604-8L in open baffles?

[souldriver]

Hi!
I am newbie with altecs thats wy i have a few questions:
1. does the 604-8L works in open baffles? if yes, how does it sound?
2. what is the price for these speakers?

I would be glad to get some answers!
Thanks a lot

Urs

[LICORNE]

Hi there,
With open baffle wou need walls and a ceiling for
it to be effective. I find this concept a bit flimsey.

The 604-8L is the model sold by Altec Pro. The one manufactured by GPA 604-8H and the one by Iconic seem to be similar.I hope I won't get into anny trouble for saying so. The price of the 604-8H (Retail 915$).
Look at the first post on the web it's been there for a while and they will redirect you to GPA for more information.
As for cabinet for these I recommend the 620
you could also use Stone Henge.
The recommended size regular port >6 optimum 9 cubic feet.There's another post with Icinic Duplex on display in a sound show room.And it was the best speaker according to the critic during that weekend display.

I hope I have answered some of your question.
P.S.These are studio Monitor quality.

.............................................

[LICORNE]

Here is the site to ICONIC display and their official Web page.

http://www.hostboard.com/cgi-bin/ult...&f=3729&t=1590


http://www.iconicspkrs.com/

[LICORNE]

This is whatt open baffle looks like. Not to be confused with open back baffle guitar cabinet.

http://members.myactv.net/~je245/OBpic1.jpg


http://members.myactv.net/~je245/OBpic2.jpg

Scary ain't it ! Anny one trying to sell you this on the web should be put in jail.

................................

[souldriver]

Thanks a lot convergence!

I am using a open baffle system with 60 year old SABA Greencones and it sound wonderfull. It doesn't have a very deep bass but the soundstage, the details and the transparency are outstanding. i sold my 4000$ Jmlabs. But you are right. they realy looks like garage doors...but sounds wonderfull. i will try to put some fotos later one...

[LICORNE]

Here is a quote from experts concerning the Altec Duplex 704 in a STONEHENGE CABINET.

posted May 01, 2005 03:32 PM
The STONEHENGE V's sounded EXCELLENT - very transparent and effortless in their ability to reproduce even the slightest nuances in the program material!

"The Bass Is Back!"

When playing the 4th cut of the soundtrack from "Star Trek - The Motion Picture", you could FEEL the 52" bass drum as the percussionist played it the Jerry Goldsmith score! Whenever anyone heard it, their eyes would get wide and a big smile would come upon their face - it was impressive!


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[Old Guy]

A good cabinet, as Convergence said, will help the bass considerably.

I would not recommend the 604-8L.

Take a look at the ones from Great Plains or Iconic. Or buy used.

The company calling itself Altec these days is not the old Altec, no matter how much they try to make people believe it.

[souldriver]

thanks a lot for all suggestions and answers!

As i wrote before...a open baffle system "CAN" work. it is depending on what kind of speaker you need to use. In the early 40's most of the speakerscabinets where open baffles. and even today the are a lot speakermanufacturers (phy, supravox, aer, beyma etc.)who pretend to use them in OB's. I bought some saba greencones (about 50$ in the past) on e... for a test. at that time i was quit happy with my jmlabs 927 BE (with the famous berillium tweeter).
here some pictures of my system:
http://img228.imageshack.us/my.php?i...sc000966nj.jpg
http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?i...sc000992sm.jpg

It's a very simpel construction (i made it in 2 hours!) but very efficient. the only thing i needed to change was the filter (mundorf 3,3uf)because the highs had been to aggressive and 2 woofers (ripolsystem) for more bass. it sounds realy impressive and coherent. but there two things i would like to change:
you can't play very loud. the upper mids (between 6-8khz) become very dominant and the dynamics sounds more flated.
that's why i am looking for new (-old)speakers. whats the difference between the "original" 604-8L, great plains and the iconics models? what are the prices in US$?
there is a german speakerbuilder (www.musicconnection.de)who use the 604-8L with a lot of succes in testimonials.

once again...thanks a lot
souldriver

[tgroendahl]

Hello Souldriver,

As I write this, I?m listening to Richter playing Bach?s "The Well-Tempered Clavier" through a pair of Altec Duplex 605B?s that are mounted in 110x120 cm (43"x47") open baffles.

As descriebed in my topic below regarding crossovers for these drivers, the music is filling the room in a very involving manner, thus without deep bass because of the limited baffle size. Amp is a totally rebuild Audio Note Meishu Phono SE, now with 2A3, so output is around 6 watt. Vinyl played on an EMT 930 tt is the only source.

For the past two years, I have been using a pair of vintage 12" Philips drivers: http://homepage.mac.com/tgroendahl/PhotoAlbum2.html in smaller open baffles, again with to little low level output, but the soundstage has been deeply fascinating anyway.

Based on my own experiences I will strongly advocate for the open baffle principle.

The challenge with an open baffle is, that it must be very large in order to reproduce the lower octaves with enough level: http://melhuish.org/audio/baffle.html . The orginal datasheets for the Philips cinema equipment http://www.bmw2002.nl/philips.html show the 2278 driver mounted in a 2 x 2 meter (79" x 79") open baffle, so this is the size that we have to consider.

The open baffle sound is very musical. Of course we get some other effects, where the most dominant is the rear waves of the drivers reflecting on the wall, causing some disturbances to the soundstage in my opinion, but it?s a matter I guess could be controlled to some extend by damping of the wall behind the baffles.

At the moment I am considering what to do with my Duplexes, since I don?t have space for very large OB?s.

One idea I have, is to make something in between, namely another old speaker principle, the aperiodic enclosure: http://melhuish.org/audio/DIYBX4.html I would then cut my present baffle of 21mm (3/4") baltic birchply into a 110 x 80 cm (43" x 31") frontbaffle, add a frame with the depth of 30cm (12") and then make a back baffle that is perforated with hundreds of needlethin drilled holes in order to ventilate the enclosure, instead of a traditional reflex tuning.

On this great site you can find a lot of info on the different Altec Duplex drivers. I got my 605B?s on eBay for 750 USD. Transport from Canada to Denmark amounted to another 300 USD.

The 605 models are similar in construction to the 604 models, but have slightly smaller magnets.

Best regards,
Thomas

[Old Guy]

whats the difference between the "original" 604-8L, great plains and the iconics models? what are the prices in US$?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm wondering what makes you say the 604-8L is the "original"

The Great Plains and Iconic products are American made by former Altec personnel. The 604- 8L is a Chinese made speaker. The 604 is a great design, but the Chinese don't have the speaker building skills Americans do. And Altec Pro has very little experience building quality speakers.

If I wanted quality I would buy the new American made speaker or buy a used set of Alnico versions.

You can pick up a set of 604-8G's on Ebay for the same or less than the 604-8L's. In ten years the 604-8L will be worth half what you paid. The 604-8G's willprobably be worth double what you paid.