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Nostalgia vs R&D

Figures now from 1971 Hi Fi Yearbook and so will be a bit higher than discounters on the high street as are suggested retail prices:

Leak Stereo 70 £69.50 (taking 10s as 50p) = £988.85

Rogers Ravensbourne (then 25wpc) £64.50 = £917.71

Quad 33 £43 = £611.81

Quad 303 £55 = £782.54

About the most jaw dropping... especially as the few pics etc I can find on the interweb show it to be really now't special at all, has to be the Sennheiser Philharmonic active speaker with (wired) remote control

£484 = £6886.37

Tannoy Guy R Fountain Autograph £335 = £4766.39 bargain!

but get this!

Celestion Ditton 15 £58 = £825.33 :eek:

Wharfedale Super Linton £42 = £597.58 :eek::eek:

lost "gems" (ok maybe) such as the Arena HT25... who remembers those? 2x B139, 3x B110 and 4x T27 per speaker in a sealed box £315 = £4481.83

Dynaco A25 MkII was then sold in UK and was £64 = £910.59

Quad ESL £132 = £1878.10

Audio Technica AT-1005 MkII £20 = £284.56

SME3009 S2 £31 = £441.07

Shure V15 II £40.40 = £574.81

ADC 25 £100 = £1422.80 this came with spherical and elliptical styli. A year or so later it had come down to about the same price as the Shure V15

Goldring G800E £18.60 = £264.64 :eek:

Shure M75-6 £16.50 = £234.76 :eek:

Goldring Lenco GL75/P £45 = £640.26

Garrard 401 £31.60 = £449.61 this is for the chassis alone note. No plinth or arm.

Garrard SP25 MkII £15.60 = £222 :eek:

Leak Truspeed £65.60 = £933.36 yes Leak made a TT! Looks like it could be good 'n all. Includes arm and cart...

No real "high end" exists then ie by and large, the most expensive speakers you could buy were about £5k and if we disallow the aberration of the ADC 25 which went down in price by about 2/3rds in a year or so then £500 ish was the worlds most expensive cart. In fact many high end of the time items seem good VFM by todays prices... How much would a pair of Tannoy Guy R Fountain Autographs be today? A load more than £4766 I think!
BUT the lower end cost a small fortune compared to today!!
I recall the Shure M75-6 and Goldring G800E as about the cheapest carts you could call hi fi and they were often fitted to upmarket music centres etc, £250:eek: and an original linn basik yellow cart that came free with the arms and decks and was bloody awful would no doubt stomp these groove manglers from yesteryear.
 
Yes, I do say. I’m not quite sure why you opted to take such an arsey tone, but I suppose the initially interesting thread has started degenerating into the usual shitshow of twats shouting opinions on the internet - so why not I guess.

Anyway, the general point being that for an album that was recorded (so badly ;)) 60-odd years ago to sound as fantastic as it still does today makes one wonder how far recording and studio technology and techniques have really got us when all is said and done.
I've got no intention to take an arsey tone, but if you want to get arsey and call me a twat, be my guest. There are zero shits given.
In terms of opinion, it's a fact that the tape recorder was faulty. Not an opinion. Yet you, and I for that matter, think (that's an opinion) it sounds fantastic. So do however many million other listeners over the years, the defect wasn't noted until 1992. In terms of recording technology, if we can't even tell if something is at the right speed, the wondering ought to be more about what we think we can hear rather than what's really there when we are sucking our teeth over boutique fuses and the like. I remember a little while ago someone here was saying that the Adele album sounded natural. Someone answered that they had read an account of what the producer had done to it in terms of multitracking, autotune, it was anything but natural. So the interesting debate for me is about what we think we hear against what's physically there. The psychoacoustic aspect of music is little understood.
 
Figures now from 1971 Hi Fi Yearbook

I’ve got an incomplete stack of these from the late-50s to 1979. They can be hard to interpret when it comes to speakers, but I suspect the ESL and Tannoy pricing is per speaker rather than a pair. Many times they don’t actually state it and you have to cross-reference with a similar-era magazine. The cheaper stuff (Ditton 15s etc) is almost always priced as a pair.
 
I’ve got an incomplete stack of these from the late-50s to 1979. They can be hard to interpret when it comes to speakers, but I suspect the ESL and Tannoy pricing is per speaker rather than a pair. Many times they don’t actually state it and you have to cross-reference with a similar-era magazine. The cheaper stuff (Ditton 15s etc) is almost always priced as a pair.

