[Da Wiz]

No loudspeakers get better with time. Once they are made, degradation begins in mechanical and electronic components... glues begin aging and failing, rubber/foam components begin degrading. Electronic components, primarily capacitors in speakers, begin degrading. It's a slow process, but everything that can degrade over time IS degrading over time.

 

[Da Wiz]

Yay, I'm happy again! Boy this thread is getting confusing

This thread is NOT confusing. No matter what ANYBODY says, speakers degrade slowly from the day you buy them. They NEVER "get better". And only the fringes of audio-hobbiests are interested in ANY 1950s or 1960s speakers and they don't listen to them without correcting any mechanical issues or electronic issues that are inevitable in un-maintained speakers from the 50s, 60s, 70s or later. These hobbyists replace capacitors, install better inductors than anything available 40+ years ago before air-core inductors were the gold standard for speaker crossovers. Even modern resistors are available that outperform any resistor from 40+ years ago. They replace pressed paper cones in drivers. They replace anything glued and anything plastic (because plastic gets brittle and delicate with age). They replace rubber or foam parts because they are likely falling apart after 40+ years. Speakers made before high quality crossover design software existed (very late 1980s) literally NEVER sound as good as modern speakers designed with crossover optimization software. Older speakers had much more OBVIOUS colorations than speakers made since crossover software matured into a reliable speaker design aid. You can improve old speaker designs substantially by remeasuring new drivers, and using good crossover design software to create a new crossover design. It's possible to eliminate huge amounts of distortion/coloration present since the speakers were originally designed. There is literally NOTHING "better" about older spreakers compared to newer speakers... as separate groups. Certainly, you can find **** new speakers and compare them to rebuilt vintage speakers to "prove a point" disingenuously. But I'm talking about more appropriate and balanced comparisons. The technology in newer speakers addresses problems they didn't even know existed 40+ years ago. Like many of the "better" speakers designed today have wire used in the voice coils that is square instead of round just to get more copper (and power handling) into the voice coil compared to round wire that has air gaps between wires (square wire fills all the air gaps in the modern wound voice coils). That's just 1 example of modern tech being better than ANY older-tech.

 

[Da Wiz]

Yes that’s true but experience shows that many very old (50-70 yrs) Klipsch speakers still work fine. Most of them use different component material, I.e. 15” woofers have paper cones and paper surrounds. The very small excursion of the horn loaded speakers means the woofers don’t wear as much as woofers designed for large excursion and smaller diameter. Also the phenolic compounds used in the horn drivers seem to age quite well.

That being said woofers with foam surrounds are junk. Some woofers have butyl surrounds which seems to age well if the glue stays intact.

I guarantee you that if you had modern measurements of a brand new 60 year old Klipsch (or any other brand) of speaker and compared that with new measurements of a new production version of the same speaker, that the 50 year old version might still make sound that's not obviously terrible. But it is NOT going to be as good as the new version of the same speaker. Hobbyists, on average, aren't the best judges of whether a 50-70 year old speaker is "working fine" or not. I've experienced auditions of brand new $20,000 a pair "single driver-single voice coil" high-efficiency speakers that people were RAVING about. Except applause from a live audience sounded like meat sizzling on a skillet and nobody even NOTICED. Something was fundamentally wrong with the speakers and people were all chatting-up those speakers for how "great" they were when driven by appropriate vacuum tube electronics. I've been given demos of vintage-but-refurbished Klipsch speakers with tweeters that were not even operating and the person thought the sound was "great". And this person had done all the refurb work themselves... re-gluing several areas of the cabinet that had resonances, new electrical parts, re-wiring, new terminal posts. He knew the speakers inside and out... but was not able to tell the tweeters were MIA. That model had a fairly high crossover point to the tweeters, but still...

 

[Da Wiz]

