1. A system built before and, subsequently, in effective ignorance
of the comprehensive Thiele-Small model. Thus, as a result, a
misdesigned, mistuned conglomeration of poorly integrated parts
and, well, "concepts" to be generous, that misses the theoretical
capabilities of a cabinet that large and a woofer that big by a
VERY wide margin.


Many enclosures were available for the 604, which is the driver
proper, and the old ones are crude by modern standards. The Japanese
have built several commercially, they tend to be really big and heavy.
Big and heavy is good until you have to ship it from Japan.




2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.






If you like the Altecs, fine. But holding them up as a paragon of
design acumen, as shining examples of how to design a well-performing
speaker in any reasonable objective sense is, well, amusing.


I have a pair of late (Mantaray) 604s with Mastering Labs x/o in some
cement cabs. I like them but they are not perfect. Improved cab design
and biamping will lead to substantial improvement, I think.

As a general rule, I like well-designed coaxes. I don't think they
are the only good technology, but they make life simpler. The Tannoys
are apparently no longer available commercially, no is the 12" used in
Urei studio monitors.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...
1. A system built before and, subsequently, in effective ignorance
of the comprehensive Thiele-Small model. Thus, as a result, a
misdesigned, mistuned conglomeration of poorly integrated parts
and, well, "concepts" to be generous, that misses the theoretical
capabilities of a cabinet that large and a woofer that big by a
VERY wide margin.


Many enclosures were available for the 604, which is the driver
proper, and the old ones are crude by modern standards. The Japanese
have built several commercially, they tend to be really big and heavy.
Big and heavy is good until you have to ship it from Japan.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

If you like the Altecs, fine. But holding them up as a paragon of
design acumen, as shining examples of how to design a well-performing
speaker in any reasonable objective sense is, well, amusing.

I have a pair of late (Mantaray) 604s with Mastering Labs x/o in some
cement cabs. I like them but they are not perfect. Improved cab design
and biamping will lead to substantial improvement, I think.

No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging
Dicks (hobbyists with money and ego who go in the high-end audio
business, selling their hobby projects-which might be well and fine as
hobby projects-for huge sums through chichi dealers with arrogant snob
salespunks that can't solder and wouldn't be allowed to clean the
toilet at Sear Sound) that they can throw something together cheaply,
package it in a form factor straight out of a Fifties cheesy sci-fi
movie or "The Wild, Wild West", and trendies form a conga line to buy
it. Look at that goofy thing on the cover of this month's Stereopile.
Would Hewlett, Packard, or Vollum have built anything that goofy
looking? And it's conservative compared to a lot of this crap. That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.) The only other industry I know where
building in the basement is cheaper is in light aircraft, where you
have huge overheads with type certification and (allegedly) product
liability insurrance.

I don't mean to insult Madisound, who are probably a decent vendor,
or Speaker Builder-now AudioXPress-who can only publish what people
submit, and from the looks of the magazine in the last few years the
submissions are getting lean.



No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

The 604 was in volume manufacture for over 45 years, until corporate
acquisition made it (and several other Altec products) a red-headed
stepchild. It cost money to build and "overlapping" products in the
line cost less, apparently much less, to build. I had a phone
conversation with "the new guys" wherein the marketing manager
explained, with glee, that they had Dumpstered the tooling, that they
had happily walked away from hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
from Japanese and other overseas orders , that they could have sold
even more and/or jacked the price higher if they'd been willing to
build earlier versions-particularly with Alnico magnets, which would
have added $100 to the build cost of each unit, and finally that Les
Paul had been after them for 20 years to do a LP signature 604 which
they had diligently ignored.

Profitable legacy products are often killed,laying off workers and
idling plants, in corporate acquisitions no matter the demand. The New
Management has to show they have a bigger-on paper, it's ROI, but it's
just the age-old instinct for measuring penis size. The new one costs
less to build. Not only that, it probably has firmware, which is the
sacred god Intellectual Property and, costing nothing to copy, is of
infinite value. Why do you think all the new subsonic airliners have
FBW, even though, in a rare episode of sanity, the FAA requires they
still be aerodynamically stable?


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.) Is there such a thing as "a good sounding driver"?
Apparently so.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message om...

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging

A LOT of utter irrelvancies deleted

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.)

You mean to say, you LIKE that driver. To YOU, it sound better.