THAT is the main area of confusion and I've assumed that the prices are EACH in all cases. Hence my prices are all for a pair. They became priced in pairs within a few years in year book. A year or so later HI Fi Sound mag has ditton 15's at roughly the price I quoted for a pair and I'm using this as a guide that they are all probably for 1 speaker.
Otherwise the ditton 15 went up from £29 a pair to £54 (dealer price not RRP) a pair in a year!
The only mention I can find of anything being priced in pairs is for Goodmans very cheapest speakers, the Miramba, Mambo and 3005 all around £22 - 25, very small, and 3005 is some sort of full range unit ("twin cone" so probably whizzer cone). I assume then that those Goodmans speakers which do not say "priced as pair" are priced singly, so Magnum K = £40 each and Magister £57 each. These figures seem to make sense to me anyway...
I included the purchase tax when <12" woofer and hence liable to tax. The figures are given in the book.
 
THAT is the main area of confusion and I've assumed that the prices are EACH in all cases. Hence my prices are all for a pair. They became priced in pairs within a few years in year book. A year or so later HI Fi Sound mag has ditton 15's at roughly the price I quoted for a pair and I'm using this as a guide that they are all probably for 1 speaker.

Just had a look at the 1978 copy as that is about the point I really started to become aware of pricing. By that point they were pricing in pairs and Ditton 15s and JR149s were £120, Quad ESLs £330 (all minus VAT). The latter surprised me as my memory is that they were much dearer. You could get the Dittons way cheaper in practice as they were really heavily discounted, about £85 IIRC. A 33/303 was £90/98, V15/III the same price give or take a few pence as a 3009 at £55, an LP12 with plinth and cover £203. It is a shame so little top-end Japanese kit is listed but not priced, I remember the big Pioneer and Marantz models costing a fortune, way dearer than the equivalent Quad, Sugden or whatever on a power basis, but I guess a lot of that was import tax. Same with the better DD turntables, I know the MkI SL-120 I’ve got sitting upstairs doing nothing cost way, way more than a Linn in 1976, at least twice the price IIRC!

PS I like that they have mics listed too, as these can be a pretty good inflation calculator too, though there are issues e.g. a Shure SM57 was £60, but that’s a proper US-made one you’d get good cash for today as the Mexico-made ones (typically about £90) apparently don’t sound the same. Musos & recording studio folk are arguably even more OCD than audiophiles!
 
Just had a look at the 1978 copy as that is about the point I really started to become aware of pricing. By that point they were pricing in pairs and Ditton 15s and JR149s were £120, Quad ESLs £330 (all minus VAT). The latter surprised me as my memory is that they were much dearer. You could get the Dittons way cheaper in practice as they were really heavily discounted, about £85 IIRC. A 33/303 was £90/98, V15/III the same price give or take a few pence as a 3009 at £55, an LP12 with plinth and cover £203. It is a shame so little top-end Japanese kit is listed but not priced, I remember the big Pioneer and Marantz models costing a fortune, way dearer than the equivalent Quad, Sugden or whatever on a power basis, but I guess a lot of that was import tax. Same with the better DD turntables, I know the MkI SL-120 I’ve got sitting upstairs doing nothing cost way, way more than a Linn in 1976, at least twice the price IIRC!

PS I like that they have mics listed too, as these can be a pretty good inflation calculator too, though there are issues e.g. a Shure SM57 was £60, but that’s a proper US-made one you’d get good cash for today as the Mexico-made ones (typically about £90) apparently don’t sound the same. Musos & recording studio folk are arguably even more OCD than audiophiles!

As my figures include tax I added it to your price for the ESL's and they come out at £2191.59 today so had gone up a bit since '71 in real terms. Doing the same for the 15's and JR149's puts them at £796.94 so slightly cheaper but only by £28 or so in today's money. That still sounds like eye watering prices! I seem to recall £99 as common discounted price for 15's (inc VAT) which would then make them £571.72 so I can well see why I recall even a pair of Ditton 15XR's (I presume all this is about XR's by 78) being an unreachable price to my 14 year old self!

