mats wrote:

Too late now for points, but just the other day I tried to imagine your plan. and I was pretty close. Actually, it is a bit like what I have going now;  15" Eminence bass guitarr woofers in a sealed 3 cu ft cabinet, Oris 150 with 8" B&C midrange driver, JBL 2435 (carefully filtered) on 340Hz Lecleach and Fostex T90A gently on top.  Oh, and a tapped horn in the 25-45Hz range.  To gain midrange resolution I aim to implement JBL 2482 on the Oris via an extender. The 340Hz horn is too large, so 600Hz on the horizon, perhaps with field coil. This will also provide space for a more refined ribbon top. No room in this house for 60Hz horns.  I like the sealed upper bass solution. I am at a loss for a more refined driver.  Even at 200Hz, second order the quality is very important. You are satisfied with the upper sound of the 416's. The best soiund I had on the Eminence was with a Marantz 8b that I had for a very short while. Nice rosin growl on the cellos! Hope you will realize the Cetla plan! Mats

My plans are will wary from how the project will end up. If somebody pays me my $50K then it will be a complete, properly balance and well performing speaker with amplification. If I keep it for myself then it will be more like a pile of conceptual channels as I do not need from acoustic system in my fireplace living room any “pushy” sound.

The Altec 19 came to me accidently and mostly due to the residue of my stupid Christian repent.  About a year ago a local audio guy was complaining to me about his loudspeaker and was asking me what to buy for little money. Since he was jazz listener I advised him to get Altec 19 but I warned him that it will require modifying them. Unfortunately people hear only what they want to hear and my comments about need to modify them were discarded. The guy went and bough a mint condition Altec 19, the cleanest that I ever with the newest drivers I ever seen, brought them home and hated the sound. I was in his home at that time and I understand what he did not like but we heard them so differently. Knowing how Altec sound I discarded in my mind all things that are bad about Altec, knowing that it might be dealt with by modification. He did not have the luxury of my experience and he was very pissed with the result – here is one more of my “recommendations” burned in hell. In addition the guy wife did not like the look of Altec 19 in this room and the guy was appearing as he just was raped by Sasquatch. At that time I was moving the things from my storages at my new home and looking how frustrated he was I decided to take those “recommended” Altec 19 from his hands. I always liked how Altec 19 looks like and they looked very nice with my new mahogany-red floors. Yes, some moronic people who do not have furniture buy speakers to fill the room.

I still like very much how the Altec 19 look in my fireplace room. The room is not being used in my house but at winter I do burn fireplace a lot – I love watch at fire. The fireplace room is too far from Macondo and it is a good idea to have some local speakers in it. The quality of these speakers in absolutely irrelevant however. If I sell the Cetla for my $50K then I’ll probably might be able to write off my fireplace room as some kind design facility or demo/testing room…

tokyo john wrote:

I just stumbled on this thread, and am thinking about being your first customer. I am planning to move to New York from Tokyo end of this year - not just escape the nuclear radiation but to let my kids experience a different culture. Depending on my economic circumstances next year I would love to be able to order my Cetla from you and set it up in a room with a lovely fireplace like yours. I am no Bill Gates so 50k is a lot of money for me, but as we have discussed before about value in audio, there is nothing out there commercially available  for 50k that looks honest (although I am curious about the Audio Machina Pure System that comes in a proper sealed enclosure), and your aims and goals with the design if achieved are worth 50k it seems to me. Maybe someone else will ultimately beat me to the Cetla, but your designs for it will hopefully not be wasted either case!

Romy the Cat wrote:

Yesterday I was working for a half day at the part of the house were my Altec 19 are sitting and just to keep myself entertained I set up the Altec 19 to play from my add-hog playback: Sony $30 DVD player, Yamaha C2A preamplifier and Yamaha B-2 power amp, all connected with those horrible Radio Shack interconnects. It was not good sound, not that I was looking for any kind of Sound. However, again and again I have noticed the amassing quality of the Altec 19’s bass driver – it just never stops to up in dynamic. As I told many times before this characteristic to demonstrate absolute lack of compression in bass at high volume is the ONLY one worthy quality of this entire speaker. It is not the bass is good, it is very bad in fact – the typical ported crap but the way this bas climbing up in dynamic range is truly remarkable and VERY infrequent commodity that one very seldom can get even from a good horn.

Wojtek wrote:

with your opinions. Your hateful criticue of 802 driver goes against your own recommendation of finding apropriate solution (horn and application ) for chosen driver . To me 811 is a bad, raspy sounding horn ,but quite perfect for reproduction of electric guitar tracks. I understand your sentiment toward Altec 19 apperance in your fireplace room but it would be probably easier and simpler to build Cetla from the ground up from the proceedings you get selling Altec 19. Since you exclusively listen to classical music and altec users exlusively are non classicaly oriented (at least I never met any) there is no point of proving anything. Hovever it would be of great value to people looking for sensible HE speaker less imposing and complicated than Macondo if you proceed with CETLA project  I think. That if you're in sort of humanitarian, sentimental mood and want to help out bottom feeders .Whatever happened to your MiniME project? Is it worse than Altec 19 that you have to aggravate yourself with altec dreck?