Oh, but I do know how old equipment sounds and measures. And the new version will sound better because of modern crossover design software, improvements in materials, and better capacitors, inductors, and resistors that are available today that were not available 50 to 70 years ago. I grew up with speakers that ALL SOUNDED DIFFERENT because they didn't have crossover design software... they "tuned" crossovers by ear... and nobody was as good at that as software for optimizing crossovers. I've lived through the decades of speakers that are now 50-70 years old. I know exactly what they sounded like when they were new. So stop defending old equipment inappropriately and get real. 50+ year old paper cones are not as good as new paper cones... PERIOD. And pressed paper is not even close to being a great material for speaker cones. Especially when the crossovers have 50+ year old devices still installed. I am using loudspeakers manufactured in 1992. They have received new crossovers when the design was updated. They have received new tweeters 2 times, a new midrange driver 1 time, and new woofers 1 time... all in the name of keeping these speakers performing as well as possible. Each change made the speaker sound better because the manufacturer sweated the details, using better materials, better driver design, and improved crossover design. The elevation in performance of these speakers has been stunning and they were already among the top performers in their price range when they were new. To be fair, the manufacturer prompted me about when to do updates that were significant and they would specifically tell me to wait if there was nothing that made significant improvements available. And to save money, I installed the updated parts myself to avoid shipping 100 pound speakers repeatedly. People who over-romanticize the merits of older speakers need to get a grip. In the "old days" they knew NOTHING SPECIAL about making speakers. And making all speakers relatively neutral sounding (as you get today) was impossible due to the vagaries of speaker design that have been improved significantly with computer design software. Speakers used to sound like you were cupping your hands over your mouth, or pinching your nose, or had super-zingy sibilants... all things that computer design software has banished from speaker design. 50-70 years ago, the entire field of available speakers might get a "5" or "6" for accurate sound quality. Since computer design software has assisted with design of drivers, crossovers, and enclosures, the speaker industry is performing at about an "8.5" level because so many sound quality defects have been eliminated by using computer design solutions. Yes, the best speaker companies still perform endless hours of listening studies to confirm everything is working properly together.

 

[Da Wiz]

I'm not missing any point. Did I not clearly state I've upgraded my own "old" speakers? You can save thousands on old speakers in good condition, then spend thousands on them updating everything so they have half a chance of sounding decent for the first time since they were made. If you upgrade them to sound how you want them to sound, they will be ****. Because NO PERSON can design the sound of a speaker better than the manufacturer. If ACCURACY is the sound you are going for... doing that on your own is ****-shooting. If you could care less about accuracy, go ahead, but don't try to convince me your speakers sound good.

 

[Da Wiz]

It's not a "belief" it is fact. If you "believe" something else, you are just fooling yourself.

 

[Da Wiz]

‘50+ year old paper cones are not as good as new paper cones... PERIOD.’

And by what means do you know this? You also never addressed my comment about cone excursion. Modern crossover design will NOT fix the distortion caused by large non-linear excursions.

You're kidding? I have to explain materials science to you? OK... paper is made with organic fibers. Everything organic "decays" with time and exposure to oxygen and other gases in the atmosphere. Changes in temperature and humidity for 50+ years contribute to the process of breaking-down paper fibers and causing them to lose some of their grip on neighboring fibers. T
he cone may not fall apart, but after 50+ years, the paper cone is considerably "softer" that it was when brand new. That inescapably degrades sound quality.

 

[Da Wiz]

Excursion only produces about half the sound from a high-efficiency woofer. The cone surface is still subject to vibration and resonances across the entire surface of the woofer. There are ZERO organic-based materials that do not break-down over time--with 1 exception that comes to mind... diamond is carbon, but acts more like a very stable mineral/metal than like something organic (anything with carbon in it is organic, generally). Whether the cone is polymer or paper, both are organic and both are subject to degredation over time that happens even if the woofer is brand new in a sealed box. Polymers get stiff and brittle, and paper gets "loose" as fibers degrade and loose some of their grip on neighboring fibers. This is a fact about EVERYTHING organic in every product ever manufactured. You learn this in materials science. Something I studied for 4 semesters in college, and messed with constantly as a young audiophile on a budget, refurbishing "old" components (including some Altec and Klipsch speakers among probably 20 other brands plus electronic components, tube and solid state). Being an engineer was quite a boon to an audiophile with a limited budget. The only cone materials that do NOT degrade with time and use are metal cones... aluminum is used in some speakers, and other metals have been used in woofers also. Glues are typically organic also and THEY degrade with time as well.

 

[Da Wiz]

High efficiency woofers are crossed over at higher frequencies than conventionally designed woofers. Because of that, the higher frequencies in high efficiency woofers are created "in the cone" not by excursion. The wavelengths of the higher frequencies are too short to reproduce with pistonic motion of a 15-inch driver (like the La Scala). In conventional speakers, the crossover points are low enough for woofers that the woofers NEVER see the higher frequencies high-efficiency woofers see. The crossover point for the La Scala woofers is 450 Hz. In conventional speakers, 15-inch woofers would have crossover point no higher than about 180 Hz because of the wavelength issue. 15 inch drivers can't be pistonic at frequencies above about 180 Hz. There is no magic in speakers. You have to know the fundamentals to design speakers that are worthy of being commercial products. And the design requirements for conventional dynamic speakers, high-efficiency dynamic speakers, panel speakers, and 360-degree (omni) speakers are all different.