Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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Lemmings, lemmings, everywhere .....

75.31.132.43

Posted by Oakroot on March 2, 2007 at 15:56:58

and all running toward that perverbial cliff - and there I was running right along with them. Just as the edge of the cliff came up I said wait a minute ... lets take another look (or actually listen).

I have been using relatively current speakers from PSB, B&W, Paradigm, Def Tech, and a couple other brands for home theater over the years ...not all mixed together but 5 speakers from the same compny for a 5.1 surround system. These are current technology and driver materials, soft and metal dome tweeters, plastic and Kevlar woofers etc etc.

I had found an old pair of ESS Model 9 speakers (this was the first speaker I bought way back in the mid 70s with my own hard earned green) at a garage sale for only a few dollars and impulsivley bought them. They needed cleaning and some refinishing - nothing too drastic. Now they look pretty good. Then I decided to give them a listen so I brought them in the house and replaced the current HT front mains just for a listen. What a shock!!!

I heard more musical detail and better dialog form two 30+ year old speakers than has ever been coaxed out of my HT system before. I eliminated the center channel and went a phantom mode and the dialoge became even clearer. I thought to myself... what the hell is going on here!

The ESS are old school paper drivers with foam surrounds. These speakers came out before ESS had their Heil Driver on any models. A two inch paper cone tweeter and 5 inch paper cone midrange, and paper coned woofer smoked everything I have listened to in my HT set up for dialog clarity, soundtrack and timbral linerarity, and special effects dynamics (micro and macro).

I just found a pair of ESS 7's (for all us oldtimers that was the same mid and tweeter as the 9 but has the KEF oval woofer) and they sound even more articualte on the bottom - I don't need to use my sub anymore.

So newer is not better, at least not in this case. I wonder if this is symptomaitc within the industry? Should current speaker makers be embarrassed when their current products fall so short of the entry level offerings from 30 years ago? Would other oldtimer speakers from Dynaco, or EPIs, or Alison, or etc etc also leave the new kids on the block in their dust? I don't know but I have my suspicions.

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