Paying Homage

A common misconception is that speakers sporting big woofers produce deep bass. In fact, though they invariably sported wide baffles and large woofers, the vast majority of high sensitivity speakers that were dominant from the 1930s to the mid 1960s favored dynamic and articulate yet rich and well developed over deep bass.  Nor did these designs extend into the frequency stratosphere.  If truth be told, they were not particularly neutral in the modern sense either.

Why is it then that so many of these speakers continue to be admired by music lovers the world over? In a word, actually two: emotional involvement. The best of the breed emphasized tonal balance, accurate timbre, resolution and dynamic realism. Without exception, these speakers were extremely sensitive – some as high as 107dB efficient -- many were two-way horn loaded designs, featuring uncomplicated crossovers, resonating cabinets constructed from plywood with minimal bracing or internal damping.

Most contemporary speakers hardly bear a family resemblance to these among their ancestors. The contemporary speaker cuts a leaner figure – taller and thinner – punctuated by narrow front baffles. Often featuring multiple drivers of exotic materials, complex crossovers and cabinets built from MDF, they are typically heavily braced and damped, and aspire to be resonance free.  The modern speaker is typically only modestly efficient as well.

The difference in speaker design was not evolutionary.  Instead, it was quite abrupt and could be traced to the advent of the transistor. The transistor meant high power at low cost which led to ever more inefficient loudspeakers which in turn fed the high power transistor industry, which allowed speaker designers to build ever more complicated crossovers correcting for every impropriety in driver response, which made the speakers ever more demanding loads for amplifiers, which, you guessed it, required ever more powerful amplifiers. 

One reason that many of the horn-loaded high efficiency designs fell out of favor – aside from their aesthetics – was the fact that they were being displayed with solid state designs which were becoming prevalent at the time, and the match was anything but synergistic. Early transistors may be have been inexpensive and powerful, but they were hardly nuanced or harmonically rich.  They screeched and pierced the ear nearly as badly as the first few generations of digital playback.  So it was out with the old and in with the new.  Solid state won out and the more efficient, and extremely revealing, horn designs more or less disappeared from view.

Though this cycle has continued pretty much unabated to this day, the past decade or so has witnessed something of a modest but not insignificant counterrevolution in speaker design precipitated largely by a renaissance in low powered tube amplifiers.  These amplifiers require very different speakers than the ubiquitous power and current hungry ones that have been in vogue. In time the popularity of lower powered tube amps fed the need for ever more ‘tube friendly’ speakers and even the occasional resonant cabinet has found its way into commercial products. Nowadays, there are also a number of horn designs of all varieties: many are multi driver affairs that are unified (?) by (of all things) digital crossovers (boo); others are rear loaded and housed in narrow, aesthetically pleasing cabinets.  In one way or another, all of these speakers revisit time tested ideas – often without acknowledging their heritage – preferring to pass themselves off as novel, even occasionally as revolutionary though they are anything but.