Stereophile's list of "Best top 25 speakers of past 40 years".

[Smokey]

This list is from Nov issue of Sterophile magazine titled:"40 years of Stereophile: The Hot 100 Products". Only speakers on this list were mentioned. Full article at the bottom.

AR 3A loudspeaker:
It may have been ugly, colored, and with rolled-off highs, but the sealed-box 3A defined the "Boston Sound" and helped establish the American speaker industry. I never liked it, but I can't ignore it. Pretty much the same drive-units were used in AR's multidirectional LST, which years later was to inspire Mark Levinson's Cello speakers.

Dahlquist DQ-10 loudspeaker:
The Brits hated the DQ-10 for its superficial resemblance to their beloved Quad electrostatic. But with the first Magnepan and the Infinity Servo-Statik, Jon Dahlquist's staggered-baffle speaker helped launch the High End in the early 1970s.

Yamaha NS1000 loudspeaker
Back in the days when paper cones were de rigueur (though a handful of British engineers were playing with plastic cones) and designers were starting down the path to trade off reduced coloration against the need for more and more driving volts from the amp, Yamaha introduced the NS1000. It was sensitive, it used a high-tech midrange dome using vapor-deposited beryllium on an aluminum substrate, and it (ahem) kicked major booty! The Yamaha's major use of technology made many contemporary European and American speaker-makers look more like box-stuffers. I haven't heard an NS1000 in 20 years, and often wonder how it would measure up in today's more refined market.

The Advent Loudspeaker
The late Henry Kloss had the Midas touch: whatever his fancy alighted on turned into sonic gold. In the case of the Advent Loudspeaker, he designed America's first true high-end dynamic sealed-box loudspeaker. And given that everyone was convinced that good speakers needed to use three drive-units, Henry made do with two. He designed the Advent armed with microphone, voltmeter, oscilloscope, and signal generator, but without—the entire generation of speaker engineers who graduated since the early 1980s will be astonished to learn—a computer. Henry made do with talent and ingenuity.

Acoustic Energy AE1 loudspeaker
Designer Phil Jones may have fed the LS3/5A concept steroids, but the AE1 makes the list because it spearheaded the resurgence of the metal-cone woofer, which acts as a pure piston in its passband. (But outside the passband...)

Acoustat 2+2 electrostatic loudspeaker
Between the demise of the KLH 9 and the introduction of the MartinLogan CLS, the Acoustats held high the flag of American electrostatics.

MBL 101d omnidirectional loudspeaker
Critics dubbed this innovative German design the "accordion from Mars," but Jürgen Reiss's bending-mode Radialstrahler drive-units were the first to successfully address the challenge of producing a laterally omnidirectional radiation pattern.

PSB Alpha loudspeaker
Canadian Paul Barton has designed bigger speakers and he has designed better speakers, but none of those has offered so much sound for so little money as the Alpha in all its guises—or, with more than 50,000 sold, has benefited so many people.

Spica TC50 loudspeaker
John Bau's ugly ducking of a time-aligned two-way miniature showed that great sound could be produced from a speaker without the designer having to throw unlimited sums of money at the problems.

Shahinian Obelisk loudspeaker
I first heard the quasi-omnidirectional Obelisk 25 years ago, and it sounded as different then from what else was around as it does now. Richard Shahinian has always gone his own way, guided by his overwhelming passion for classical orchestral music; his speakers fall into the category of "If you love their sound, they're the best speakers in the world for you." However, for Dick to survive and even to prosper through the years lends his efforts a credibility that cannot be acquired in any other way.

Avantgarde Uno & Sonus Faber Guarneri Homage loudspeakers
With American and British loudspeaker design philosophy running along rigidly defined rails by the 1990s, the appearance of these musically communicative German and Italian speakers, which danced to very different design drummers, blew a welcome breath of fresh air into the High End.

KEF Reference 107 loudspeaker
Yes, the elegant R107 was the first high-end speaker to successfully implement a "bandpass" or "coupled-cavity" woofer, but its real importance lay in the fact that it finally rammed home the lesson that speaker design primarily involved engineering rather than art. Yes, art is still an essential part of designing a musically satisfying speaker, but only when that art rides on a platform of solid engineering.

