Ever see one of these? It's a mini version of an Altec Lansing A2 Voice of the Theater speaker.
As far as I know, there are only 2 or 3 others in existence. Think it was built in the 1940's as some type of sales device to show off the A2 and A4 sound systems to theatre owners around the country. I still own two full size A2's that came out of the George Burns Theatre. Bought them almost 25 years ago.
'Been thinking about making some 1/2 or maybe 1/4 scale copies of the big A2's. Really wonder what something like that would sound like. I found some small square framed Bose car stereo speakers that fit in the mini (the original Altec speakers had disappeared long ago) and it's amazing how good it sounds for that small of a speaker. Got the mini up on Ebay and I think I'm gonna regret selling it, but it's given me inspiration to build something just a little bigger......
What do you think? There is some serious potential there for home use if it was scaled down to a more manageable size. The exponential flare of the horn would be the tough part to make, but I think I know how.
Guy
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
As far as I know, there are only 2 or 3 others in existence. Think it was built in the 1940's as some type of sales device to show off the A2 and A4 sound systems to theatre owners around the country. I still own two full size A2's that came out of the George Burns Theatre. Bought them almost 25 years ago.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
'Been thinking about making some 1/2 or maybe 1/4 scale copies of the big A2's. Really wonder what something like that would sound like. I found some small square framed Bose car stereo speakers that fit in the mini (the original Altec speakers had disappeared long ago) and it's amazing how good it sounds for that small of a speaker. Got the mini up on Ebay and I think I'm gonna regret selling it, but it's given me inspiration to build something just a little bigger......
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
What do you think? There is some serious potential there for home use if it was scaled down to a more manageable size. The exponential flare of the horn would be the tough part to make, but I think I know how.
Guy
I have a friend in Oakland, California who collects theatre memorabilia, he has a full set of these miniature Altec speakers in glass display cabinets.
You are correct they are salesman samples, which were built on a common scale and used as "point of sales" examples for clients.
Cyclotronguy
You are correct they are salesman samples, which were built on a common scale and used as "point of sales" examples for clients.
Cyclotronguy
Too short?
The horn in a full size A2 is too short? Compared to what? It's 29" deep and the total depth of the cabinet is 39". If the horn was much more than that it would make for one *******' HUGE
cabinet. Heck, it's huge now.
What does work well mean? Well, I meant would it sound good?
Personally, I don't think the perfect speaker exists. Many designs have their strengths and weaknesses and (without spending a fortune) personal preference is always a factor in the quest for the "ultimate" speaker system. What might sound good to you might not sound as good to someone else. Obviously the size and shape of the room your trying to fill with sound is also an important factor.
I had a pair of Magnepan Tympani's that were fairly expensive at the time and sounded absolutely incredible, but they lacked decent low end and were not exactly the most efficient speakers in the world.
I'm aware of the inherent positive and negative aspects of the VOTT 210 cabinets - like their "binny" nature. I've owned four of them for 25 years and have spent a lot of time listening to them in many different environments - from the stage of a 1500 seat theater to outdoor concerts....... to my garage. I've read every printed word I can find on them and what needs to be done to improve them. They are not the best speakers in the world, but I don't think they're anywhere near the worst either.
Guess it comes down to what type of music you like, what type of sound your looking for, and how much it's gonna cost you.
Ever listen to one of these?
Loud is beautifull .........if it's clean.
Guy
The horn in a full size A2 is too short? Compared to what? It's 29" deep and the total depth of the cabinet is 39". If the horn was much more than that it would make for one *******' HUGE
cabinet. Heck, it's huge now.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
What does work well mean? Well, I meant would it sound good?
Personally, I don't think the perfect speaker exists. Many designs have their strengths and weaknesses and (without spending a fortune) personal preference is always a factor in the quest for the "ultimate" speaker system. What might sound good to you might not sound as good to someone else. Obviously the size and shape of the room your trying to fill with sound is also an important factor.
I had a pair of Magnepan Tympani's that were fairly expensive at the time and sounded absolutely incredible, but they lacked decent low end and were not exactly the most efficient speakers in the world.
I'm aware of the inherent positive and negative aspects of the VOTT 210 cabinets - like their "binny" nature. I've owned four of them for 25 years and have spent a lot of time listening to them in many different environments - from the stage of a 1500 seat theater to outdoor concerts....... to my garage. I've read every printed word I can find on them and what needs to be done to improve them. They are not the best speakers in the world, but I don't think they're anywhere near the worst either.
Guess it comes down to what type of music you like, what type of sound your looking for, and how much it's gonna cost you.
Ever listen to one of these?
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Loud is beautifull .........if it's clean.
Guy
When you listen to those... Ubangi into the walls a lot. 