That's a great argument for YOU, one for which I will nor can provide
no technical rejoinder. But you have taken your preference for the
driver and elevated it almost to the level of physical fact. In the
process, you failed to address every single technical point I raised.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.

You brought up the example of how, in your mind, 40 and 50 year old
engine technologgy was, fro some reasons, superior to that which prevails
now. I suggest your example, as applied to the 604, is a highly flawed
example. I would suggest a more apt example would be the comparison
between the internal combustion engine and rickshaws.

Had Altec known 10% of what is known about the intergration of drivers
and cabinets and the resulting determination of driver electromechanical
parameters, the 604 would have had to have been a VERY different driver.
The fundamental physics dictates so. That physics has not changed one
wit in the intervening 60 years. Our knowledge of it has.

In counter to this, you bring up utter irrelevancies about Madisound
and "singing dick high enders" and stuff which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
to do with the fact that th 604 is a BAD DESIGN, and its BAD DESIGN
stands on its own, and need not be compared to anything else, other
than the fundamental operation of physics, electronics and acoustics,
to be judged as bad.

You seem to continue to miss the point that it's not that SPEAKERS
have changed, it's that our UNDERSTANDING of speakers have changed,
and because of THAT, we now know how to change the speakers. Altec
knew NONE of this, NOTHING.

Yoe are certainly correct in that the 604 is unlike anything available
today. I know of now manufacturer of any repute who would knowlingly
design and market a system with such miserable low-frequency performance
as exhibited by the 604 with its typically awful low-frequency alignment.

How wel do you think a system with a whopping 15" driver would sell
if its designers were to admit that it can't go below 50 Hz? And what
sort of reception do you think an 11.3 dB peak at 80 Hz will receive?

That's your 604 in all it's glory, in all it's naive, ignorant of
modern low-frequency design principles, 60-year-old-booming-mid-
bass, absolutely-no-low-bass magnificence.

As I said near the outset of this thread, you may like the 604 and what
it does. But do NOT hold it up as a paragon of loudspeaker design. Having
now investigated it in more detail, I no longer think doing so is
laughable, it's embarrisngly ridiculous. It's a joke. A 60 year old
quaint, if not somewhat unfortunate, joke.

If you want do deal with the technical issues raised in this thread,
I'd be happy to continue. However, you seem to want to raise any number
of totally irrelevant proxy issues that, to me, merely underscore the
gross technical failings of the 604. Such a pursuit is unproductive,
though certainly more so for you than I. I don't know what other readers
can get from this thread, hopefully some of my technical points could
be of some value. But irrelavancies like kit airplanes and demonstrably
misrepresentative views of kit magazines and retail vendors and quite
unsupportable claims of what the current state of the art is have, in
this person's view, no value other than to diminish whatever is left
of any veracity of the foundational basis for your position.

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an
anechoic chamber, but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.
Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.




Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant. Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then? Does it matter?
Judgment, I'd say.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this. Yes, I'm ignorant
of some things. My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it, just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them. (And laid off
all those old broads in Lee's Summit, who knows, Pat Metheny's mom
maybe.)

So how do you feel about Klipschhorns and la Scalas? ;-)

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.

In which case, it's clear that you'd have a woefully incomplete
test. Most of us gave up testing amplifiers in such an incredibly
crude and anachronistic way several decades ago. Fat Dale non-
inductive resistors and the typical sort of measurements do not
a comprehensive set of measurements make.

In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an anechoic chamber,

Again, your comment speaks volumes to, no disrespect intended, how
far out of date your notions of the state of the art of loudspeakers
are. Back 60 years ago, people like Altec new they were lucky if they
knew someone whose uncle worked at a place that ahd an anechoic chamber.
Now, we're 30 years paste the time when they were a requirement.

but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.

But, that's your opinion. And, thus far, we haven't seen single
shred of credible data to suggest that it has any veracity. I'm
not defending the so-called "high-end;" anyone who has seen my
comments on them would know better. But I would hazard to suggest
that your opinion of the technical merits of the ancient 604 are as
wildly out of touch with physical reality as is your opinion of the
current state of the art, which is NOT represented by the hobbyist
market, not by a long shot.

Your raising of that hobbyist market is nothin but a strawman: it;s
easy to knock down. So what? The hobbyist market has NOTHING to do
with the state of knowledge in acoustics and loudspeaker design. Why,
then, do you insist on raising it, other thna as a purely argumentative
strawman?

Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.

Well, all due respect, these last 3 words are the answer.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.

Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that. Hardly neutral,
hardly what competent mastering engineers would call a true monitoring
and verification tool. It may have been all they had at the time, but
that's no excuse for today.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this.

But, you DID hold forth on the topic as if you DID.

Yes, I'm ignorant of some things.

Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?

They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.


What are the more popular mastering systems now? Who ( just a few
names) is using what?


Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that.


Well may have!




Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?


Assuming you meant "product generating a profit"-yes, I do,
absolutely, which is what I said. Unless the product is generating SO
MUCH net spendable as to make it politically unassailable, the small
cash cows are vulnerable not to accountants per se, but accountants
made managers, who then have to "make their bones". I said that as
clearly as I could, in fact. Ask Arctic users of Spilsbury HF radios,
or vintage motorcycle racers running Castrol R.




They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

Probably the market from Japanese audiophiles for the 300B was ten
times or more larger than the existing market, which apparently had
been a few foreign phone exchanges and, bizarrely, NASA. In fact I
sort of suspect the prospect of newly rejuvenated sales to the
vintage/cult audio market was a prime factor in the Lee's Summit tube
line being shut down when it was. A cash cow that management didn't
come up with in the first place is destabilizing, particularly in the
very corporate environment that Deming, a prime contributor to the
Japanese audio cult mentality, engineered in the first place! (One
supplier for any given class of product, and all that.)

In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.


What are the more popular mastering systems now? Who ( just a few
names) is using what?


Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that.


Well may have!




Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?


Assuming you meant "product generating a profit"-yes, I do,
absolutely, which is what I said. Unless the product is generating SO
MUCH net spendable as to make it politically unassailable, the small
cash cows are vulnerable not to accountants per se, but accountants
made managers, who then have to "make their bones". I said that as
clearly as I could, in fact. Ask Arctic users of Spilsbury HF radios,
or vintage motorcycle racers running Castrol R.




They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

Probably the market from Japanese audiophiles for the 300B was ten
times or more larger than the existing market, which apparently had
been a few foreign phone exchanges and, bizarrely, NASA. In fact I
sort of suspect the prospect of newly rejuvenated sales to the
vintage/cult audio market was a prime factor in the Lee's Summit tube
line being shut down when it was. A cash cow that management didn't
come up with in the first place is destabilizing, particularly in the
very corporate environment that Deming, a prime contributor to the
Japanese audio cult mentality, engineered in the first place! (One
supplier for any given class of product, and all that.)

In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.


What are the more popular mastering systems now? Who ( just a few
names) is using what?


Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that.


Well may have!




Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?


Assuming you meant "product generating a profit"-yes, I do,
absolutely, which is what I said. Unless the product is generating SO
MUCH net spendable as to make it politically unassailable, the small
cash cows are vulnerable not to accountants per se, but accountants
made managers, who then have to "make their bones". I said that as
clearly as I could, in fact. Ask Arctic users of Spilsbury HF radios,
or vintage motorcycle racers running Castrol R.




They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

Probably the market from Japanese audiophiles for the 300B was ten
times or more larger than the existing market, which apparently had
been a few foreign phone exchanges and, bizarrely, NASA. In fact I
sort of suspect the prospect of newly rejuvenated sales to the
vintage/cult audio market was a prime factor in the Lee's Summit tube
line being shut down when it was. A cash cow that management didn't
come up with in the first place is destabilizing, particularly in the
very corporate environment that Deming, a prime contributor to the
Japanese audio cult mentality, engineered in the first place! (One
supplier for any given class of product, and all that.)

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.

In which case, it's clear that you'd have a woefully incomplete
test. Most of us gave up testing amplifiers in such an incredibly
crude and anachronistic way several decades ago. Fat Dale non-
inductive resistors and the typical sort of measurements do not
a comprehensive set of measurements make.

In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an anechoic chamber,

Again, your comment speaks volumes to, no disrespect intended, how
far out of date your notions of the state of the art of loudspeakers
are. Back 60 years ago, people like Altec new they were lucky if they
knew someone whose uncle worked at a place that ahd an anechoic chamber.
Now, we're 30 years paste the time when they were a requirement.

but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.

But, that's your opinion. And, thus far, we haven't seen single
shred of credible data to suggest that it has any veracity. I'm
not defending the so-called "high-end;" anyone who has seen my
comments on them would know better. But I would hazard to suggest
that your opinion of the technical merits of the ancient 604 are as
wildly out of touch with physical reality as is your opinion of the
current state of the art, which is NOT represented by the hobbyist
market, not by a long shot.