Apogee Scintilla loudspeaker
It wasn't the first all-ribbon loudspeaker from Apogee, it wasn't the biggest, and it probably wasn't even the best-sounding (that was probably the Duetta). It was also a pig to drive, with perhaps just the big Krells up to the task of sinking power into what was, at some frequencies, little more than a short circuit. But the Scintilla was the Apogee speaker that convinced me that the magnetically driven ribbon, with its effortless coupling to the room and its lack of sonic character or coloration, was more than just a historic backwater of speaker design.

KLH 9 electrostatic loudspeaker
An American classic at least two decades ahead of its time. I heard the 9 only once, but I still shiver at the memory.

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker
More recent Meridian loudspeakers exceed the D600's performance in every way, but this modest floorstander was the first to show what could be achieved by integrating power amplification and digital technology in a speaker design.

Celestion SL-600 loudspeaker
The first popular compact supermonitor, introduced in 1983. The English company's Graham Bank and Gordon Hadaway decided that, as the main source of coloration in a box speaker is the box, they would effectively do away with it by making it from the Aerolam material used in airplane construction. The copper-dome tweeter used in the SL-600 and its wooden-box SL-6 sibling also pioneered the resurgence of interest in moving-coil drivers with pistonic metal diaphragms. "Had anyone even 1) tried to make a compact monitor sound this uncolored, or 2) charge as much?" asks Wes Phillips. Nope. But what a sound!

Spendor BC1 loudspeaker
Designed by the late Spencer Hughes after he left the BBC, the BC1 was perhaps the finest all-'round loudspeaker to come out of the UK until the B&W 801 Series 2. Too bad its somewhat loose low frequencies were not the optimal match for typical mid-1970s LP playback, and that the CD came too late to save it from relative obscurity.

Thiel CS3.6 loudspeaker
While almost every Stereophile writer nominated one of Jim Thiel's designs, it was the CS3.6, from the early '90s, that was mentioned most often, rather than one of the Kentucky company's flagships. This is because the '3.6 was the finest all-'round package in terms of time alignment, neutral balance, power handling, bass extension, and industrial design—all for about $3000/pair, which, in hindsight, looks like an unbelievable bargain. While Jim Thiel has since designed speakers that exceed the CS3.6 in one, two, or more areas of performance, the '3.6 represented the first full flowering of his talent.

BBC LS3/5A & Wilson Audio WATT loudspeakers
These two tiny speakers—which, apart from being intended to serve as location recording monitors, are as far apart in their design starting points as is possible to imagine—redefined the art of the miniature loudspeaker: the LS3/5A in the mid-1970s, the WATT a decade later. The LS3/5A perhaps represented the finest flowering of a team of audio engineers assembled by the state-run broadcasting company, and which included Dudley Harwood and the late Spencer Hughes.

MartinLogan CLS electrostatic loudspeaker
The elegant and transparent (both visually and sonically) CLS brought electrostats into the mainstream consciousness—you can find MartinLogans on both the small and silver screens.

B&W Nautilus, Infinity IRS, Wilson Audio WAMM loudspeakers
One uses cone/dome drivers in a conventional cabinet (if something resembling a snail could be called "conventional"), the other two use dynamic, planar-magnetic, or electrostatic upper-range drivers in a panel array and conventional woofers in a separate tower. All three were made in minuscule numbers, and all three are the finest-sounding true full-range loudspeakers I have heard.

B&W 801 Matrix Series 2 loudspeaker
Widely used in classical recording studios and high-end systems alike, the revised version of the big B&W took the concept of a high-quality minimonitor integrated with a bass bin to a far wider audience than its $5000/pair price would suggest was possible. "Possibly the best-selling high-end loudspeaker ever sold in the US," notes Wes Phillips, and "certainly the most influential dynamic loudspeaker design of its generation." The current Nautilus incarnation of the 801 builds on a solid base of quality.

Magnepan Magneplanar Timpani loudspeaker
Back in the late 1980s, more Stereophile readers owned Magneplanar panels than any other loudspeaker. Jim Winey's twin ideas of using an array of ceramic refrigerator magnets and bonding a flat wire coil to a Mylar diaphragm allowed him to create a magnetic equivalent to an electrostatic speaker but without some of the latter's problems, and with additional benefits such as ease of drive and much higher power handling. The current Magnepan designs may use a ribbon tweeter and be refined in all areas of performance, but are no different in concept from what Paul Bolin calls "a landmark in the dictionary sense of the word."