Hey Guy I see those mini's are closing soon. I wonder what VOT.com has as a maximum. Those would be really cool to have with the rest of the stuff but I've been spending too much on speakers lately so I don't think I'll go higher.
I wonder if we're allowed to discuss things like this? I guess I'll find out in the next hour or so.
Also Guy, you stole GM's signature.
Cal
Hey Guy I see those mini's are closing soon. I wonder what VOT.com has as a maximum. Those would be really cool to have with the rest of the stuff but I've been spending too much on speakers lately so I don't think I'll go higher.
I wonder if we're allowed to discuss things like this? I guess I'll find out in the next hour or so.
Also Guy, you stole GM's signature.
Cal
>The horn in a full size A2 is too short? Compared to what?
Compared to a bass horn. That's midbass only - 100hz and up. Of course the large mouth would give it a nice end correction, so maybe like 70hz. Still, one of my bass horns was about 11 feet long. Another was closer to 20 feet. The trade off in those cases was that the mouth wasn't big enough for half space operation with flat response. They had to be in a corner. That was how the box size stayed managable (around 30 cubic feet).
A small A2 horn would have an even higher cutoff. You'd essentially have a midrange horn, so to get decent hi-fi sound out of it, you'd need to eq the snot out of it. It would mainly be a visual kind of thing. If you use a driver below the horn's cutoff, you're essentially throwing away the distortion-reducing advantages of horn loading, as you're now making the speaker really move to get the same sound levels out of it as in the range it's horn loaded in.
Compared to a bass horn. That's midbass only - 100hz and up. Of course the large mouth would give it a nice end correction, so maybe like 70hz. Still, one of my bass horns was about 11 feet long. Another was closer to 20 feet. The trade off in those cases was that the mouth wasn't big enough for half space operation with flat response. They had to be in a corner. That was how the box size stayed managable (around 30 cubic feet).
A small A2 horn would have an even higher cutoff. You'd essentially have a midrange horn, so to get decent hi-fi sound out of it, you'd need to eq the snot out of it. It would mainly be a visual kind of thing. If you use a driver below the horn's cutoff, you're essentially throwing away the distortion-reducing advantages of horn loading, as you're now making the speaker really move to get the same sound levels out of it as in the range it's horn loaded in.
Re: Too short?
Yup - too short to be a proper horn. Just because it's big doesn't mean it's big enough. 1/2 wavelength of 100Hz is over 5 ft in length! The A2 is more like a 200Hz horn (in length) which is no longer bass - it's midrange.
And yes, I know exactly how big the original A2 is. I had RCA W-bins that were identical in size to the A2 bins, but they were folded horns. Even those weren't really long enough. Still sounded good, but I reckon a properly proportioned horn would sound better.
RacerXtreme said:
Yup - too short to be a proper horn. Just because it's big doesn't mean it's big enough. 1/2 wavelength of 100Hz is over 5 ft in length! The A2 is more like a 200Hz horn (in length) which is no longer bass - it's midrange.
And yes, I know exactly how big the original A2 is. I had RCA W-bins that were identical in size to the A2 bins, but they were folded horns. Even those weren't really long enough. Still sounded good, but I reckon a properly proportioned horn would sound better.
"Still, one of my bass horns was about 11 feet long. Another was closer to 20 feet. "
Thanks John, point well taken, but my ROOM is 20 feet long (at the moment) so having an 11 or 20 foot long bass horn is a little out of the question. The VOTT's take up a lot of room as it is....
Hey Jeff -
200 Hz is midrange ?
Let me ask what may be a simple question.
What frequencies (EXACTLY) are the lower and upper levels of "midrange". Isn't that a kind of arbitrary thing or are there specific numbers ?
Same questions for "mid-bass" and "bass" ........???
Guy
Thanks John, point well taken, but my ROOM is 20 feet long (at the moment) so having an 11 or 20 foot long bass horn is a little out of the question. The VOTT's take up a lot of room as it is....
Hey Jeff -
200 Hz is midrange ?
Let me ask what may be a simple question.
What frequencies (EXACTLY) are the lower and upper levels of "midrange". Isn't that a kind of arbitrary thing or are there specific numbers ?
Same questions for "mid-bass" and "bass" ........???
Guy
Yes, and no. I wish I could claim credit for it, but alas, I 'stole' it off a Cerwin Vega promo button they were handing out at the original CES here in Hotlanta many moons ago.
Anyway, when I first laid eyes on a picture of a 210/211, I used a pantograph to scale it to the Delco 6x9 car audio driver I was then using, and being 12 and not having a clue about what constituted good speaker design beyond making the box big, good woodworking practices, and my own ears proceeded to build one out of some scrap 1/4"? plywood complete with 'wings'. I just remember it was thin enough for me to bend it with just some shallow kerfs. Since I didn't have a pic of the horn profile I just eyeballed a constant radius one. I don't have any plans, but 9/32nd would be a close enough scale.
