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Worst Speakers Ever??

So, we’re in the (part time) business running a service operation with the purpose of keeping decent, aging audio gear from ending up in the dumpster. Got a call from a guy a few weeks ago requesting service on some items. He dropped the names of some well known brands -- Sansui, Onkyo, Garrard -- so, he seemed like a legit customer and I agreed to take them in.

When he arrived, the items totaled NINE pieces altogether and included the not-so-glamorous Sanyo, Realistic, etc. I have to mention, however, that the LAB500 was a pleasant surprise and a great example of a high quality "consumer" direct drive, fully automatic turntable.

Then, there were these speaker boxes with the SRL badge on them. Never heard of this brand. Not sure if it was an AARP thing, or a boutique brand that I was not familiar with. I yanked off the grilles and immediately noticed severe foam disintegration around the woofer cones. But, then it become obvious these were no "boutique" speaker. Cheap drivers. A not-so-dense cabinet. Very basic screw input terminals. These were designed to hit a price point. A "promotional" speaker.

A quick Google search lead me to the full name of the speakers -- Sound Research Laboratories -- a "house brand" for University Stereo in SoCal back in the day. This is making sense now. Removing a woofer gave a clear view of the "crossover." Yes, 3 capacitors to provide a high pass so that lower frequencies didn’t blow things up. A later RTA of the refoamed woofer revealed a bandwidth well past 5k. So? With a tweeter crossover at 5k, this would mean that ALL 4 drivers were operating in the same range in at least part of the audio spectrum. Not the best solution for linear, detailed sound. Not being one who likes to copy the Titanic with the hole already in it and head out to sea, I did some "complementary" mods to the speakers to eliminate part of the tug of war between drivers. They didn’t sound quite as awful as they did when they came in.

It got me thinking about my past experiences with "house brands" and "promotional" speakers.

Ah... Ultralinear.

We sold these back in the day. The cabinets were made of some fragmented materials squeezed together to resemble some type of organic substance , with a wood-grained pattern, literally, screen printed onto the box. Some joked that the cabinets were made of GLIT -- half glue, have sh...! Others mentioned that if you took these out of their cardboard cartons and sit them next to them, if a big gust of wind came up the speakers would blow away and the cardboard cartons would still be standing there.

I did have one real example of their build quality and structural integrity. In the "speaker room" we had the big floor standers (Pioneer HPM 200s, for example) on the floor and everything else on the shelves above. The Ultralinear 12" 3-ways were placed on the top shelf. One day I was doing some maintenance in the room and needed to rearrange and rewire some things to the speaker switcher. Then, there was this darned cable that was just a couple of inches too short. I gave it a gentle tug. Nothing happened. So, I put my body into it and gave it an aggressive pull. Right about then I noticed something moving in the corner of my eye. Followed shorty by the horror of watching the Ultralinears plummet from the top shelf and crash onto the HPM200s. The Ultralinears disintegrated on impact. My first thought is that I just ruined a pair of our most expensive speakers -- the Pioneers. I’m going to get fired!! Then, came the dreaded approach to the Pioneers to determine the extent of the damage. Not a scratch!! Not even the walnut veneer was damaged!! And there lay the totaled Ultralinear right next to them.

The Ultralinear speaker days came and went. And, so did I.

 

 

128x128waytoomuchstuff
benanders's avatar
benanders
219 posts
 
ozzy

7,206 posts

 

The worst speaker I have ever tried/owned was the Carver Line Source. I had at the time the Carver Raven amps, which I liked, so when these speakers came out, I thought they would be a perfect match.

WRONG!

These speakers had the brightest mid/hi I have ever experienced. Even after extensive break in!

No bass, terrible soundstage, etc. Even Bob Carver came to my home to hear them. Which impressed me. Somewhere, somehow, they greatly cheapened his original design.

Soon after Bob's visit they removed the speakers from their website.

ozzy

 

@ozzy some years back there was a plausible reason suggested for why those ALS’s did not perform well (too bright) - allegedly, Carver or his company may have implemented knockoffs of the original HiVi tweeter design (below per diyAudio cut-and-pasted from Carver website ~2015/16):

"Mr. Carver, I admire your achievements in Audio but pelase do not disinform your clients and public. The RT-2 ribbon tweeter for your Cinema line was developed by me when I worked at HI-Vi Research at that time in Toronto. It was developed in the beginning of 1997 and around the end of 1997 we started advertising it in Voice Coil and Speakerbuilder magazines. You asked for Rt-2 samples around that time and then showed the Cinema system prototype at 1999 CES I believe with a great sucess. In about a year, in 1999 we at Hi-Vi inclduing its president Mr.Hongbo Yao were very much amazed with the number of RT-2 tweeter copies that another chinese company started showing in China. We learned that they indeed copied HI-Vi’s RT-2 by request of your supplier who was supposed to make Cinema system for you. At that time it was not Homni. If you went back to HI-Vi tweeters since then, good for you, becase I have almost all RT-2 copies from about 3-4 Chinese vendros and none of them performs like RT-2 tweeter.

As far as your claims about line array performance properties they are, mildly put, somewhat illusory. I suggest you read more about line arrays. I have been building ribbon line arrays for residnetial and professional market for 12 years using desgins like your new ALS and many different other ones that are used in sound reinformcent and commercial market.
I suggest you to “refine” your story about your line array product so that it does not look embarassing to readers who know something about line arrays.“

Ouch! 
Full webpage link:

 

asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,308 posts
 

Ouch indeed...
Worst speakers? Likely my earliest DIYs’ in my SoCA daze....some would agree that the 901/2s’ owned later was a ’step up’ even if they Hate Bose Anything. *L*...

...there is the HF driver in a pair of Phillips bookshelf speakers that has a decent mid/bass driver that’s saddled with a miserable leaf tweeter that hasn’t aged well.

Due for dR.Dawg to surgically Xplant a pair of dinky ribbons....;)

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,454 posts
 

 

Bose 901, definitely. But JBL, Klipsch, and Cerwin Vega are good runner-ups. So suffering from what JGH named "vowel" colorations, they all make voices sound comically unnatural. I saw a lot of that horrid JBL L100 back in the 70’s, which would drive me out of the room every time.

The band I was in in 1971-2 had an Altec Voice-Of-The-Theater PA, set up in the band house living room between gigs. I connected my little system (AR turntable/Shure M91e cartridge, Dynaco PAS-2 pre and ST-70 power amp) to them and blasted records while everyone else drank and smoked. Good times. 😊

Then I heard the Infinity Servo-Static 1 (ESL panels, an 18" servo-feedback sub) and ESS Transtatic I loudspeakers (RTR ESL tweeters, a KEF B110 midrange driver and B139 woofer in a transmission-line enclosure). At $2000 and $1200/pr respectively out of reach (in 1971 dollars), but a boy can dream.

 

knotscott
813 posts
 

@vuch 

Panasonic Thrusters. Prove me wrong.

Those were speakers?! 😉😂

zappas's avatar
zappas
164 posts
 

I found a pair of 15" 4 way AAL speakers in someone's garbage. Took them home and checked them out. Worst speakers I ever heard. And by the way 901's were some of the BEST speakers from the 70's. Omar Bose had it going on then.

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