Your raising of that hobbyist market is nothin but a strawman: it;s
easy to knock down. So what? The hobbyist market has NOTHING to do
with the state of knowledge in acoustics and loudspeaker design. Why,
then, do you insist on raising it, other thna as a purely argumentative
strawman?

Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.

Well, all due respect, these last 3 words are the answer.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.

Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that. Hardly neutral,
hardly what competent mastering engineers would call a true monitoring
and verification tool. It may have been all they had at the time, but
that's no excuse for today.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this.

But, you DID hold forth on the topic as if you DID.

Yes, I'm ignorant of some things.

Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?

They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.

In which case, it's clear that you'd have a woefully incomplete
test. Most of us gave up testing amplifiers in such an incredibly
crude and anachronistic way several decades ago. Fat Dale non-
inductive resistors and the typical sort of measurements do not
a comprehensive set of measurements make.

In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an anechoic chamber,

Again, your comment speaks volumes to, no disrespect intended, how
far out of date your notions of the state of the art of loudspeakers
are. Back 60 years ago, people like Altec new they were lucky if they
knew someone whose uncle worked at a place that ahd an anechoic chamber.
Now, we're 30 years paste the time when they were a requirement.

but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.

But, that's your opinion. And, thus far, we haven't seen single
shred of credible data to suggest that it has any veracity. I'm
not defending the so-called "high-end;" anyone who has seen my
comments on them would know better. But I would hazard to suggest
that your opinion of the technical merits of the ancient 604 are as
wildly out of touch with physical reality as is your opinion of the
current state of the art, which is NOT represented by the hobbyist
market, not by a long shot.

Your raising of that hobbyist market is nothin but a strawman: it;s
easy to knock down. So what? The hobbyist market has NOTHING to do
with the state of knowledge in acoustics and loudspeaker design. Why,
then, do you insist on raising it, other thna as a purely argumentative
strawman?

Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.

Well, all due respect, these last 3 words are the answer.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant.

If you think the mastering world consists of either 604s or Genelecs,
you ARE woefully out of touch.

Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then?

If they used 604s in comething like UREI cabinets, then we can say
for certain, they heard something with a seriously bloated, woefully
underdamped, highly-distorted bottom end, a major midrange suckout as
that 15" struggled mightly to keep up with a tweeter that had a
monster peak at about 9 kHz and little above that. Hardly neutral,
hardly what competent mastering engineers would call a true monitoring
and verification tool. It may have been all they had at the time, but
that's no excuse for today.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this.

But, you DID hold forth on the topic as if you DID.

Yes, I'm ignorant of some things.

Indeed. I would respectfully point out you are ignorant of the vast
majority of imformation about the last 60 years of loudspeaker
research and technology, and you allowed what was left be colored by
a preference for what is one of the poorer examples of loudspeaker
design in the last half century, taken in any reasonably modern context.

My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it,

No, SOME people wanted. Not anywhere near enough to justify keeping
an inefficient, difficult-to-manage and money-losing manufacturing
line going. If you think there was ANY prayer ofthe product generating
a product, do you think ANY bean counter would kill it?

They're not going to keep making them to do some tiny handful of people
a favor.

just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them.

As well we should. Have you any clue what the total annualized sales
of SE triode amplifiers are world-wide? Frankly, that fart is far more
substantial.

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an
anechoic chamber, but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.
Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.




Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant. Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then? Does it matter?
Judgment, I'd say.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this. Yes, I'm ignorant
of some things. My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it, just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them. (And laid off
all those old broads in Lee's Summit, who knows, Pat Metheny's mom
maybe.)

So how do you feel about Klipschhorns and la Scalas? ;-)

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.

In the case of the amplifiers, it would be easy to settle the matter
with an AP box, a couple of fat Dale noninductive resistors, and the
needed test leads.In the case of the speakers, I'd say you need an
anechoic chamber, but it's no secret that the more determined hobby
guys are very competitive with some of the High End factory stuff.
Whether this means the hobbyists are good or that a lot of the High
end stuff is not-and I suspect it's both-I don't know.




Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.


