616-8A

[ob]

Found also a pair of this for sale. Are they as good as the 604 8A? Since it goes up to only 12000Hz by adding a HF driver will it perform as well as the 604 8A?

[whitebroncoii]

The 616 is a ceiling speaker designed for high ceilings. It uses a paging horn HF diaphragm and has a large bump around 3kHz so that it can reach out and touch you from 40 feet. In other words; it sounds like a paging horn with lows to 100Hz.

Although the 616 can make a decent floor monitor that can cut through stage noise, I would only recommend it as a near-field monitor for folks that use hearing aids . . .

[Old Guy]

Hi Gary- a couple corrections...

The 616 basically is an 802 type HF. It is rolled off in the highs by the crossover.

The 617 is closer to your description, but AFAIK none of the Duplexes use a "paging" diaphragm. The 617 essentially uses the University T-50 driver. It was a Hi-Fi product not paging.

[ob]

Thank you guys for the response. I am not so familiar with altec and can be considered a newbie. Is there any way to push the 802 type HF to higher frequencis like maybe nearer the 20Khz level? What frequencies does it roll off? Will changing the crossover help reach higher frequencies?

[whitebroncoii]

Oops . . . OG is right. I looked at he photo on the 616-8A data sheet and described for you my experiences with the 617-8A. I know nothing about the 616-8A. Sorry.

BTW; "Duplex" was not a specific model or performance from Altec. We called all Altec coaxial speakers "Duplex".

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ September 19, 2008 08:59 AM: Message edited by: GaryZ ]</font>