Interesting site

[sonofagun]

http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/index.html

note: http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/...r-design1.html

[BMWCCA]

note: http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/...r-design1.html

At least he makes no attempt to mask his prejudice!

"The most famous example of this marketing philosophy was the very successful JBL L100, a beautiful-looking bookshelf speaker with a bright-orange sculptured foam grille. It really looked great until you had to listen to it."

"...the sonics of the West Coast high-efficiency classics like JBL's and Altecs are not to everyone's taste (especially classical-music fans), and the East Coast favorites like the AR and KLH are inefficient and low in resolution (high IM distortion, crude crossovers)"

"Vintage horn tweeters are anywhere from really terrible to pretty good; just don't expect anything beyond 15 kHz or broad dispersion. I still prefer the sound of phenolic diaphragms to aluminum - one of the reasons I've never warmed up to the Altec/JBL sound, which has always sounded metallic to my ears."

[Mr. Widget]

I wouldn't dismiss what he is saying so quickly... the couple of sentences I read sounded fairly accurate to me. I may go back and read more at a later time...


Widget


The Past

Contemporary speakers, for all of their faults, are better than most speakers of the Fifties. Very few "hi-fi nuts" had full-size Altec "Voice of the Theatre" A-7 systems, Bozak B-305's, 15" Tannoys, or Klipschorns. The typical enthusiast had to endure University, Jensen, or Electro-Voice 12" coaxial drivers in large resonant plywood boxes with a single layer of fiberglass on the rear wall. A large cutout served as the vent, resulting in boomy, resonant boxes tuned much too high, with a 6 to 12 dB peak in the 80 to 150 Hz region. (Have you ever heard a restored jukebox?)

[sonofagun]

I actually am not endorsing whatever is on his site (and the others that link from it) one way or the other.

I only read a little of his page on speakers and thought it "interesting". Don't know anything about the author.

Y'all can draw your own conclusions. IF I have the time ( ), I'll read more.

[Uncle Paul]

Turns out unexpectedly useful for me - I have a non-functional Audionics CC2 amp, and the site has schematics. Mebbe I'll get it fixed this winter.

[Doc Mark]

Greetings, All,

I found that site to be "interesting", as the OP commented. Whilst I don't agree with everthing that was written there, some of it was right on the money. I've posted before, but way back when, I actually got to enjoy a pair of Hill Plasmatronics speakers for a few hours. The owner was a tech for General Dynamics, in San Diego, if I remember correctly. He also had four separate subwoofers, one in each corner of his large front room, in addition to the HP's. Every speaker had it's own amp, mostly Crown DC300AII's, with a few Threshold amps tossed in. He had an old HP tone generator which he used to impress myself and my friend, who had actually come to his house to buy a Crown amp from this fellow. He cranked the amps up, ran his HP generator down to 4HZ, or so, and we watched in amazement as the water in his back-yard swimming pool began to undulate and ripple!! THAT was impressive!! AND, those sorts of shinanigans were also tearing his house apart.... The plaster walls had cracks in them, and had pulled completely away from the fireplace, as I recall!! In any case, I found the helium/plasma tweeters to be outstandingly natural, and to me there are still the most natural and free from coloration, tweeter I've ever heard. For what it's worth.....

As for some of the rest of the author's assertions, I find them "interesting". Whatever floats your boat, blows up your skirt, or trips your trigger, sez I!! Take care, and God Bless!

Every Good Wish,
Doc

[Steve Schell]

I have long thought that Lynn Olson has one of the finest minds in audio. He has investigated several of the vexing problems of sound reproduction for decades and has evolved some fascinating theories and findings. His thoughts on the inadequacies of conventional THD measurements are really provocative, that perhaps harmonic distortion products should be weighted by a square or perhaps even a cube of their order to accurately represent their harmful effects in correct proportion. This goes a long way toward explaining why a simple triode circuit with relatively high THD can sound much better than a high feedback transistor circuit with vanishing measured THD.

Lynn hung out for quite a while in our Cogent/Welborne room at RMAF in 2006. It was great fun talking audio with him. We went... deep, man.