Most expensive Jap integrated I can find in 71 is Sony TA-1120 at £160 = £2276.46 Sony also have a pre and power at £3116 in todays money.
Crown DC300A easily the most expensive amp at £320 = £4553

Vitavox make, presumably under licence, the Klipschorn in '71 and it's "POA" but I recall from another yearbook a while back that they were more than the Tannoy GRF Autograph!

No equivalents to the Veblen oligarch £100K amps and speakers etc of today though.
 
Doing the same for the 15's and JR149's puts them at £796.94 so slightly cheaper but only by £28 or so in today's money. That still sounds like eye watering prices!

To my mind it is the other way, i.e. comparatively affordable. The thing we must do when making comparisons is to only compare prices to product built in the UK, EU or US. Once you include stuff made with Chinese or third-world slave labour obviously all bets are off. As such compare the JR149, Dittons, LS3/5A (£157 pr in ‘81 for Chartwells) with a little Spendor, ProAc, Harbeth or whatever, not with whatever Chinese mini-minitors Richer, Amazon or wherever are knocking out for a couple of hundred quid. All these genuinely equivalent speakers are now well over £1k, which sounds right to me as they are low-volume niche-market product whereas Ditton 15s, JR149s etc would have been selling in their 1000s as two-channel home audio was still mass-market.

The difference in inflation-calculated price just equates to economies of scale in production. Same with the amps, you’d pay a heck of a lot for an amp with the bespoke castings and sheer quality/quantity of metalwork as a 303 or 405 these days, far more than the inflation calculator implies. The current solid state Quad power amp, electrically a close descendant of the 606, is £1500, and that is Chinese made. I bet it would be twice that built in the UK.

PS A Sugden A21 would be a good comparator as they are still UK made albeit very different aesthetically.
 
To my mind it is the other way, i.e. comparatively affordable. The thing we must do when making comparisons is to only compare prices to product built in the UK, EU or US. Once you include stuff made with Chinese or third-world slave labour obviously all bets are off. As such compare the JR149, Dittons, LS3/5A (£157 pr in ‘81 for Chartwells) with a little Spendor, ProAc, Harbeth or whatever, not with whatever Chinese mini-minitors Richer, Amazon or wherever are knocking out for a couple of hundred quid. All these genuinely equivalent speakers are now well over £1k, which sounds right to me as they are low-volume niche-market product whereas Ditton 15s, JR149s etc would have been selling in their 1000s as two-channel home audio was still mass-market.

The difference in inflation-calculated price just equates to economies of scale in production. Same with the amps, you’d pay a heck of a lot for an amp with the bespoke castings and sheer quality/quantity of metalwork as a 303 or 405 these days, far more than the inflation calculator implies. The current solid state Quad power amp, electrically a close descendant of the 606, is £1500, and that is Chinese made. I bet it would be twice that built in the UK.

PS A Sugden A21 would be a good comparator as they are still UK made albeit very different aesthetically.

I can see some sense in that but I guess it's difficult to compare apples with apples as it were... I just tried prices and dates for things like KEF Coda, Heybrook HB1 etc and I'm getting around £360 ish in today's money. I reckon a set of HB1's would easy beat 15XR's but there again they were cheaply built in comparison, with wood effect vinyl coverings etc.

It's interesting to note how certain things which have become collectable and worth loadsa money now were same price or cheaper than other items which are now regarded as crap or distinctively forgettable! 15XR V JR149 both same price new is a prime example as is LS3/5A's being not that much more than 15XR when new. What's a set of 15XR worth now? £50 - £100 it seems, with the odd mint set getting maybe £150... JR149 around £300 - 450, and the LS3/5A??? :eek:

'71 Sugden A21 £56 = £797
 
I can see some sense in that but I guess it's difficult to compare apples with apples as it were... I just tried prices and dates for things like KEF Coda, Heybrook HB1 etc and I'm getting around £360 ish in today's money. I reckon a set of HB1's would easy beat 15XR's but there again they were cheaply built in comparison, with wood effect vinyl coverings etc.

Those were real bargain-bucket budget speakers though, vinyl-wrap chipboard, very cheap drivers, albeit good sounding overall for the money. FWIW I never liked the HB1 at all, that was a pretty brash tweeter, though the smaller and more expensive HB2 was stunningly good.

