On Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 1:54:49 AM UTC-4, Big Bad Bob wrote:
never heard that before, 'Boston Sound'. Or 'California Sound' for that
matter.
I just want flat response and reasonable sound distribution.
It seems that most of the well-made acoustic-suspension speakers came out of Boston/Cambridge starting in the 1960s, and continuing into the 90s or so before International Jensen came in and pretty much destroyed the industry. These speakers were known for being (relatively) compact, inefficient, and almost boringly accurate within their response curves.
The west coast, on the other hand, developed speakers that were very bright relative to all things, with curves skewed up at the bass and treble ends of the curve. Cerwin Vega was a prime example of the species with massive woofers and very loud horn tweeters, with the midrange being amongst the missing. Also fairly efficient as measured in noise-per-watt. So, smaller amplifiers were OK - even though a LOT of tweeters were destroyed by clipping if the owners did not show some restraint.
The problem with horn-loaded speakers is that they simply can't move enough air to provide the full range of sound. Power notwithstanding. My least powerful amp is an optimistic 17 wpc/rms using EL84s in PP. My most powerful is a 200 wpc/rms brute-force device every bit of which I need for the Maggies - very nearly dead-flat from 32 Hz - 40 K Hz, down only 6dB at 20 Hz.
Point being that every person has choices in what they like. And certain speakers generally favor certain types of signal over others. Were this not the case, all ice-cream would be vanilla. At this point, I keep six speaker systems in general service, all AR but for the Maggies - which are in the main system. I really _DO_favor the Boston Sound, but, the Maggies blow all of them away. I guess it is also speakers like the Maggies that have removed any temptation I might have had to roll my own. Or, I could spend an obscene amount of money to make my own planar speakers.....
http://www.eraudio.com.au/DIY_Speake...n_esl_kit.html
Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA