10 Most Influential Speakers

[spacedeckman]

This thread got hijacked into a stupid marketing discussion that I regrettable got involved in. It was such a great idea for a thread that I thought it deserved a clean start. This time, keep it clean (on topic), and lets see what we come up with. Here is my contribution to the list. Now, do your part. You can nominate a speaker, or come up with your own list. If you come up with something, just give a reason why.

Here is mine:

1) BBC LS3/5a: You want a "standard"
2) Quads: Love 'em, Hate 'em, they were groundbreaking
3) KEF 104/2s: Again, a groundbreaker (I would accept the 104s here too)
4) Original Maggies: Something "completely different".
5) AR-1s: Need no intro
6) Dyna A-25s:
7) Mirage M-1: You guys can take the 901, this was the breakthrough
8) M&K Volkspeaker: Bose made is smaller, worser, and got richer.
9) Heil AMT-1: Breakthrough technology that really didn't "happen"
10) Energy 22: New thinking

These are in no particular order. These are the speakers that changed things IMHO, and that's just what you asked for. If allowed an 11th, it would have to be the IRS-V, the original "overkill" speaker that spawned a hundred more.

[Debbi]

1. original Edison Gramophone---had no competition
2. Early cheap paper carbon cone speakers that made radio possilble 1920s through 40s-was the chief source of information and entertaiment for 35 years....
3. Folded Horns ala Paul Klipsch --brought quality to large venues and homes-pioneer of tuning the box prior to computers and created interest in tinkering with speakers among the interested 2%
4. accoustic suspension designs ala Henry Kloss---Affordable small enclosures for average homes with decent bass-AR, Dynaco, advent, KLH, and many more-first product type to make quality affordable and small enough to be widely marketed and acceptable in average homes....
5. ported speakers like BIC (first ones I noticed in early 70s)--small enclosures, decent sound, affordable, more efficient... 90% of what we have now..
6.Dont Laugh---HTIB and the like---only 5% of Americans own decent sound equipment--now changing fast----maybe not your definition of quality but better than what 95% of Americans were willing to buy before....and idiot proof for the same 95% that dont want to make their sound system a second job....Yamaha probably doing best job here.....