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On 20 Jun 2005 04:07:36 -0700, wrote:

By your description, these are probably from the late-50's or
early- to mid-60's vintage systems. This was from a time when
few people in the industry had a comprehensive understanding
of the notion of designing speakers using a systems approach
as described by Thiele and then later Small.

But the overwhelming factor is that these speakers were INTENDED
as junk, DESIGNED as junk, MANUFACTURED as junk, all to save lots
of money, and then intended to be SOLD to people who didn't know
or didn't care much about the quality of the sound.

I think you're being too hard on them. Did they know as much back
then as we do today? Of course not. As to Thiele and Small, AFAIK
that's for bass-reflex designs, which that old stuff was generally
not.

I have no doubt that (at least the more thoughtful) designers back
then made reasonable attempts to design systems with decent
performance, within the limitations of the technology and design
practices of the time. Large magnets as what are common today simply
were not appropriate back then.

Most stuff sold back then was not nearly as "junk" as most stuff sold
today...