The thing to remember with the Ditton 15 is it was very old by the time we got to the late-70s. IIRC it was introduced in the mid to late-60s and was a bit of a game-changer being a fairly small (large by today’s standard) speaker that actually had some bass. I rather like it, when setup well they can sound nice and balanced, and whilst the tweeter doesn’t go up that far (certainly higher than I could hear today!) it was a very nice sounding one, a very close relative of the lower one in the BC1 (I never liked the later 15XR with its conventional soft-dome as much). The 15s had a nice big, balanced and warm sound for the money, but so many ended up in poor locations with feedback-prone turntables muddying the bass. Stick a pair on the end of a good system today and I bet you’d be surprised, nowhere near as bad as their reputation. I’d definitely take a pair over HB1s, but not HB2s.

PS Cheapest Sugden A21 variant today >£2k.
 
An audio dealer in Wisconsin, USA has scanned a bunch of old audio print ads from the Sixties through the Nineties and put them in a “Good Ole Days” collection on their website, very entertaining:

https://www.audioemporium.com/the-good-ole-days/

Make sure to click on the ad that’s next to a given year, that then shows you quite a few ads from that particular year.
 
Those were real bargain-bucket budget speakers though, vinyl-wrap chipboard, very cheap drivers, albeit good sounding overall for the money. FWIW I never liked the HB1 at all, that was a pretty brash tweeter, though the smaller and more expensive HB2 was stunningly good.

The thing to remember with the Ditton 15 is it was very old by the time we got to the late-70s. IIRC it was introduced in the mid to late-60s and was a bit of a game-changer being a fairly small (large by today’s standard) speaker that actually had some bass. I rather like it, when setup well they can sound nice and balanced, and whilst the tweeter doesn’t go up that far (certainly higher than I could hear today!) it was a very nice sounding one, a very close relative of the lower one in the BC1 (I never liked the later 15XR with its conventional soft-dome as much). The 15s had a nice big, balanced and warm sound for the money, but so many ended up in poor locations with feedback-prone turntables muddying the bass. Stick a pair on the end of a good system today and I bet you’d be surprised, nowhere near as bad as their reputation. I’d definitely take a pair over HB1s, but not HB2s.

PS Cheapest Sugden A21 variant today >£2k.

HB2 was a real peach yeah! Definite LS3/5A eater and for much less today. Maybe slightly more than LS3/5A new at the time I suspect. A bit bigger than LS3/5A.

You know I've never actually heard a pair of the original 15's, although I do own a pair which I suspect will work fine if I put the tweeters back in and replace the, IIRC, single electrolytic in the crossovers. I removed the tweeters for "safe keeping" thinking they would be suitable replacements for those in my Spendors.... they are not alas..

XR's are a speaker I spent hundreds of hours with in early 80's and remember as sounding pretty damn good. I've heard them a few times since in much less well fettled and set up systems and been unimpressed to say the least.. so wondered if rose tinted specs... but then heard a mint pair with CD source about a year ago and was once again quite impressed.. for what they are anyway.

15's and 15XR's are totally different BTW. Cabs are slightly larger in XR's and all drive units are different, including the ABR.

I have a set of UL6 also and they are pretty impressive. They were a little more than 15XR at the time. Pity a mate I sold them to but then got them back at a much lower price decided to paint them gloss black whilst he had them! ARGH! Those beautifully veneered baffles etc 'n all. At least he made a good job of it and could pass for piano lacquer from 10' away...
I rebuilt crossovers with polyprops etc and made them bi-wire-able as it was in fashion at the time and in fact used them with that Rogers Ravensbourne I mentioned up thread in a bedroom system for a while.

The HB1 could be a bit brash yes but I've heard them sound much better than they have any right to on the end of a "sympathetic" system. Better than I've heard 15XR's ever sound but to be fair I've heard HB1's with some pretty high end gear driving them and not so with 15XR.
 
my Dad started teaching in 1972. His salary was less than £1000.

Guess that'd be about right. I started at the chalk face in Jan. 1974 at £1,400 odd p.a. Those were days of high inflation (to which teaching salaries were linked) so I'm not surprised if it had gone up that much for NQTs in the interim. Around 1974/5/6 inflation rocketed and so did my salary; esp. on a grade 2 later in '74.
 
Same with the better DD turntables, I know the MkI SL-120 I’ve got sitting upstairs doing nothing cost way, way more than a Linn in 1976, at least twice the price IIRC!