Stuck in a corner, it was pretty impressive to those of us who only had '40s-'50s table top radios, TVs, and the odd console to compare it to. Wound up selling a truckload of them to support my budding racing addiction. In retrospect, I must have lucked out in that the horn must have 'pumped up' the BW above the driver's in-cab hi Q 'bump' to make for a relatively strong midbass/lower mids.
My old ones loaded to ~55/77 Hz with/without wings, with a shelved ~35Hz Fb.
GM
Hi,
FYI, AFAIK these are the two most commonly used today, I don't know of a universal standard.
From "Complete Guide to High End Audio":
20-40 Hz: deep bass
40-80 Hz: midbass
80-160Hz: upper bass
160-320Hz: lower midrange
320-640Hz: (middle) midrange
640-1280Hz: upper midrange
1280-2560Hz: lower treble
2560-5120Hz: middle treble
5120-10240Hz: upper treble
10240-20480Hz: top octave
This is from "How to Read The Absolute Sound" reprinted in Guide to HighEnd Audio Components 1992/1993 (it has been printed infrequently over the years):
below 32 Hz: Extreme bottom
20-40 Hz: low bass; bottom octave
40-80 Hz: mid bass
80-160Hz: upper bass
160-320Hz: lower midrange
320-2560Hz: midrange
2560-5120Hz: upper midrange
5120-10240Hz: highs; lower highs
10240-20000Hz: extreme highs; top octave
FWIW, until these were sent to me a few years ago, I used an ancient Bell Labs one that makes more sense to me and was still in common use as late as the mid '60s when I originally quit 'bench racing' audio:
infrasonic: <20Hz
bass: 20-128Hz
midbass (tenor or alto): ~128-896Hz
mids (soprano): ~896-5,000Hz
treble (overtones): ~5,000-10,000Hz
super treble: 10-20kHz
ultrasonic: >20kHz
HTH,
GM
FYI, AFAIK these are the two most commonly used today, I don't know of a universal standard.
From "Complete Guide to High End Audio":
20-40 Hz: deep bass
40-80 Hz: midbass
80-160Hz: upper bass
160-320Hz: lower midrange
320-640Hz: (middle) midrange
640-1280Hz: upper midrange
1280-2560Hz: lower treble
2560-5120Hz: middle treble
5120-10240Hz: upper treble
10240-20480Hz: top octave
This is from "How to Read The Absolute Sound" reprinted in Guide to HighEnd Audio Components 1992/1993 (it has been printed infrequently over the years):
below 32 Hz: Extreme bottom
20-40 Hz: low bass; bottom octave
40-80 Hz: mid bass
80-160Hz: upper bass
160-320Hz: lower midrange
320-2560Hz: midrange
2560-5120Hz: upper midrange
5120-10240Hz: highs; lower highs
10240-20000Hz: extreme highs; top octave
FWIW, until these were sent to me a few years ago, I used an ancient Bell Labs one that makes more sense to me and was still in common use as late as the mid '60s when I originally quit 'bench racing' audio:
infrasonic: <20Hz
bass: 20-128Hz
midbass (tenor or alto): ~128-896Hz
mids (soprano): ~896-5,000Hz
treble (overtones): ~5,000-10,000Hz
super treble: 10-20kHz
ultrasonic: >20kHz
HTH,
GM
The "How to Read The Absolute Sound" version is out of balance. It gives an octave for the first few ranges, then 320-2560 Hz, ie three octaves for the next bracket, midrange.
Middle C on a piano is IIRC 246 Hz, so I think should either be in the midrange, without needing to be ‘dead centre’; or very close.
The "Complete Guide to High End Audio" version is the more sensible of the two.
But I’ve always thought of mid bass as about 80 – 120/140 Hz, not 40-80 Hz. Only one guitar note gets down to IIRC 41 Hz, so that’s too low to be termed “mid bass”.
Given the different versions, to avoid misinterpretations it’s probably better to just state the Hz, IMO.
Middle C on a piano is IIRC 246 Hz, so I think should either be in the midrange, without needing to be ‘dead centre’; or very close.
The "Complete Guide to High End Audio" version is the more sensible of the two.
But I’ve always thought of mid bass as about 80 – 120/140 Hz, not 40-80 Hz. Only one guitar note gets down to IIRC 41 Hz, so that’s too low to be termed “mid bass”.
Given the different versions, to avoid misinterpretations it’s probably better to just state the Hz, IMO.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.