Rockmeister
pfm Member
is it much to do with the music you play? Mastered on 60's kit = sounds best on 60's kit etc??
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.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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
my Dad started teaching in 1972. His salary was less than £1000.
Avoiding purchase tax was a big thing with speakers then, three ways were professional, 2 ways domestic.....I included the purchase tax when <12" woofer and hence liable to tax. The figures are given in the book.
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.
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).
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.
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.