On 22 Dec 2004 00:38:45 -0800, "godcity" wrote:

Hi.
I've got some Urei 809's soffit mounted in my control room. I went to
all the trouble of soffit mounting them only to learn that i don't
really care for them. my studio designer said "trust me" but i'm still
not impressed. There's some tears in the cones, though. snip

Well, DUH!

They are
quite old and run down. I could possibly have them reconed. snip

Of course.

But does anyone have any ideas either for speaker cabinets of the same
dimensions that would fit in the soffits, or for some sort of speaker
upgrade that would drop into the existing cabinet? Maybe there's a
good coaxial 12" out there that I could use? The JBL 2142H came up on
a quick google search. Freq response curve sucks, though.
I'm not opposed to DIY'ing something into the Urei box. snip

Have your UREIs (which are essentially an Altec 604 with improved
horn) reconed. Very few made for better control monitors. I remember
a "shootout" at an AES convention many years ago, with a pair of UREIs
driven by bi-amped Crowns duking it out agains some Magnaplanars using
some stupid foo-foo amps. The source was the Soundstream digital RTR
playing Leonard Maazel's "1812 Overture" that was then in release on
Telarc on LP. The result? The UREIs kicked that foo foo crap's ASS!

You don't have to "like" control mointors. They're supposed to tell
the truth. Inasmuch as "point sourcing" goes, you can't do much
better than these, although they're just a tad shy on top end off
axis. Perforated cones are a major problem in any bass reflex design.
Are they mounted in the correct UREI enclosures, I hope?

dB