Wojtek,

Of cause I would not agree with inconsistency as you need to view my comments from a proper perspective. The Altec 19 is not my main playback and I have absolutely no objectives to have second respectfully playing installation. In fact to make it “respectfully playing” would take much more efforts then I am willing to spend. My currant approach in audio allows to me to be involved in any audio project where I do not need more tools then a screwdriver. That is literally the measurement of the efforts that I am willing to invest. The people who use Altec with 802 as their own playback and particularly who are wiling to play classical repertoire (as you very accurately noted) would need much more then screwdriver efforts and it is not what I do nowadays, without somebody pays me $50K… :-)

The “proper perspective” that I mentioned is the ultimate objective that I have for my Altec 19. The recent resurrection of my interest to Altec or Cetla coming from the fact that my local audio friends temporary furnished me with components that converted my fireplace room into Opera Room:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=14568

So, the Altec, or Cetla or whatever need to be good enough to play video – very limited and very restricted set of audio requirements.  My experiment with substitute the 802 with S2 was just a band-aid to eliminate some announce from Altec MF, the announce that does not exhibit itself what I play video, so it is very possible that for video I will use even the stock Altec 19 as the requirement is very low in there. I will observe that subject further but most likely in my Opera Room thread.

Wojtek wrote:

I understand your sentiment toward Altec 19 apperance in your fireplace room …

As I have finished remodeling my new Opera room:

 http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=16948

…I modified my Altec 19. The one ordinal that I had was truly phenomenal item. I went to recue what was done in there I was very impressed. The former owner from Florida has reportedly died already but the way how he kept the speaker was truly exemplary.  Everything inside is original and new as it was produced just last week. The new external foam, the new grills, the drivers as they were made just last night. Wonderful! I rotated the bass drivers (a good for suspension sagging) and realized the he put a very thick layer of leather (½ inch) between the bass driver and enclosure. I got rid of the MF driver, put my 18-cell with S2 driver in place driving it from the very same Altec 19 crossover, effectively converting the Altec 19 to Altec 21S. The sound of CD was very nice if I hear it from another room.

Then I decided that I am too expressed and too sophisticated and that I can do much better then the 35 years old stupid crossover. So, I made two second order 500Hz crossovers for 416 driver and S2 with metal cone. As I connected my new Altec 21S with my own crossovers, with use the original one  the sound turn out to be so disgusting that it shocked my “sophistication” to its core. I can not even begin to describe how bad it was and I am very glad that no one witnessed that shame. In the best it sounded like I just eaten a kilogram of rusty nails and then drunk a gallon of Muriatic acid. If somebody tried to apply Muriatic  acid to metal then you know it feels (smells). I was sitting in front of the speakers and was thinking what the fucking idiot I am. I literally was about to vomit not only because the Sound but also because I did it with my own hands (mind).

Well, the result I got, perhaps need to have further working and I am sure that if I go all the way to the bottom of it then I would find a useful combination, but I was poisoned by me “engineering” that I trashed my own crossover, put back the original Altec and said to myself: “You Moron, do not fucking touch it anymore.”  The only thing that comforts me in that whole story is that the narratives of my big “design adventure” is my secret and no one knows about it.

Listening my Altec 21S, even for movies, I do detect that it has some kind of lower MF problem, somewhere within 500-2000Hz. Here is the dilemma, what to do with it in 2–way speaker? Pretty much nothing… Since I use the original Altec 19 crossover my crossover has MF adjustment but Altec adjustment   is within next octave and sonically as I move Altec own EQ then it very horribly reflects sound. I prefer to keep the MF Altec 19 adjustment at zero.

Here is two options that I can see if I willing to deal with it: 1) to drop the MF crossover point from the Altec’s 1250Hz to let say 500Hz, thankfully the 180Hz multi-sell would allow to do so 2) introduction another channel between tweeter and woofer. Both of the ways would do and I “might” try it.

What I wonder if another channels goes what driver it might be. It is not that I am in search mode for driver. I would like to spend no efforts on it and at this point my interest is purely theoretical. For sure my JBL 2490 would be a great candidate for it:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=15335

I have a pair of them, new sitting in the boxes. The problem is that when I got them I was thinking to use them with my 18-sell 180Hz horn. Now the multi-sell is busy with Vitavox S2 and I have no plans to change MF. So, to engage the JBL 2490 it would need another lower MF horn with 3” entry. I do not have such a horn. If somebody knows any ready to go 3”-entry horn of any profile with 150Hz-180Hz exit then I might try it. I would not custom design and order such a horn as I would like to have the Altec 91 project to go easy and cheap.

To drop the MF crossover point would not be a big deal and I need to try it another day…. Still, the huge amount of empty space above multi-sell with Vitavox S2 drives me nuts… and called to be filled…

The Cat

Markus wrote:

Personally, if I wanted to get a 2nd system, I wouldn't want a less good version of the main system. If they both share an approach to audio, you'll always hear the 3- or 4-ness when you are used to the same thing in 10. I'd try to be as different as possible in the 2nd system, say Genelec 8260A or something in that genre. Or perhaps, since you want your 2nd system for opera, I'd look at what monitors are used in opera production.

Romy the Cat wrote:

As wonderful my Altec 21S plays video and pop crap as much it absolutely impotent to play any classical repertoire. In fat when I estimated it as 3 on the scale of Macondo 10 I meant the video concert and operas that I play on it. With pure audio with more or less demanding material it sinks to the bottom of the barrel.   I played today on the Altec 21S the Adagio form Mahler 6 – probably the most beautiful music Mahler ever composed and Altec 21S just destroyed it to level that it was a pain to listen. I do not need to make those experiments as it kills my libido to entire audio…

miab wrote:

I wonder if the inappropriate settings for 2 channel audio somehow might have affected your experiments with it as a transport in your main audio only system?