Just have one word.... BOSE
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.
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Worst speaker ive ever owned was a pair named CANNON... i was sold at STEREO WAREHOUSE on LI...They were billed as a sister co to ESS!....They had a passive radiator on back and a rectangular tweeter with a metal screen over it...Once i got em home they were very shrilly sounding bright...i xchanged em for EPI 180s...Great move!.....Best speakers to buy for refurb would be an EPI or an AR 18....Very simple crossovers and on the AR with a vinyl veneer,you heat gun it and pull right off...replace with a nice wood veneer..Cherry looks great..refoams easy as well..ive done dozens... |
Worked briefly for a repair shop during college. They sold garbage "Hi-Fis." The speakers were about 16 × 10 and 6 inches deep. You could see hints of the chrome surround of the 8" woofer and the separate tweeter behind the fixed in place covers. Turns out they were only painted on and the only driver was a cheapo 4" radio speaker. |
I'm embarrassed to say I owned 2 of the dishonorable mentions here. My first set of speakers were Panasonic Thrusters. They came with an all-in-one system that was a stretch Christmas gift from my parents back then. I bought my Mach Ones with money I saved mowing lawns and doing odd jobs. I remember saving up and them selling at $259.95 a pair. I had to wait a couple weeks for them to go on sale for $239.95 to buy. It was winter, and my job stream had dried up for the season. I had those for decades. They ended up as garage speakers, eventually. Once I saw the foam surrounds were disintegrated, i trashed them. I should have re-foamed them so they could rock on!
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How about the most honest crap speaker? Back in the late 60s and 70s Infinity was getting a name for itself with things like the Servo Statik 1. But they also sold a lot through the large chain Tech Hi-Fi, who wanted some cheap speakers with a good name on them. So Infinity came out in 1976 with a two way speaker with 10" woofer and 2" tweeter and a very simple crossover only hooked to the tweeter in a cheap box. Really a garbage speaker both construction wise and musically (one of the smallest woofer magnets I have ever seen, a KEF B110 midrange had a significantly bigger magnet). The name? The POS 1! And, yes, the initials stand for exactly what you would think they do, with Infinity admitting and everyone in the industry knowing they were a Piece Of.... |
@jl1ny |
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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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
I had a Sansui SP-5….something, don’t remember exact model. Weighed a ton. Beautiful cabinet made of solid wood with a lattice front. Must have had 5 or 6 drivers. Considering how wonderful my Sansui 881 & 9090DB receivers sounded, I was astounded at the utter trash sound of those speakers. I never opened them up to see what driver quality looked like, maybe it was just bad crossover execution. |
When I had my first job in the "Electronic Sound" (yes, that actually was the name of a Grand Rapids based 'stereo' store), I brought home the McIntosh speakers to try out. I had the tangent tracking bang olufsen turntable, some Luxman pre-amp, etc. These speakers were huge square pieces of deluxe furniture that had some drivers somewhere inside there. They sounded like your Grandpa's stereo console if you covered it with four down blankets. Warm....very warm sounding. When the burglars broke in they stole my turntable (without the European connector), but left those speakers. I could see they tried to steal them but they weighed at least 200 pounds a piece so they were left behind. Most horrible speakers I've heard to this day. No wonder I've over compensated by getting Klipsch Lascalas. Crisp, revealing, and efficient to a fault but no McIntosh thankfully! (Makes one wonder how early "stereos" experiences end up affecting future sound choices?) |
I owned a pair of Ultralinar 100s back in the day. They were the best $99 / Pair speakers you could buy. They sounded great on rock and roll, BTO kicked nice. Compared side by side at the stereo store, you had to pay $500 / pair to beat them. Not a great low or high end on the UL100s. I removed the woofer out of curiosity to find a $10 woofer and $5 tweeter. The company made the most of it. I never had the case problem you experienced. They were a great starter speaker. The JBL Lancers I built way surpassed them as they should have with the $200 woofer, LE 20, LE 5 upgraded model. 1" thick particle board. |
The worst speakers I ever owned were Utah 10" 3 way speakers. They sounded nice, but With with my pioneer 424 12 wpc, they buzzed intermittently driving me nuts!. It sounded like the voice coil lead wires were touching the cone. I went through 4 pairs under warranty and gave up. Other speakers on the system were fine.
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