In some cases we have. In others, we-actually "youse" since I don't
design speakers-have ****ed up really badly. FWIW not many people are
still mixing down or mastering on 604s, although several speakers are
in use the Genelec seems dominant. Are the active Genelecs bad
speakers? No. If you listen to a Jimi Hendrix record on Genelecs or on
604s, which is more likely to replicate what Eddie Kramer-or whoever
mixed it down in 1969-heard in the room back then? Does it matter?
Judgment, I'd say.

You are right, I didn't rebut your technical arguments because you
probably have the numbers completely right-I could look them up, I
trust your citations-although I don't really have enough speaker
design background to intelligently deal with this. Yes, I'm ignorant
of some things. My rant was, and is, not against modern speaker design
per se but more against the corporate behavior of those who gave the
604 the Nembutal enema. Good or not, people wanted it, just as WE
willfully farted in the face of the Japanese who worship the 300B
triode and were willing to pay ridiculous sums for them. (And laid off
all those old broads in Lee's Summit, who knows, Pat Metheny's mom
maybe.)

So how do you feel about Klipschhorns and la Scalas? ;-)

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message om...

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging

A LOT of utter irrelvancies deleted

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.)

You mean to say, you LIKE that driver. To YOU, it sound better.

That's a great argument for YOU, one for which I will nor can provide
no technical rejoinder. But you have taken your preference for the
driver and elevated it almost to the level of physical fact. In the
process, you failed to address every single technical point I raised.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.

You brought up the example of how, in your mind, 40 and 50 year old
engine technologgy was, fro some reasons, superior to that which prevails
now. I suggest your example, as applied to the 604, is a highly flawed
example. I would suggest a more apt example would be the comparison
between the internal combustion engine and rickshaws.

Had Altec known 10% of what is known about the intergration of drivers
and cabinets and the resulting determination of driver electromechanical
parameters, the 604 would have had to have been a VERY different driver.
The fundamental physics dictates so. That physics has not changed one
wit in the intervening 60 years. Our knowledge of it has.

In counter to this, you bring up utter irrelevancies about Madisound
and "singing dick high enders" and stuff which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
to do with the fact that th 604 is a BAD DESIGN, and its BAD DESIGN
stands on its own, and need not be compared to anything else, other
than the fundamental operation of physics, electronics and acoustics,
to be judged as bad.

You seem to continue to miss the point that it's not that SPEAKERS
have changed, it's that our UNDERSTANDING of speakers have changed,
and because of THAT, we now know how to change the speakers. Altec
knew NONE of this, NOTHING.

Yoe are certainly correct in that the 604 is unlike anything available
today. I know of now manufacturer of any repute who would knowlingly
design and market a system with such miserable low-frequency performance
as exhibited by the 604 with its typically awful low-frequency alignment.

How wel do you think a system with a whopping 15" driver would sell
if its designers were to admit that it can't go below 50 Hz? And what
sort of reception do you think an 11.3 dB peak at 80 Hz will receive?

That's your 604 in all it's glory, in all it's naive, ignorant of
modern low-frequency design principles, 60-year-old-booming-mid-
bass, absolutely-no-low-bass magnificence.

As I said near the outset of this thread, you may like the 604 and what
it does. But do NOT hold it up as a paragon of loudspeaker design. Having
now investigated it in more detail, I no longer think doing so is
laughable, it's embarrisngly ridiculous. It's a joke. A 60 year old
quaint, if not somewhat unfortunate, joke.

If you want do deal with the technical issues raised in this thread,
I'd be happy to continue. However, you seem to want to raise any number
of totally irrelevant proxy issues that, to me, merely underscore the
gross technical failings of the 604. Such a pursuit is unproductive,
though certainly more so for you than I. I don't know what other readers
can get from this thread, hopefully some of my technical points could
be of some value. But irrelavancies like kit airplanes and demonstrably
misrepresentative views of kit magazines and retail vendors and quite
unsupportable claims of what the current state of the art is have, in
this person's view, no value other than to diminish whatever is left
of any veracity of the foundational basis for your position.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message om...

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging

A LOT of utter irrelvancies deleted

That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.)

But very FALSE. I would be interested in seeing but a single example
of your assertion demonstrated as such with a reasonable acceptable
auite of measurements.


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.)

You mean to say, you LIKE that driver. To YOU, it sound better.

