GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Altec Model 19 in Boston.

Post Subject: Cetla 91 Light of the Altec 19++?Posted by Romy the Cat on: 8/23/2011

I was sitting in my fireplace room; eating my freshly cooked oyster mushrooms and listening a master dub of Munch and BSO take on Damnation De Faust. No matter how primitive the setup was in this room the experience was enjoyable even sound was annoying. Then I asked myself how much I willing to invest efforts for Cetla projects? The option to cut the Altec frame to get rid of that horrible 811 horn with that Altec drive do sound like a good project for somebody. I might do it one day, and $50K would be a good motivation, but it is not what I would like to do nowadays…

Then I asked myself what single thing that annoys me in Altec 19 the most? Unquestionably it will be MF channel. The idea to put a narrow version of CN481 horn instead of 811 horn and rid rid of that ugly Altec driver simple but they I asked myself: why as a “light” version I just put a better horn with better driver above my Altec 19 and disconnect the 19’s own MF channel. It was very simple. I screwed the Vitavox S2 driver in the back of my 180Hz multi-sells, got the Altec 19’s lead that went to 802 drivers and connected them to S2. It took 3 minutes to do and another 5 min to re-adjust Altec 19 crossover and tone balance on my preamp. The ugly sound of the Altec 19 had gone and gave a birth to very different sound. All those miserable horn echoes that Altec is so famous is not here anymore. The crunchy, barbaric HF extension of 802 drivers that so many idiots Altec-enthusiasts admire so much and consider as definition of “quality”, is gone for good. The speaker got more of less more sophisticated MF, lost everything that bad in original Altec 19’s MF and become much more sensible.

It does not have as good integration between the channels as Altec 19 was and it is need to be heard now from a distance. That is not a big deal for me. I am willing to keep it as it for now…

Rgs, Romy the Cat

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