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Worst Speakers Ever??

So, we’re in the (part time) business running a service operation with the purpose of keeping decent, aging audio gear from ending up in the dumpster. Got a call from a guy a few weeks ago requesting service on some items. He dropped the names of some well known brands -- Sansui, Onkyo, Garrard -- so, he seemed like a legit customer and I agreed to take them in.

When he arrived, the items totaled NINE pieces altogether and included the not-so-glamorous Sanyo, Realistic, etc. I have to mention, however, that the LAB500 was a pleasant surprise and a great example of a high quality "consumer" direct drive, fully automatic turntable.

Then, there were these speaker boxes with the SRL badge on them. Never heard of this brand. Not sure if it was an AARP thing, or a boutique brand that I was not familiar with. I yanked off the grilles and immediately noticed severe foam disintegration around the woofer cones. But, then it become obvious these were no "boutique" speaker. Cheap drivers. A not-so-dense cabinet. Very basic screw input terminals. These were designed to hit a price point. A "promotional" speaker.

A quick Google search lead me to the full name of the speakers -- Sound Research Laboratories -- a "house brand" for University Stereo in SoCal back in the day. This is making sense now. Removing a woofer gave a clear view of the "crossover." Yes, 3 capacitors to provide a high pass so that lower frequencies didn’t blow things up. A later RTA of the refoamed woofer revealed a bandwidth well past 5k. So? With a tweeter crossover at 5k, this would mean that ALL 4 drivers were operating in the same range in at least part of the audio spectrum. Not the best solution for linear, detailed sound. Not being one who likes to copy the Titanic with the hole already in it and head out to sea, I did some "complementary" mods to the speakers to eliminate part of the tug of war between drivers. They didn’t sound quite as awful as they did when they came in.

It got me thinking about my past experiences with "house brands" and "promotional" speakers.

Ah... Ultralinear.

We sold these back in the day. The cabinets were made of some fragmented materials squeezed together to resemble some type of organic substance , with a wood-grained pattern, literally, screen printed onto the box. Some joked that the cabinets were made of GLIT -- half glue, have sh...! Others mentioned that if you took these out of their cardboard cartons and sit them next to them, if a big gust of wind came up the speakers would blow away and the cardboard cartons would still be standing there.

I did have one real example of their build quality and structural integrity. In the "speaker room" we had the big floor standers (Pioneer HPM 200s, for example) on the floor and everything else on the shelves above. The Ultralinear 12" 3-ways were placed on the top shelf. One day I was doing some maintenance in the room and needed to rearrange and rewire some things to the speaker switcher. Then, there was this darned cable that was just a couple of inches too short. I gave it a gentle tug. Nothing happened. So, I put my body into it and gave it an aggressive pull. Right about then I noticed something moving in the corner of my eye. Followed shorty by the horror of watching the Ultralinears plummet from the top shelf and crash onto the HPM200s. The Ultralinears disintegrated on impact. My first thought is that I just ruined a pair of our most expensive speakers -- the Pioneers. I’m going to get fired!! Then, came the dreaded approach to the Pioneers to determine the extent of the damage. Not a scratch!! Not even the walnut veneer was damaged!! And there lay the totaled Ultralinear right next to them.

The Ultralinear speaker days came and went. And, so did I.

 

 

128x128waytoomuchstuff
panzrwagn's avatar
panzrwagn
519 posts
 
While most house brand and white van speakers back in the day were uniformly hideous, the most disappointing speakers I was ever around were the JBL L-36, a 10" 3-way positioned as the little brother to the L-100. I worked in an Advent/ADS/Dahlquist/JBL shop in the mid-70s. We had a pretty good showroom with a 16-pair Advent level-compensated speaker comparator, so when you A/B'd speakers they were at the same level. It inserted a pad between pre and power amps that was adjusted for each pair using a pink noise generator so what you heard was the actual difference in speaker sound quality, not loudness. Very revealing. Anyway, we could never get the L-36 to sound better than awful, no matter how or where we positioned them. Unbalanced, harsh, the bass fell off about 60Hz. Just a beautifully built but terrible sounding loudspeaker. In 2 years, we only sold one pair, and they were returned in exchange for a pair of Large Advents. The costumers wife refused to be in the room when the L-36s were playing.
simonmoon's avatar
simonmoon
517 posts
 

Back in the 70’s, every stereo chain had it’s house brand. They all sucked.

They pretty much got everything wrong about speaker design and build. And that was back then, when a lot less was known.

The vast majority of 70’s Japanese speakers. Too many drivers, mounted randomly in unbraced enclosures. The vintage stereo fans love these visual and sonic monstrosities.

JBL too. I used to work at a chain that carried L100’s. Even back then, it was not hard to hear they were bad. The new ones are barely better.

With regards to current speakers, Klipsch for sure is at the top of my list.

Also, almost any speaker labeled as "heritage", "classic" or similar term (KLH, Wharfdale, Harbeth..I’m looking at you) . People! Speaker designers have learned a lot in the last 5 decades. There are real sonic reasons why speakers have gotten away from "monkey coffin" enclosures, with wide baffles, and that stupid lip around the outer edge of the baffle.

I am not saying that some of these don’t sound good, but that does not mean they haven't been sonically compromised, on the alter of nostalgia.

bob540
407 posts
 

The worst speakers I have owned were the Radio Shack Realistic brand Nova 7’s.  I didn’t know a thing about speakers or really any audio equipment when I bought the Nova 7’s that I saw at the local RS store.  This was during the early 1970’s. The price was lower than some alternatives, and I didn’t have money.  I can say that the cabinets looked nice for the price . . not vinyl or thin particle board.  
 

The things I didn’t like about them I only realized when I heard a friend’s stereo.  The Nova’s did not project the sound out into the room, not the bass and especially not the midrange and highs.  It was like the sound was muffled.  When I bought some big Advents a couple of years later, I rarely listened to the Nova’s anymore. 

mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
4,982 posts
 

My first store was a Team Electronics.  We had a house brand named Award that were absolute garage.  We sold a 8" 2-way for $99 a pair and paid like $8 bucks for them.  If you tapped on the top too hard, your knuckles would poke through...really, true story.  Awful speakers.

 

waytoomuchstuff's avatar
waytoomuchstuff OP
1,108 posts
 

Here's a quick "making lemonade out of lemons" story:

As a teenager, I had a nice little Pioneer receiver and some small, compact speakers.  I was visiting one of those catalog stores and did my usual stroll thru the "stereo" department.  There they were!  A set of Scott 15" 3-ways on the closeout rack.  Only one problem.  Someone had thrust their fist through the woofer cone of one of them.  They were priced at some ridiculous ($40 a pair) price, so a bought them and took them home.

My sister had some clear finger nail polish that I used to adhere the fragmented and torn edges together.  It was one ugly woofer when I got finished.  I let the polish cure for a couple of hours, and fired them up.  Boom!!!  Mids, highs ... AND ... lots of bass!!

I played them until it was time to move away to college and they wouldn't fit in the truck of my '65 Corvair Corsa.  Not sure of the fate of these speakers.  But, they were perfect for a high schooler who preferred quantity over quality -- at the time.

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