That's a great argument for YOU, one for which I will nor can provide
no technical rejoinder. But you have taken your preference for the
driver and elevated it almost to the level of physical fact. In the
process, you failed to address every single technical point I raised.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

We HAVE done better today. As I said, you chose to ignore the very gross
technical failings of the 604 in the points I rasied, just from the fact
that on the basis of it's electromechanical parameters alaone, it is
a product desgined in an era when, quite literally, the people at Altec
and elseqhere were essentially clueless as to how drivers and cabinets
integrated into systems. The cabinets recommended and manufactured at
the time resulted in, as I said, abysmally poor low-frequency response.
"Redesigning" these cabinets using concrete changes an abysmally poor
system into a heacy, hard-to-manage abysmally poor system.

You brought up the example of how, in your mind, 40 and 50 year old
engine technologgy was, fro some reasons, superior to that which prevails
now. I suggest your example, as applied to the 604, is a highly flawed
example. I would suggest a more apt example would be the comparison
between the internal combustion engine and rickshaws.

Had Altec known 10% of what is known about the intergration of drivers
and cabinets and the resulting determination of driver electromechanical
parameters, the 604 would have had to have been a VERY different driver.
The fundamental physics dictates so. That physics has not changed one
wit in the intervening 60 years. Our knowledge of it has.

In counter to this, you bring up utter irrelevancies about Madisound
and "singing dick high enders" and stuff which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
to do with the fact that th 604 is a BAD DESIGN, and its BAD DESIGN
stands on its own, and need not be compared to anything else, other
than the fundamental operation of physics, electronics and acoustics,
to be judged as bad.

You seem to continue to miss the point that it's not that SPEAKERS
have changed, it's that our UNDERSTANDING of speakers have changed,
and because of THAT, we now know how to change the speakers. Altec
knew NONE of this, NOTHING.

Yoe are certainly correct in that the 604 is unlike anything available
today. I know of now manufacturer of any repute who would knowlingly
design and market a system with such miserable low-frequency performance
as exhibited by the 604 with its typically awful low-frequency alignment.

How wel do you think a system with a whopping 15" driver would sell
if its designers were to admit that it can't go below 50 Hz? And what
sort of reception do you think an 11.3 dB peak at 80 Hz will receive?

That's your 604 in all it's glory, in all it's naive, ignorant of
modern low-frequency design principles, 60-year-old-booming-mid-
bass, absolutely-no-low-bass magnificence.

As I said near the outset of this thread, you may like the 604 and what
it does. But do NOT hold it up as a paragon of loudspeaker design. Having
now investigated it in more detail, I no longer think doing so is
laughable, it's embarrisngly ridiculous. It's a joke. A 60 year old
quaint, if not somewhat unfortunate, joke.

If you want do deal with the technical issues raised in this thread,
I'd be happy to continue. However, you seem to want to raise any number
of totally irrelevant proxy issues that, to me, merely underscore the
gross technical failings of the 604. Such a pursuit is unproductive,
though certainly more so for you than I. I don't know what other readers
can get from this thread, hopefully some of my technical points could
be of some value. But irrelavancies like kit airplanes and demonstrably
misrepresentative views of kit magazines and retail vendors and quite
unsupportable claims of what the current state of the art is have, in
this person's view, no value other than to diminish whatever is left
of any veracity of the foundational basis for your position.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging
Dicks (hobbyists with money and ego who go in the high-end audio
business, selling their hobby projects-which might be well and fine as
hobby projects-for huge sums through chichi dealers with arrogant snob
salespunks that can't solder and wouldn't be allowed to clean the
toilet at Sear Sound) that they can throw something together cheaply,
package it in a form factor straight out of a Fifties cheesy sci-fi
movie or "The Wild, Wild West", and trendies form a conga line to buy
it. Look at that goofy thing on the cover of this month's Stereopile.
Would Hewlett, Packard, or Vollum have built anything that goofy
looking? And it's conservative compared to a lot of this crap. That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.) The only other industry I know where
building in the basement is cheaper is in light aircraft, where you
have huge overheads with type certification and (allegedly) product
liability insurrance.

I don't mean to insult Madisound, who are probably a decent vendor,
or Speaker Builder-now AudioXPress-who can only publish what people
submit, and from the looks of the magazine in the last few years the
submissions are getting lean.



No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

The 604 was in volume manufacture for over 45 years, until corporate
acquisition made it (and several other Altec products) a red-headed
stepchild. It cost money to build and "overlapping" products in the
line cost less, apparently much less, to build. I had a phone
conversation with "the new guys" wherein the marketing manager
explained, with glee, that they had Dumpstered the tooling, that they
had happily walked away from hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
from Japanese and other overseas orders , that they could have sold
even more and/or jacked the price higher if they'd been willing to
build earlier versions-particularly with Alnico magnets, which would
have added $100 to the build cost of each unit, and finally that Les
Paul had been after them for 20 years to do a LP signature 604 which
they had diligently ignored.

