Ugliest Component of the Year 2024!

The Washington Post did an article where a non-audiophile reporter went to a local high end shop.  The reporter described the Avantegarde speakers as looking like an air raid siren from a Tex Avery cartoon.  I thought that was a terrific description, albeit one that younger readers might not understand.

LEDs tend to increase noise to the power supply circuit.  Perhaps, that improves the sound of some gear where noise is preferable to what the amp puts out.

DeKay,

Holy s**t, that is a real looker, although what looks like a port when the thing is closed is really going too far.  I recall people talking about putting toilet paper over the tweeter on Klipsch Heresy speakers; toilet paper stuffed in that port would really be too much to even think about.

I have another anatomically suggestive speaker system for you to consider.  It is the Western Electric 16A horn from the 1920's.  I know someone who owns two of these beasts.  Although it has two drivers, it is a single midrange horn.  I've heard them run full range with Western Electric 555 fieldcoil drivers and also YL compression drivers.  The setups I heard did not employ any woofers.   Being a midrange horn, and given that the drivers were also meant to only operate in the midrange, it was shocking how much bass this horn delivers (goes down to somewhere around 70 hz).  A bullet tweeter crossed in at around 15 khz.  Whether it is ugly or beautiful is really hard to say.  It is like what someone said about Nat King Cole--I don't know if he is the handsomest or ugliest man.

https://we16ahorn.blogspot.com/

The person who owns these horns cares ONLY about the sound.  He puts together custom systems that are much more practical than ones with that giant horn.  That horn was meant to be used in theaters where it was hidden behind screens or curtains so looks were totally irrelevant.  The sound is a great example of how one can engineer something that works despite what would otherwise be considered a major flaw.  If you suddenly stop the music, you will hear a very long echoing decay of the music, which means that the horn is ringing like crazy.  But, it rings over a broad range of frequencies so that the decay sounds utterly natural and there is no sense of the music being muddled or tonally altered by this ringing.  Once I heard that ringing, I found it hard to accept, in my mind, that this was not a BIG problem.  But, the more I listened, the more I came to realize that it was not a problem and that this horn is fantastic.  It is very impractical, requires at least four, and up to eight very expensive midrange compression drivers for a stereo pair, but it IS something one should hear if one has the chance.  It is on display and plays in the museum dedicated to vintage gear in Seoul, South Korea.