Vandersteen 2 loudspeaker
In production for a quarter century and incrementally improved throughout that period, the modest-looking 2 offers astonishingly clean, extended, and detailed sound without ever losing sight of the music. That it does all this for just $1500/pair is a tribute to Richard Vandersteen's talent but also foresight.

Quad ESL-63 loudspeaker
An inspired planar design from a true audio genius, England's Peter Walker, and still in production (as the ESL-988) more than two decades after its introduction, the Quad has survived when bigger, more complex full-range electrostatics have long since disappeared. "A no-brainer classic," writes Paul Bolin. "People will be listening to the ESL-63 40 years from now and loving every minute." Amen.

http://www.stereophile.com/features/709/index.html

[RGA]

This is not a best list this is a subjective list of influential products. Heck the guy even says that he didn't like the AR 3 but put on the list because he can't ignore it.

He also basically calls the Crown DC300A "Crown sounded like early solid-state. But it was powerful, bombproof, and drove the early days of the progressive rock revolution and what was to become high-end audio."

In other words easily outclassed today but began the road to quality. Mostly interesting because it forms a history of some of the things that began down roads for good or ill like speakers using metal woofers.

There are bizarre things like the PSB Alpha which is there because of bang for buck in its day but the new speakers from many other speakers in that price range easily beat the Alpha...thogh the Alpha B is still a very good speaker for low money. But even the reviewer says there is better.

This is not a list of best of products...innovative perhaps.

[ryewoods]

There are some classic speakers on that list. My father owned some Advents and the famous KLH Model 6's, but unfortunately the drivers are blown. I have an itch to build a clone of a set of a classic pair of speakers. I have the plans to build Pro Ac Response 2.5, the LS3/5A, and numerous EPI and Genesis clones. They are a bit intimidating, which is why I haven't done so yet.

[Smokey]

RGA,

I belive you are right when you said most of these speakers were innovative. Most of speakers mentioned are from 60s and 70s and probably were best in their time frame. But some of them might still hold up pretty good today against contemporary speakers. Looking at their price, they better be

ryewoods

I also have heard alot about classic KLH speakers. Too bad today they are not the company they used to be as now they cater more toward lower end market. The other speaker I hears about also is Yamaha NS1000 loudspeaker. They seem to be monster in their glory days

[RGA]

I'm not even sure they were best in their day...there is a difference between good and innovative. The latter simply means they started something different. The first Sony and Phillips cd players are on the list because CD was new technology...the players were truly terrible. But it began cd and since then has been totally re-done and fixed. The AR 3 is there because of the design concept and most considered it the best AR speaker made...which apparently wasn't saying much since a lot of folks think it was and is dungheep in a heavy box. I have never yet liked the sound of a speaker with rear firing drivers which are tonally innacurate with phase problems and such. Others support that sound and think it's the best. Sound however is directional and should be directional. One reason I prefer two way designs that sound like all music is of one piece... It would be nice if one speaker could produce it all from a ONE-WAY.

[skeptic]

The AR 3 is there because of the design concept and most considered it the best AR speaker made...which apparently wasn't saying much since a lot of folks think it was and is dungheep in a heavy box. I have never yet liked the sound of a speaker with rear firing drivers which are tonally innacurate with phase problems and such. Others support that sound and think it's the best. Sound however is directional and should be directional. One reason I prefer two way designs that sound like all music is of one piece... It would be nice if one speaker could produce it all from a ONE-WAY.

Acoustic Research was the result of the pioneering work done by Edgar Vilcher. Acoustic Research was responsible for more innovations in loudspeaker design than almost any other manufacturer I can think of. AR pioneered the Acoustic Suspension principle and even today, the earliest AR 12 inch woofers will give some of the finest subwoofers a run for their money. The AR3 was the first truely full range compact loudspeaker being only 2 cubic feet. It made high quality stereophonic sound in the home a real possibility and was a benchmark against which all other speakers of its day were compared. One of its major crimes was being inefficient in an era when amplifier electrical power was very expensive. It was the first speaker to use dome tweeters. It also used a dome midrange which was unique. Whether you "like it" or not, it was used successfully in many live versus recorded demonstrations including two I heard personally. This attested to its high degree of accuracy. The AR3 design itself was evolved from the earlier AR1 which used a Western Electric tweeter. The design continued to be refined over a stretch of some 40 years from the mid 1950s to the early 1980 through such production units as AR3A, AR 10 Pi, ARLST, AR 303A and (Teledyne)AR9 which IMO is the ultimate expression of that concept. There are probably few manufacturers of loudspeakers which ever equaled the quality control exercised in the manufacture of AR speakers through most of their history.

