The Altec A-7 Voice of the theater for those who don't know anything about it is a highly efficient two way 15 inch design with a large sectoral horn tweeter. A great deal of information about the details of its design and construction can be obtained from the Lansing Heritage web site. It was a landmark of audio history. Designed for movie theaters and used for sound reinforcement in large public areas, it found its way into homes of wealthy people. They had to be wealthy to have rooms large enough to accomodate these huge monsters. Altec made them available in utilitarian cabinets for theaters and in dressier styles for home use. When stereo was introduced into the home, they offered scaled down versions which were more practical but employed the same idea. Many of them probably still survive to this day and may still function pefrectly or at most need new woofer surrounds. They were exceptionally rugged and reliable. They were also very efficient requiring very little power to play loud.

As theater speakers of a bygone era, they don't really challenge modern high quality high fidelity speakers for the accuracy and detail of sound many audiophiles today look for in loudspeaker performance. It's not that they aren't fun to listen to for people like me who still love the old equipment but they have been eclipsed by 50 years of research and development of countless new ideas for home sound reproduction from countless companies including Altec themselves. If you have them, enjoy them if you can. If they have become unsatisfactory because they are too large or not accurate enough, it's time to think about retiring them and buying something more modern.