Profitable legacy products are often killed,laying off workers and
idling plants, in corporate acquisitions no matter the demand. The New
Management has to show they have a bigger-on paper, it's ROI, but it's
just the age-old instinct for measuring penis size. The new one costs
less to build. Not only that, it probably has firmware, which is the
sacred god Intellectual Property and, costing nothing to copy, is of
infinite value. Why do you think all the new subsonic airliners have
FBW, even though, in a rare episode of sanity, the FAA requires they
still be aerodynamically stable?


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.) Is there such a thing as "a good sounding driver"?
Apparently so.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

Well, to a substantial extent, I did. I have a reasonable electronic
background, but I don't claim to be a speaker designer. That said, and
not as a dig, a lot of those who do apparently don't know very much
either.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

I rail against the attitude of many hobbyists and High End Swinging
Dicks (hobbyists with money and ego who go in the high-end audio
business, selling their hobby projects-which might be well and fine as
hobby projects-for huge sums through chichi dealers with arrogant snob
salespunks that can't solder and wouldn't be allowed to clean the
toilet at Sear Sound) that they can throw something together cheaply,
package it in a form factor straight out of a Fifties cheesy sci-fi
movie or "The Wild, Wild West", and trendies form a conga line to buy
it. Look at that goofy thing on the cover of this month's Stereopile.
Would Hewlett, Packard, or Vollum have built anything that goofy
looking? And it's conservative compared to a lot of this crap. That a
hobbyist can build an amp as good as a c-j, Audio Research, or VTL, or
a speaker as good as a Thiel or Vandersteen for a fraction even
counting his own time at market technician/assembler rates, is
ludicrous. (But very true.) The only other industry I know where
building in the basement is cheaper is in light aircraft, where you
have huge overheads with type certification and (allegedly) product
liability insurrance.

I don't mean to insult Madisound, who are probably a decent vendor,
or Speaker Builder-now AudioXPress-who can only publish what people
submit, and from the looks of the magazine in the last few years the
submissions are getting lean.



No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

The 604 was in volume manufacture for over 45 years, until corporate
acquisition made it (and several other Altec products) a red-headed
stepchild. It cost money to build and "overlapping" products in the
line cost less, apparently much less, to build. I had a phone
conversation with "the new guys" wherein the marketing manager
explained, with glee, that they had Dumpstered the tooling, that they
had happily walked away from hundreds of thousands of dollars per year
from Japanese and other overseas orders , that they could have sold
even more and/or jacked the price higher if they'd been willing to
build earlier versions-particularly with Alnico magnets, which would
have added $100 to the build cost of each unit, and finally that Les
Paul had been after them for 20 years to do a LP signature 604 which
they had diligently ignored.

Profitable legacy products are often killed,laying off workers and
idling plants, in corporate acquisitions no matter the demand. The New
Management has to show they have a bigger-on paper, it's ROI, but it's
just the age-old instinct for measuring penis size. The new one costs
less to build. Not only that, it probably has firmware, which is the
sacred god Intellectual Property and, costing nothing to copy, is of
infinite value. Why do you think all the new subsonic airliners have
FBW, even though, in a rare episode of sanity, the FAA requires they
still be aerodynamically stable?


But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

And yet: they sound better than many, many later efforts (although
I'd never say all.) Is there such a thing as "a good sounding driver"?
Apparently so.

Can we do better today? You'd think so. But I think it would mean
spending money, and the audio industry seems allergic to this.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...
1. A system built before and, subsequently, in effective ignorance
of the comprehensive Thiele-Small model. Thus, as a result, a
misdesigned, mistuned conglomeration of poorly integrated parts
and, well, "concepts" to be generous, that misses the theoretical
capabilities of a cabinet that large and a woofer that big by a
VERY wide margin.


Many enclosures were available for the 604, which is the driver
proper, and the old ones are crude by modern standards. The Japanese
have built several commercially, they tend to be really big and heavy.
Big and heavy is good until you have to ship it from Japan.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

If you like the Altecs, fine. But holding them up as a paragon of
design acumen, as shining examples of how to design a well-performing
speaker in any reasonable objective sense is, well, amusing.