IMO, almost every one of the most highly prized loudspeakers (AR, KLH, and Advent not included) of every era used indirect firing sound in some way. This recognized that fact that the limitations of direct firing loudspeakers in real rooms could not be overcome with only direct firing drivers and is especially apparant in the treble range. These products may include bipolar radiators or a long column of tweeters which puts the listener off axis of most of them, or indirect firing tweeters. Think of all the electrostatics, Vandersteen, Snell, JBL Paragon, Magneplanar and so many others which exploited the reflective surfaces of rooms to improve sound reproduction. (I'm not going to type the B word.)

Designers of two way speakers face an insurmountable problem and that is how to get only two loudspeaker drivers which are inherently resonant devices to sound like one non resonant device over 10 octaves. Most can't. They are inevitably a compromise. BTW, by compromising the lowest 2 or 3 ocatves and then using a subwoofer, you no longer have a 2 way system. You have designed your own 3 way system so anyone who thinks they have only a two way but uses a subwoofer is only kidding themselves.

[JoeE SP9]

It would be nice if one speaker could produce it all from a ONE-WAY.

That's very easy to do. Just buy some fullrange ESL's.

[Woochifer]

Interesting list because some of the choices like the Infinity IRS and Dahlquist speakers were also on The Absolute Sound's list of most influential products since they began publication. A lot of the products on the list indeed were ahead of their time but never caught on, while others were precursors for things ahead and very influential. It's also very interesting to see all of those various panel speakers on the list from now defunct manufacturers like Apogee and Acoustat. The list also points to some of the varied approaches that have been taken over the years, which is always interesting.

[barney]

Surely you forget the best speaker ever made on the top 10 list
Griffin Electronics type 85
Tri Amplified with electronic crossovers.
Actively damped bass driver.
And all from 1975-1983.

[Dusty Chalk]

Huzzah for the BBC LS3/5A.

[audio_dude]

ya, i hate it when noobies dig up old threads just to make a stupid comment... pisses me off, but i have to admit, it was fun reading this...

[JoeE SP9]

With more than 700 posts I don't think I'm a newbie. My comment was made in jest. I am well aware of RGA's approach to gear. I don't own boxes and never will. Currently I'm trying to decide between some new Apogee's and a Cayman. However, I've got a lead on some Acoustat 6's and may buy them and the car!

[jrhymeammo]

Hey Joe, you've been contemplating that Apogee for a while now. I cant believe some of the price I see on Agon too. $5000 for Apogee Grand? They'll just take up my space though...

I think the Dude was talking about this newbie named Barney.

BTW, are you gonna buy that CTI shirt?

Best wishes.

[JoeE SP9]

Hey Joe, you've been contemplating that Apogee for a while now. I cant believe some of the price I see on Agon too. $5000 for Apogee Grand? They'll just take up my space though...

I think the Dude was talking about this newbie named Barney.

BTW, are you gonna buy that CTI shirt?

Best wishes.

Every time I pass a Porsche dealer my head gets twisted around! After all, I am also a gear head. Where did you see Apogee Grand's for $5k? They don't take up much floor space though do tend to dominate a room. My thinking is that if I have Apogee's for fronts the need/desire for them in the rear will take over. Besides buying two pair of speakers I would have to change all my power amps! When I look at things from that perspective the Cayman looks more and more inviting. It's a definite yes on the shirt. I'll dig out some plastic today and go for it. I usually don't buy anything from ebay but a t-shirt is no real expense.

[likeitloud]

Not one entry from James B. Lansing is a joke. The 42xx/43xx/L100 series monitors
blow away almost everything on that list, and did'nt mention any of the horn stuff
or the later, and seriously Rock'n 4410/12's with Ti tweeter's. No late 70's Pioneer
HPM stuff with giant voice coil, carbon cones, ribbon tweeters, except for the
NS1000, all the other stuff is "east coast" sound stuff. "West coast" sounding
speakers, or, lets face it, JBL's, or loud monitors, never get there due respect. Until,
you buy them, and use them.

