[raztec]

I'm wondering what the general consensus is with respect to buying vintage speakers (if 9 years old can be considered vintage?)

I'm thinking of purchasing a pair of 9 year old Reference 3a, Generation II, Type M3 floor standing speakers for $1200. They were made in France, not Canada like the newer generation Ref 3a. I compared their sound quality to a pair of brand new B&W 704 ($2800) and the used Ref3a were far less fatiguing.

A friend who's an audiophile says don't bother with older speakers as the technology has improved dramatically to make most moderns speakers much better sounding at the same price point.

Are people in agreement with this statement: that newer is better than older speakers?

And anyone have any experience with this particular Ref 3a?

Thanks,
RAZ

[PaulFolbrecht]

In short, there have been no speaker developments in the last decade that would render these Ref 3A speakers "obsolete" in any sense. 

There have been developments in drivers and cabinet design that may bring improvement to particular designs/brands, but OTOH there are certain, nearly timeless designs/methodologies that rely very little on technology and still sound great.

For example, I am of the opinion that Ref 3A's philosophy of wideband drivers and minimalist crossovers is much more likely to produce natural and realistic sound than the modern B&W philosophy of very complex, power-robbing high-order crossovers and flat anechoic frequency response at all cost.  In other words, since, despite all the technology, B&W speakers aren't very good, they're easy to beat, even by much older speakers that are built with more sensible design.

[Vapor Audio]

I'd disagree ... the big improvements have been tweeters than can handle incredibly low crossover points with shallow slopes and woofers with much lower distortion motors, higher excursion, and a linear Bl curve.  You're right too, construction methods have come a long way in the last decade.

[Russell Dawkins]

Paul,
whereas the MMs run the woofer full range, I think, I don't think this is a  general philosophy of Ref 3A. Their M3, if I'm not mistaken, is a 4 way with complex design - KEF style clamshell isobarik woofers in dual chambers, "mid bass coupler", midrange and tweeter in the version I heard in '93. It sounded reasonably accurate, tonally, but dead - as most multi way high order crossover designs seem to, in my experience.

The MM, by considerable contrast, sounded very much alive but ultimately wrong tonally and with an indefinable phasiness that made them unacceptable to me. Close, but no cigar.

RAZ,
I think your audiophile friend is basically right. I think there has been more improvement in speakers than in any other category of component in the last 10 years. This period has been good for cheap amps, too.

[JLM]

Vintage vs. new speakers is not the root question here. IMO the biggest change in speakers over the past 30 years has been the trend away from flabby to lean bass.  The only new technology over the past ten years that I'm aware of is Martin King's development of software to enable design of transmission line cabinets.  Yes material science continues to advance, but it’s more of a crawl than a leaps and bounds kind of phenomenon.

We've had horn loaded speakers and Lowthers around for 70 years.  Maggies and air transformers have been around for decades.  Sealed and ported design methods are also decades old.  Mainstream speakers are still a vertical series of dynamic (cone) drivers in a wooden box.  The vintage vs. new is fighting words among some.  Eventually cone surrounds may need repair/replacement and you can't be sure how an speaker may have been treated or mis-treated.  If you have an eye and the time, searching pawn and thrift shops can turn up absolutely wonderful finds in old speakers or amps.

The real question here is knowing what you want. Obviously you don't have a price range nailed down.  I don't know if the B&W or Ref 3A sound anything alike.  What kinds of music do you listen to?  How big is the room?  What sonic attributes are you after?  How loud do you listen?  What speakers have you been listening to and what don't you like about them?  What amp will you be using?  I'd take a step back and maybe do some soul searching about this.  Half the fun of being an audiophile is in the hunt.

I agree with Paul that multiple high order crossovers destroy any coherency of the sound.

B&W makes "hi-fi sounding" speakers IMO.  By that I mean by that term is artificial and exagerated, cannot be mistaken for live, unamplified sound. 

[TheChairGuy]

I compared their sound quality to a pair of brand new B&W 704 ($2800) and the used Ref3a were far less fatiguing.

A friend who's an audiophile says don't bother with older speakers as the technology has improved dramatically to make most moderns speakers much better sounding at the same price point.

Are people in agreement with this statement: that newer is better than older speakers?

I paraphrased your statement above.....

Make sure whatever you end up with is not-at-all fatiguing....not just less fatiguing.  If the Ref3a were fatiguing, you're still barking up the wrong tree. 

