The 2005 TECnology Hall of Fame

[LICORNE]

The 2005 TECnology Hall of Fame

By George Petersen

Sep 1, 2005 12:00 PM

INNOVATIONS THAT CHANGED THE PRO AUDIO WORLD


A year ago, the Mix Foundation for Excellence in Audio, which produces the annual Technical Excellence & Creativity Awards, announced the TECnology Hall of Fame. It debuted by honoring 25 innovations that shaped the course of pro audio during the past 125 years. The task of selecting so few from audio's vast heritage was difficult, yet with the help of an elite committee of 50 industry leaders, we settled on the first 25 inductees, available at http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_tecnology_hall_fame/

This year, we've added 15 more honorees from 1913 to 1995. To keep these in historical context....


ALTEC LANSING
604 Duplex Speaker (1944)
Altec Lansing's famed 604 was not the first Duplex? coaxial speaker; that honor goes to the company's 1941 model 601, which mounted an HF compression driver onto the back of a 12-inch woofer with a hole cut into the center of the magnet, forming a throat for a small multicell horn in the center of the cone. However, it was Altec Lansing's model 604 coaxial that created a splash that continues to this day. The 604 was based on a 15-inch woofer with a 3-inch voice coil within an Alnico V permanent magnet, combined with a large HF driver and a six-cell horn. The 604 was capable of a then-impressive 30 watts of power handling, but due to its high efficiency, wide bandwidth and point-source imaging, it was soon adopted as a standard monitor in studios.

Altec continued improving the 604 through the years, and the drivers have been used in numerous variants, either in stock ?utility? cabinets, custom enclosures, modified third-party designs (Big Reds) or with an alternate crossover such as Doug Sax's Mastering Labs model. The affinity for the 604 may have waned in the studio, but it later regained popularity as the basis for UREI's 811/813/815 monitors.


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[LICORNE]

And the previous year the award went to Altec
Vott.

ALTEC LANSING
VOICE OF THE THEATRE SPEAKERS (1947)
From the big cities to the farms and small towns, American life in the post-WWII era was good. Besides the return of thousands of GIs from overseas, an end to wartime shortages and rationing meant that people could live it up and enjoy life without feeling guilty. Hollywood was booming and the theater business prospered, offering an evening of entertainment everyone could afford. So the timing was perfect when Altec co-founder Alvis A. Ward announced the original Voice of the Theatre Series in 1947.

Designed by John Hilliard, Voice of the Theatre was a line of high-performance, two-way cabinets made up of a number of huge (9- to 10-foot-tall) low-frequency enclosures that put one to four 15-inch Model 515 woofers on a wide-flare bass horn. The LF boxes supported large multicell horn(s) with the new Model 288 HF compression drivers, and could be mated with bolt-on wing panels that extended the bass response. It worked. In fact, the sonic improvements that Voice of the Theatre speakers offered made them an immediate hit with studios, theater owners and the general public. Approved by the Research Council at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, they became the industry standard for decades.

In the early 1950s, Altec unveiled the Voice of the Theatre A7, a compact (5-foot/180-pound!) two-way product suited for smaller cinemas and multichannel installs in the burgeoning stereo theater market, as well as for studio monitoring and home systems?the latter offered in a walnut cabinet model. The A7?s high 103dB (1W/1m) sensitivity made them an ideal match for the low-wattage power amps available at the time, and they became the popular P.A. choice of a zillion bars, clubs and rock bands throughout the 1960s and ?70s. More recently, Altec has reissued the A7 in a special ?A7 Legacy? edition for the home stereo/pro market.

[Steve Schell]

Convergence, I can add a few persnickety corrections to their product descriptions. The Altec Lansing 601 field coil Duplex was introduced in 1943; development had begun in 1941. It was a 15" driver not 12"; someone at Altec confused it with their later 12" 601 Duplex series in historical accounts. I got to see a sure 'nuff original 601 a couple of years ago and discussed it in a thread with pictures here:

http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/s...ght=holy+grail

The Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre systems were tested in prototype form in theatres around the country in late 1944, and introduced officially in early 1945. They sold like hotcakes, as Altec had produced more than 3,000 288 drivers by late 1946 (as evidenced by a hang tag pictured in an ebay auction). In 1947 the Model 800 small VOTT was introduced, and was replaced by the A7 in about 1953.

[Old Guy]

The 12 inch also did not have a hole in the magnet. The tweeter assembly bolted to the front.

This company calling itself "Altec" doesn't even know its own history.

[tomt]

Originally posted by Old Guy:

This company calling itself "Altec" doesn't even know its own history.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">a sign of the times-

[Todd W. White]

The original 601 (12") did have the hole bored through the pole piece, just like the later version, called the 604. Later versions of the 601, were, though, fitted with a front-mounted tweeter.

- Todd

[Old Guy]

Wasn't the original 601 a 15"?

http://www.lansingheritage.org/image...943/page04.jpg

[Steve Schell]

Yes, just to clarify, the first driver to be designated 601 was the 15" Duplex field coil driver built in 1943 and 1944. They referred to it as a 602 if furnished with a field supply.

http://www.lansingheritage.org/image...943/page04.jpg

The 601 designation was used again in the early 1950s for the 601A 12" Duplex driver that placed the tweeeter in front of the woofer motor and used a 3,000Hz. crossover point. A 15" version called the 602A was also produced for a while.

http://www.lansingheritage.org/image...ome/Page10.jpg