[jrhymeammo]

Where did you see Apogee Grand's for $5k? .

Oops. I have totally forgot about this post. I made a mistake, what I mean to say was Diva. Grand for $5k? Not a chance. I would even buy it for $70k in a heart beat.

-JRA

[hermanv]

Perhaps I'm missing something here. A decent audiophile quality sub costs about $1,000 and up, you really should use two, it sounds better.

Now to keep it relative, good audiophile speakers start at about $5,000. Yes I know there are many quite decent speakers for less, but to get that hard to define elegance you need to spend near that amount or more not counting good electronics and cables to run the things.

So as to what I'm missing why can't those same 5K and up speakers deliver kick ass bass? Adding a grand per speaker to the expensive models almost gets lost in the pricing, worse a sub added to an exisiting cabinet should have some savings from reduced duplication of box, feet, connectors etc.

My friend and I designed our own 3 way. Using a Scanspeak 10" woofer with an Fs of 19.5 Hz (better than many sub woofers) we get honest bass to 20 Hz. The driver is under $200 retail, I'm sure it's less for OEMs. Like all speakers that deliver decent bass cabinet sizes go up, you can't get there from here with small boxes. Those tiny subs with slope or servo correction and massive amps just don't seem to end up sounding very musical.

My point is that good bass can be done especially at the 5K and up price points. One big problem (pun intended) is the size of the damn things.

[jrhymeammo]

The biggest problem I hear and read all the time is that, if speakers can't play Classical music superbly, it's not considered audiophile speakers. I'm not obsessed with that word "Audiophile" at all, but kinda shytty how designers focus alot on Classical and Acoustic music.

[Smokey]

First when I read the subject line to this post, said to myself this is a good post to read and clicked on it. But when I saw who posted it, quickly realized it was me 2-1/2 years ago......LOL

Still a good [old and new] read though

[hermanv]

The biggest problem I hear and read all the time is that, if speakers can't play Classical music superbly, it's not considered audiophile speakers. I'm not obsessed with that word "Audiophile" at all, but kinda shytty how designers focus alot on Classical and Acoustic music.

Classical music seems to be the hardest to reproduce accurately. What I mean by accurate is that it has a much wider dynamic range than most other music, it uses practically every instrument ever invented and it often plays all of them at once which makes any HiFi system work very hard and thereby shows up weaknesses in that system

It's not the musical content but the technical difficulty of playing classical music well that I think makes it a choice for many reveiwers.

[RGA]

Actually classical music is limited. A synthesizer covers more frequency response at limitless permutations of dynamics. So technically the best thing to illustrate technical perfomance would be a sysnthesizer and NOT classical music.

Having said that the real reason classical is used is because we have a known reference of what instruments sound like such as piano or vilin whereas we have far less with an electric guitar player running through an amplified set-up.

Having said that all music coming from a stereo is in the end AMPLIFIED. So the classical music guros argue bogus condemnation of rock and pop and folk classical and often even Jazz.

The bottom line is that no electrostat no matter how expensive sounds like a Horn loudspeaker (at even more money). What is better? The K-Horn has been selling for more than 40 years and no it's not perfect but yes it is very good -- the question is the three things that it does better by a MILE than any panel can offer up more important to you than three things that a good panel can do that the K-horn can't.

Looking around and see which companies went belly up and how many HE/Tube set-ups there are and how many panel makers are around and it is clear that both have a great deal of supporters. Which is why Quad and Klipsch are still selling.

[JacksonS54]

So if you're lucky enough to have a large house or apartment, don't skimp on speakers: look for large towers, with 8-inch (203mm) or larger woofers. Take the opposite course with small rooms, and go for bookshelf or tower speakers with 5-inch (127mm) or smaller woofers.
Moose Jaw snow removal companies

[JacksonS54]

Water easily seeps through openings around pipes and vents, putting your home at risk for bacteria and rot. In other words, your home will be at risk for costly damage.
Saskatoon wall insulation

[JacksonS54]

Tree planting programs implemented by a growing number of cities, local councils and organizations is mitigating the losses and in most cases increasing the number of trees in suburbia.
https://www.patreeremoval.com/

[jackslesly19]

Isn't that speakers are big? I am using a portable sony speaker mostly in my work from window screen repair bend Oregon, doing my job with music is more fun.