Re: [LAU] monitor specifications

On Saturday, January 07, 2012 08:07:12 PM Fons Adriaensen did opine:

> On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 03:49:25PM -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> > Fons, are you perchance old enough to remember the "Karlson" speaker
> > cabinet designs from back in the late 50's?
>
> No :-) During the very late 50s I was playing my first notes
> on the piano and my father introduced me to the existence of
> prime numbers.

This was a few years after my mother gave up on teaching me how to play the
piano, mainly because I have such short fingered but wide hands (I can't
reach an octave on a std keyboard, but it takes an XXXL glove to be able to
get into it, with nominally 1.5" of surplus, empty finger sticking out &
getting in the way) plus I was bored out of my skull at the time, far more
interested in things electronic.
 
> But some time in the late 70s, together with my prof of audio
> technology at the Brussels broadcasting and media academy, I
> constructed some very large linear horns using glass fibre
> sheets and epoxy resin. One day we were testing outdoors using
> sine sweeps and actually destroyed a window of a neighbour at
> 25 meters distance. It was a big floor to ceiling one which
> turned out to be quite expensive :-)
>
> Ciao,

I think by now its safe to ROTF & L? It sure makes an interesting story to
tell ones great grandchildren as they come of age in a world we never
imagined... ;-)

One fellow who worked at Electrovoice in Chicago relates the story that
they were testing a new PA driver horn at the factory, had it hung on the
corner of the building at 222 Hart-Rey Avenue there in Chi-town, by having
someone with a decent voice sitting inside the room behind the speaker,
reading the morning paper. The person telling the story said he was still
3 blocks away, walking to work when the el train passed above & 50 feet in
front of him. That was when he understood how loud that single PA horn
really was, because he could not hear the el's passing, just the guy
reading the paper.

One of my employees at the tv station once cast in concrete, his version of
the Altec Voice of the Theater cabinet. Made 2 of them at the time. Today
they look something like 50 miles of bad road behind a runaway 4 horse
team, it takes a full set of pall-bearers to get them into a half-ton
pickup & one of them is all the pickup can carry at a time, but 35 years
later they still sound at least as good as the Voices did in their heyday.
He guesses they probably have logged at least 10k miles in the back of a
pickup & never been more than 75 miles from home.

Personally, I think we did a good job at doing decent sound reproduction 60
some years ago with nothing but a pair of KT-66's and some decent acoustic
engineering. We do it now in smaller boxes with phenomenal specs, but is
it really 'better'. Too subjective to make a blanket statement one way or
the other.

Cheers, Gene

-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene>
Long life is in store for you.
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