. Our ears are incredibly good at recalibrating themselves to adjust for volume and tonal balance, and to do this kind of test reliably you need an SPL meter (for loudness) and spectrum analyser (for tone). It’s especially true when walking away; when walking towards (especially after a period of quiet), you should better hear the volume increase.
The physics is simple, when the sound isn’t reflected or channeled: it’s an inverse square law, because it radiates spherically. If it had been in a huge room with a low ceiling (rather than outside), channeling the sound to a flat slice of cylinder, then it would be directly inverse. If it was a very long very narrow room, then the sound attenuates slowly and linearly, based not on radiation/dispersion but on friction and other factors (in power? amplitude? not sure but in any case far less than the flat cylinder case: this is the transmission line case).
So there’s no possible way your experience (while valid as an experience) matched the physical reality as would be measured using an objective devicce.
Furthermore, if the sound (spectral density) was the same inside and out, your high frequency hearing is suspect: even if a lot of HF was leaking through the attic vents.
In any case, there are big speakers still available today. Some are based on older designs, like the Klipsh series … I had a pair of Heresies, and while they have lots of flaws, they were incredibly good at what they were good at. If you could squeeze everyone listening into the one sweet spot in the room, that is.
A bunch of old speakers that are still cool today, though scoffed at (for good reasons) by many audiophiles: Magnaplanar, Bose 901 (if the driver surrounds haven’t dissolved), Klipsch horn-based systems (super transients, but colored, and very directional) … countless others that slip my old mind.
I sure don’t remember Magnavox making anything I liked.
In any case, it may be that you’ve grown accustomed to the sound of your old speakers and simply like them (nothing wrong with that), and don’t like the sound of newer more accurate speakers. But be sure to try a decent set of speakers with a subwoofer.
Also consider powered speakers, especially powered studio monitors. The advantage of powered speakers is that the amp can be tailored to the driver, using feedback from the driver to help control the cone position, rather than just blasting away and hoping they move where they should. (Most power amps do this, even back then the good ones did, but had to be compromised for typical drivers – with crossovers – rather than matched.) The other advantage to powered speakers is that they’re easily bi-amped or tri-amped, with an amp attached to each driver directly, rather than one amp and a crossover. This also helps dramatically with feedback, and allows a bigger amp for bass and smaller one for treble so the power can be applied where it’s needed.
However, speakers like this will sound very different from what you’re used to. They’ll point out any flaws in the sound source, rather than smoothing everything over. Very old well-loved cuts can suffer in comparison. But it’s worth a try.
One other point. When you listen to a speaker in a showroom, it’s sitting there with lots and lots of other speakers in the room, sucking up the sound. Unless you’re very close to the speakers, they’ll sound very different in that showroom than they will in your home. At home they’re be brighter and possibly harsher.
[QUOTE=squeegee]
Tandy has never, ever made or even stocked decent audio equipment, especially speakers.
[/QUOTE]
They had a brief partnership with Linaeum 20-some years back, IIRC. *Stereophile *magazine thought them to be “Uninvolving, but unreasonably pleasant-sounding at the price.”
Faint praise, but for them to not say “YECH!” is an achievment.
I guess it’s too harsh to say there’s been “no innovation,” but by and large a typical dynamic loudspeaker still looks like one from 40 years ago.
depends. High Xmax was driven partly by car subwoofers; the desire for ever-smaller sealed enclosure pushed the industry towards “long-throw” woofers to get the performance they wanted. Bass extension has more to do with the mass, compliance, and Q of the woofer’s diaphragm than does Xmax. When you have PA or sound-reinforcement speakers where you can still have large bass-reflex cabinets, woofers still only tend to have a few mm of Xmax at most.
yeah, this is one area where modern speakers can be a lot better. Better-damped cone materials do indeed help tame breakup modes and can extend the usable response higher in the frequency range. The downside is that this typically adds mass which tanks the speaker’s sensitivity, but since we’re no longer stuck with 8 watt tube amplifiers this isn’t really a big deal. Power is cheap these days.
Still, a larger diameter speaker has its limits. All else equal, a larger diameter speaker will start “beaming” (become more directional) at a lower frequency. I have some 70mm “extended range” speakers which do a credible job of playing up to 20 kHz but only if you’re listening directly on-axis. Even 15° off-axis and the high end just dies. You really still need a multi-element speaker to credibly cover the entire range and have a larger “sweet spot.”
Neodymium magnets are commonplace now, but that’s more to make up for the aforementioned loss in sensitivity.
Fascinating stuff! Do any of you have (or know of) a website that would give an intro level understanding of speakers?
There are a lot of terms like “drivers” and “frequency response” and “crossovers” and such that I have no idea what it means, but I want to learn. Everything I’ve found with Google is geared to the more advanced audiophile where a lot of these terms are assumed knowledge.
I have some plastic speakers that are all buzzy. I was wondering if I built enclosures for them, would they sound better? Or are they just cheap POS’s that are beyond any help at all? If I decided on building new enclosures anyway for a fun learning project, what kind of things should I look for and keep in mind?
I have an Electrical Engineering degree, but been in the software industry since graduating. I’d love to play around with resistors and caps and such, I just have no idea where to start.
What about the exotic kinds of loudspeakers (flame, electrostatic, plasma, etc.)?
what about them?
Are they any better than conventional speakers?
define “better.”
Good post. Makes more sense as far as explaining what I experienced years ago.
FYI there are repair kits for dry-rotted speakers.
I wish I’d found out about them before I replaced and threw away the speakers in my Infinity floor speakers.
True. I’m somewhat of an old Infinity (stuff made in the early 90s and before) snob and I can’t count the number of auctions I’ve seen on ebay or ads on craigslist where people just replace the woofers (with bad foam, but were otherwise OK) with cheesy generic drivers and say they sound “just as good” or “better than new” as if they know better than the engineers who designed the things.
To the OP: search ebay with this text: realistic mach (repair,foam,refoam) and you should be able to find what you need. That’s assuming that the only thing wrong with the woofers in your speakers is the foam (which is likely, unless they were abused - the cone and spider don’t usually deteriorate). You’ll want to find a kit that includes replacement dust caps, so you can remove the old dust caps, shim the voice coil (to keep it centered) while you’re doing the work, and then glue on new caps. It is possible to do it without shimming the voice coil, but it’s more difficult (read: easier to screw up) and best left to someone with experience. There are also repair places that will do the work for you (Orange County Speaker is one such place), but of course you pay for the privilege (and the shipping).
If you choose to do it yourself, doing the work isn’t that difficult, and should take no more than a couple of hours. Search Youtube for refoam speakers to see how it’s done.
I may try that on one of my old speaker sets. Maybe the Mach. Or I have an old Realistic 100 watter made in Japan that had incredible sound and only 8 inch speakers which would be easier to do. And you all are right. Just need to replace the foam.
And I need to do something pretty soon. Those old Magnavox speakers can’t last forever, although they seem to want to.