It's altogether possible that it wasn't the speaker causing listening fatigue - some other area in the chain (often likely, the digital source)

As for the subject of old vs. new...neither of the speakers mentioned are state-of-the-art in any era (tho, certainly, adequate choices on the whole)....choose whatever sounds pleasing irregardless of age, but with an eye on your budgetary constraints. 

The advances in speaker designs the past decade seem to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, by my yardstick as such, so I wouldn't be pigeonholed in that debate.  Just focus on what you like and can afford, and tune out the audio-phool chatter on the subject and you'll be fine. 

Your hobby exists to please you, not the masses - so, just enjoy    Your tastes, or 'refinement', may change along the way - you can't really help that.  Enjoy what you can today as it's the only reality you have to judge right now 

[PaulFolbrecht]

Paul,
whereas the MMs run the woofer full range, I think, I don't think this is a  general philosophy of Ref 3A. Their M3, if I'm not mistaken, is a 4 way with complex design - KEF style clamshell isobarik woofers in dual chambers, "mid bass coupler", midrange and tweeter in the version I heard in '93. It sounded reasonably accurate, tonally, but dead - as most multi way high order crossover designs seem to, in my experience.

If that's true I definitely made a bad assumption!  Thanks for the clarification.

The point I was making regarding crossovers and drivers is still valid, but obviously just doesn't apply here then. 

[raztec]

The real question here is knowing what you want. Obviously you don't have a price range nailed down.  I don't know if the B&W or Ref 3A sound anything alike.  What kinds of music do you listen to?  How big is the room?  What sonic attributes are you after?  How loud do you listen?  What speakers have you been listening to and what don't you like about them?  What amp will you be using?  I'd take a step back and maybe do some soul searching about this.  Half the fun of being an audiophile is in the hunt.

I like to listen to music very loud. My favourites are Thievery Corporation, Shakti, Ghazal (a mix of n.indian and persian), jazz, hard rock, pop (james, placebo, paulson, radio head, people in planes etc.).
The room is 22x11 with 6'7" ceiling.
The amp is to be determined. Probably Sherwood Newcastle or Rotel or Arcam AVR3000.

BTW the Ref 3A were not fatiguing at all. And from what I've read about the designer he's into simplicity and minimalizing the cross-overs. But this is the first I've ever heard or heard of them.

Thanks for all the advice,

Raz

[doug s.]

raz, imo, the "old" speakers you refer to are new, imo.  want old?  try these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320136166187


i picked up a ratty looking but 100% functional pair on my local craigslist for $20.  are they as good as my spendy modern speakers?  no, but they are good speakers, period.  based upon my results, an audio bud who lives in upstate ny picked up a pair of these (along w/a vintage receiver) for $40:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250141959344


he likes 'em as much as any speakers he's listened to, including modern, & he's had modern speakers up to ~$3k in his room.  so, check out craigslist, or the salvation army/goodwill, etc.  you may be surprised as to what you can find...   aa

now, one of the best speakers around, still prized by today's music lovers, is the ~30 year old yamaha ns1000m.  a bud of mine had a pair when i was in college, & they were the best i'd ever heard.  i suspect they are still awesome performers.  but, don't expect to find a pair in good condition for cheap.  altho, cheap is a relative term, compared to new speakers.  you can find these in decent shape for >$1k...

http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/oldeworldehtml/yamahans1000m.html


doug s.

[TheChairGuy]

The Sansui's look like they have old Heil Air Motion Tweeters....but they are described as 'horns' so probably not.

If they were Heil's, they'd probably be worth every penny of that $242 they fetched on ebay recently 

[Wayner]

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned the age of components in an older speaker. The problem is thru time voltage and current bombardment slowly renders a capacitor to the eventual value of 0 MFD. The effects on the mid-range and/or tweeters is that their effective cross-over point has been lowered by aging caps. Now they are expected to reproduce the entire spectrum which will certainly result in their failure. Do you have to worry about a 9 year old 3a, not yet....hopefully. I do think that when speakers age 20 years, all of the cross-over capacitors should be replaced. By the way, I have a couple of old Dynaco speakers ($89.00 in 1975) that will out-do many $1k speakers of today.

W

[doug s.]

i agree about the caps issue.  upgrading caps is a well regarded mod to new speakers as well...

doug s.

