16-11-2017, 10:32 AM
Of course, things have come a long way since then, and it's quite possible (indeed, likely) that a good modern 4" speaker would out-perform a vintage 8" loudspeaker in just about every aspect.
In fairness, the older speaker will probably be more efficient - but watts are cheap and plentiful today - and the new speaker would need a properly designed cabinet - old speakers work in open-baffle conditions, so their parameters were set with that in mind, but modern speakers are designed with the intention of being put into an appropriate enclosure.
I did a load of tests on speakers in transistor radios over on UKVRRR - the results were quite illuminating. Nearly all were terrible by modern standards, but some managed to sound really quite agreeable because by luck, the peaks and troughs in the response fell in the right places. I don't have many valve sets, so can't go back much further in time, but perhaps one day...
In fairness, the older speaker will probably be more efficient - but watts are cheap and plentiful today - and the new speaker would need a properly designed cabinet - old speakers work in open-baffle conditions, so their parameters were set with that in mind, but modern speakers are designed with the intention of being put into an appropriate enclosure.
I did a load of tests on speakers in transistor radios over on UKVRRR - the results were quite illuminating. Nearly all were terrible by modern standards, but some managed to sound really quite agreeable because by luck, the peaks and troughs in the response fell in the right places. I don't have many valve sets, so can't go back much further in time, but perhaps one day...
