Speaker porn

what are those?

 

I've always liked the look of the simple beauty of Martin Logan CLS.

 

Hi,

Vitavox Bitone 6201



Vitavox CN191



More Vitavox porn




Living Voice



SCIDB

 

ive wanted these since the second i seen them (not heard them though)
PMC IB2

 

Mike. It's a Magico Mini. Price? If you have to ask. Superb construction and attention to detail.

 

Cheers

I'd guessed!

 

Mid/bass driver looks a bit small eh ? Bet the need silly watts ?

 

Think this Volent uses the same main driver as the original Mini (ATD-18W4004 7" Titanium sandwich mid/woofer) (~$5000 compared to ~$25000 for the Mini?):


Mark and Daniel monitor? Some sort of composite cabinet (~Corian-ish):


VMPS "Flying V" anyone? Open baffle with planars:

 

My own personal preference in speaker porn at the moment:

 

Doesn't seem justifiable to me, it's just a small 2 way speaker!

 

Well surely if you can afford twenty thousand dollars for a pair of speakers (and presumably the same amount or more in electronics) then you can also afford a decent sized property - in which case why not have larger speakers?

To me you either see hifi as a means to an end (but have an enthusiasm for the kit) or you see it as a hobby - and these speakers are firmly for those in the latter category!

 

I'd have thought people who see hi-fi as a means to an end are less likely to put up with big speakers, than those for whom hi-fi is a hobby.

Also it strongly depends where you live and your lifestyle. You can be very well off and only have a small property, like a designer flat in the middle of Tokyo for example.

 

Actually Japanese Audio nerds (though Tokyo is not a hotbed of audio nerdery) are famous for putting huge speakers into rooms that are considerably smaller than the average English living room.
And guess what? It works. There are some very good reasons why big speakers can work in small rooms.
Here's an 80s Japanese three way that isn't a Yamaha:


and a cutaway:



With the bolt-on stands they are a metre high, 40cm wide, 36cm deep and weigh about 65kgs each.
No idea how they sound, yet.

 

Women are less likely to put up with big speakers - both literally and metaphorically speaking.

Large Tannoys are owned by many music lovers whereas many "audiophiles" own pathetic little speakerettes that fail spectacularly to get the essence of much music across. But they often image well

 

those pioneers are gorgeous, and look stylshly retro, rather than out-dated.

 

I'm sure they do, and I'm sure they sound great. But what I was saying is that people who are not audio nerds, those who just want good sound for the music they like, are less likely to want huge speakers since the equipment is not a big part of their life. I only commented on Tokyo because I know property can be rather expensive to say the least!

I was really just commenting in response to mikedefacto's post that seemed kind of reversed to the way I see it.

 

Couldn't agree more.....
Now maybe I'm just an unreconstructed northern bloke but I was into big speakers when she(who must nearly always be obeyed) met me-she knew what she was getting into
The way I see it we bend over backwards with new kitchens, new flooring, bathroom suites, vile sister in laws etc etc you name it, women just need the balance of these things explaining to them.
Ps It does help when the music is so good they get moved to tears by a performance from Micheal Hutchens/INXS "he was here, I could almost touch him, snif, sob" as happened yesterday.(I made her a nice cup of tea)

 

These people don't exist to any great extent that I can see. Few of the many people with seriously large record collections I know care very much about sound quality.
Either you want good sound and try to get it, or you don't care. The vast majority of people don't care and don't buy speakers on the basis of "good" sound quality anyway.
And as SM has pointed out, most audiophiles (in the west anyway) prefer dinky speakerettes and strange small-driver, narrow baffle designs to what IMO are proper full-range speakers.

Anyway, more mid-80s Japanese speaker pron, this time from Onkyo.


Yet another big, ported 3-way based not-very-loosely on the Yamaha NS-2000 / 1000x concept.
The S-3000 above is smaller and lighter than the Onkyo Scepter 5001 (w432, h756, d490 for 72kgs), but does share a similar concept for mounting the woofer (30cm on the Pioneer vs 35cm on the Onkyo).


The Onkyo were also much more expensive at around 800,000yen/pair in 1986.
The mid and HF domes use a very high-tech sounding diamond coated ceramic/Titanium material that was "laser etched" in someway to "minimise distortion" (my approximate translation, so beware ).

 

Thats a very thin speaker!