I have a pair of late (Mantaray) 604s with Mastering Labs x/o in some
cement cabs. I like them but they are not perfect. Improved cab design
and biamping will lead to substantial improvement, I think.

No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.

(Sam Byrams) wrote in message . com...
1. A system built before and, subsequently, in effective ignorance
of the comprehensive Thiele-Small model. Thus, as a result, a
misdesigned, mistuned conglomeration of poorly integrated parts
and, well, "concepts" to be generous, that misses the theoretical
capabilities of a cabinet that large and a woofer that big by a
VERY wide margin.


Many enclosures were available for the 604, which is the driver
proper, and the old ones are crude by modern standards. The Japanese
have built several commercially, they tend to be really big and heavy.
Big and heavy is good until you have to ship it from Japan.

Maybe you missed the point of my remarks. The 604 design comes from
an era when no one new how to design a box suited to a driver, and
no one new how to design a driver to fit in a box. People couldn't
do reasonable driver/enclosure and thus system designs because no one
knew, back in the middle 1940's what any of this stuff meant.

A number of variations of the 604 exist, but typical T/S figures
on them run something like:

Fs 27 Hz
Vas 450 L
Qms 2.32
Qes 0.22
Qts 0.20
Xmax 3 mm

Yes, it's got phenomenal efficiency at about 98 dB 1W @ 1m, but
at a pretty significant cost: look at the Qts figure of 0.2.

Aiming for a maximally flat response requires the speaker to be mounted
in a TINY box, on the order of 80 liters, tuned to about 50 Hz. The result
is impressively flat, less than 1 dB response variation (ignoring driver
response anomolies), but is hardly impressive bass-wise for a 15" driver,
struggling, as it does, to reach down to 53 Hz.

In the more typical cabinet used for these drivers, which is an excessively
large cabinet tuned with large ports at a very high frequency, the response
of the system is, well, abyssmal. How about an 11 dB peak at 80 Hz, with
a response that plummets like a rock below that.

And the horn is such that crossover frequencies like 900 Hz are a
bare minimum. That's asking an awful lot of an untreated paper cone.

2. A "real" large driver with very poor linearity that has no better
linear volume displacement than your alledged "cheap" smaller
drivers, with a stiff and VERY non-linear suspension.

With an excursion of all of about 3 mm, despite its enormous magnet
and underhung voice coil, this 15" driver has no more output capability
than one of those "cheap" 10" drivers you go about.

3. A "real" expensive crossover that was designed without any
consideration of conjugate load matching

Doug Sax of Mastering Labs designed a much better x/o but although
it's still available to order I think even he would admit biamping is
better.

But the basic item is SO handicapped by its fundamental limitations. It
was an amazing driver in its time. But it's time was 1945. That's almost
SIXTY years ago, my friend. Event ignoring your rather biased and poorly
constructed remark about "cheap" drivers, pretty much EVERYTHING that's
understood about the interaction of cabinets and drivers, system
integration, crossover design, driver design, EVERYTHING occured
significantly AFTER the 604.

You take ALL of that knowledge, lump it into a single pile, call it
"the stuff they sell at Madisound" and "Speaker Builder mentality
projects" as if that represented the Parnassus of loudspeaker knowledge
and proceed to tilt against it like some evil windmill. Well, there's a
much larger world of knowledge about loudspeakers than that, I would
hesitate to suggest. And the Altec 604 is NOT part of it, because it
was born 25 years too early.

If you like the Altecs, fine. But holding them up as a paragon of
design acumen, as shining examples of how to design a well-performing
speaker in any reasonable objective sense is, well, amusing.

I have a pair of late (Mantaray) 604s with Mastering Labs x/o in some
cement cabs. I like them but they are not perfect. Improved cab design
and biamping will lead to substantial improvement, I think.

No, you have already run up against the unresolvabel fundamental
design limitations of the the beast. Theya re intrinsically what
they are, and NO amount of fiddling will get them beyond that point.

Appreciate them for what they a probably one of the best examples
of the black art of speaker from 6 decades ago, a period where more
witchcraft and alchemy and kitchen-sink fiddling then science and
understanding and real engineering ruled.

604's, like T. Rex, is a magnificent specimen of a time long past.
We can admire them, study them, marvel at their anachronistic
magnificence.

But, like T. Rex, they're STILL extinct. Their time has come, and
their time has gone. R. I. P.