I don't think it was that much of a difference. Also admittedly from memory, a Linn with plinth and lid, sans arm was £75. I recall we had the first Rotel DD, the RP3000, which sold for £99, but that included an arm. The original Technics SL1200 was £140 I think, with the Technics arm. I don't remember the SL120 being readily available at the same time for some reason, although we did have a few customers who replaced the arm on a 1200 with an SME, replcement arm boards were readily available.

So by the time you paid £40 or thereabouts for an AT arm or similar for a Linn, you were eating into the cost differential.

I do remember my boss being a bit taken aback when the Linn jumped to £99, he was concerned they might have priced themselves out of the market! (I wonder how that turned out?).
 
I don't think it was that much of a difference. Also admittedly from memory, a Linn with plinth and lid, sans arm was £75. I recall we had the first Rotel DD, the RP3000, which sold for £99, but that included an arm. The original Technics SL1200 was £140 I think, with the Technics arm. I don't remember the SL120 being readily available at the same time for some reason, although we did have a few customers who replaced the arm on a 1200 with an SME, replcement arm boards were readily available.

When I landed mine (£35 from the local auction with SME 3009 and M95ED!) I did a bit of research and found a high RRP in 1976 when it was introduced, though can’t remember what it was. I’d have to go digging through mountains of old Gramophone magazines etc to find it again, but I suspect like most kit at the time the RRP and what you actually paid after shopping around were very different, but it was certainly an expensive deck and feels it too; very heavy, solid cast aluminium construction etc. I bet it cost more to build than a Linn! I actually carried it best part of a mile back from the auction, knackering work! The Akai 4000DB I got some weeks later was no fun to carry either!
 
Studies of people's preference (e.g. Harman) in direct back-to-back comparisons show that pretty much everybody regardless of their levels of interest in hifi or music tends to prefer conventional high fidelity sound (some mild qualifications).

Their studies are somewhat flawed though as they use a single speaker positioned in the middle of a room, despite the fact that most people listen in stereo.
You can't expect to poll taste in an adequate fashion when the speakers have not been properly positioned or aren't being used as intended.
This perharps explains why the Quads rated so poorly in mono and yet were found to be just as pleasing in stereo, though curiously Toole seems to have made the opposite interpretation of the data (defending that since people dislike the Quad in mono then mono is more discriminating – I agree for certain aspects of speaker performance but not for tasting polls):

tszz0Tt.png
 
You can't expect to poll taste in an adequate fashion when the speakers have not been properly positioned or aren't being used as intended.

Indeed. This whole event was just marketing IMHO. I’m really surprised Toole put his name to to it. It had zero scientific value that I could determine. May as well hang an ESL on the wall, measure a Klipshorn in the middle of a room or whatever. It was just bollocks. If you are going to make meaningful comparisons you have to respect the design intent and setup in the location specified using the intended/recommended amplification.
 
Indeed. This whole event was just marketing IMHO. I’m really surprised Toole put his name to to it. It had zero scientific value that I could determine. May as well hang an ESL on the wall, measure a Klipshorn in the middle of a room or whatever. It was just bollocks. If you are going to make meaningful comparisons you have to respect the design intent and setup in the location specified using the intended/recommended amplification.

I think that the data was gathered in a scientific manner but I disagree with some of the methodology as well as the interpretation of some data.

I agree that there was a bit of an agenda, or perhaps a taste-driven bias, behind some of the research directions and interpretations.
Toole is an advocate of "envelopment" (he uses a 2- to multi-channel upmixer) and defends that speakers should have a wide dispersion.

On the other hand, I do agree with Toole's opinion and findings that designers should strive for flat on-axis and smooth off-axis response.
 
Their studies are somewhat flawed though as they use a single speaker positioned in the middle of a room, despite the fact that most people listen in stereo.

Harman has performed many studies with, no doubt, varying degrees of flaws. You don't say where the plot has come from. The format looks like Toole's book but I don't have a figure 7.14 in my copy. I don't recall seeing many speakers named in Harman's many publications with a scientific emphasis so the plot looks a bit odd in this respect.

The plot seems to be showing the measured difference in perceived quality between a central mono speaker and a pair of stereo speakers. If this is the objective of the experiment how can using a mono speaker be flawed? It would appear to be essential to the experiment.
 


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