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned the age of components in an older speaker. The problem is thru time voltage and current bombardment slowly renders a capacitor to the eventual value of 0 MFD. The effects on the mid-range and/or tweeters is that their effective cross-over point has been lowered by aging caps. Now they are expected to reproduce the entire spectrum which will certainly result in their failure. Do you have to worry about a 9 year old 3a, not yet....hopefully. I do think that when speakers age 20 years, all of the cross-over capacitors should be replaced. By the way, I have a couple of old Dynaco speakers ($89.00 in 1975) that will out-do many $1k speakers of today.

W

[doug s.]

the sansui tweets are definitely horns.

doug s.

The Sansui's look like they have old Heil Air Motion Tweeters....but they are described as 'horns' so probably not.

If they were Heil's, they'd probably be worth every penny of that $242 they fetched on ebay recently 

[fredgarvin]

Years ago , for a brief time, I owned a pair of glass-topped JBL floor monsters that had tweeter lenses like those Sansuis'. They had 15'' woofers and played real loud! If I could generalize, I would agree with Paul in that cabinet construction has become much more solid in todays units. Of course there were many well built cabinets 20 years ago, but the speakers of today have gone much farther. For instance, the old Infinities were favorites of mine, but except for the mega buck ones they generally had twinky cabinets compared to most today. The result is mid-bass coloration and hollowness in comparison. Think Heil and again it was the flabby bass that flawed them. Measurements seem to show bwtter tweeters today, but in real life listening, the old ones sound quite good. think Heil, Energy, infinity etc.

[Russell Dawkins]

TCG, I think what you're looking at is called a diffraction lens, once commonly seen in front of HF horns.

One thing that caught my eye: if you click on the upper link in the post, then the upper link in the eBay ad where Sansui gets in to their detailed tech description, on the woofer illustration they show an "HF filter" near the voice coil. In the text they mention that the woofer is fed full range, bypassing the crossover, and the crossover frequency to the mids is 700Hz.

So, my guess is that they were mechanically de-coupling the cone from the voice coil to achieve limited HF extension and avoid having to use a large inductor.

[raztec]

Thanks guys for all your wonderful replies.

But, does anyone have any experience with this particular Ref 3A, if it's worth that kind of money and what amp would best suit them?

Raz

[Russell Dawkins]

If the "generation II" M3s are anything like the Gen I with which I am very familiar, I don't think you will be able to get enough power into them to play as loud as you apparently want to before risking voice coil burn out. They need a powerful amp to come alive, slightly, if I remember and even then did not really come alive, which was my fundamental problem with them. Accurate but dead.

I would say go for a more modern design that doesn't need a 1 horsepower amp.
One other thing that has changed over the last 10 years or so is that we are starting to see efficient speakers that also sound good, whereas in the bad old days you chose efficiency or refinement.

Make sure you get to hear these speakers with an amp representative of what you will be using and make sure they go loud enough.

[Daygloworange]

I'd disagree ... the big improvements have been tweeters than can handle incredibly low crossover points with shallow slopes and woofers with much lower distortion motors, higher excursion, and a linear Bl curve.  You're right too, construction methods have come a long way in the last decade.

I have to echo Turbo's comments here. He hit the nail right on the head. I would also add that some of the newer crossover components add even more performance.

I would seriously look at newer designs, with more current components.

Cheers

[Wayner]

Really low cross-over frequencies for tweeters usually produces a more realistic presentation from a sonic perspective, but usually has one bad side effect; low power handeling. Some designs will comprimise somewhere in the middle, raising the cross-over a bit to gain more power handeling. Some manufacturers go for the 4th order steep cross-over, which can muck things up, like phase and time alignment. I want a new pair of speakers myself and these are issues I'm wrestling with, along with cost.

w

[doug s.]

there's more than one way to skin a cat.  some mfr's go for a higher x-over, & a midwoofer that can play a lot higher.  take the diapason adamantes lll, for example.  the midwoofer is not crossed over at all, having a natural frequency roll-off which blends w/the tweeter, crossed at 4.6khz.  91db efficient, plenty of power handling capability.  and, the x-over is not in the critical midrange...

http://www.diapason-italia.com/eng/adamantes3.htm


i know there are other speakers that take this approach...

doug s.

Really low cross-over frequencies for tweeters usually produces a more realistic presentation from a sonic perspective, but usually has one bad side effect; low power handeling. Some designs will comprimise somewhere in the middle, raising the cross-over a bit to gain more power handeling. Some manufacturers go for the 4th order steep cross-over, which can muck things up, like phase and time alignment. I want a new pair of speakers myself and these are issues I'm wrestling with, along with cost.

w