Vintage
hi-end speaker system
An application linking a horn compression tweeter in a single cabinet with a large area paper cone woofer was put into practice in 30s of the last century and has been in use ever since, especially in professional applications.
The 50s through 60s were “the golden age” for home horn speakers which excellently matched with valve amps. Their wide bandwidth, high sensitivity and good directional characteristics together with a good base control seemed very attractive and load efficient for low powered amplifiers.
Today, however, the speakers advantages of the past are no longer acceptable for present day audiophile community. The limitation of good 3D space and air reproduction along with poor resolution and focusing and above all sound coloration dominate obvious advantages usually associated with high efficiency. At times, their sound reproduction resemble sound being reproduced in a manner of a platform speaker announcement.
However, after a long and arduous road to perfection, Ancient Audio have managed to eliminate inherent weaknesses of horn speakers with the latest edition of “Vintage” speakers due to driver and crossover modification and expertise application of corresponding cabinet design suited best for this type of drivers.
What was eventually attained was unparalleled space reproduction, imaging and focusing combined with unprecedented neutrality and low-level signal resolution. Their inherent efficiency, dynamics and low-level frequency control make it perfect for a demanding high-end system driven even with a low-power single-ended triode amplifiers for both small and big living spaces.
Unlike most high-end cabinet construction the woofer voice coil is closer to the listener than tweeter. This sort of application makes it possible to produce a perfect phase coherence between driver’s wavefront due to perfectly adjusted time delay of the filters in the full range of audio band frequencies and not only crossover regions.
Another useful application allows for a flexible horn adjustment in line with the listener’s ear height.
“Vintage “ speaker system is complex but perfectly matched array of components. Aluminium cast horn, soft dome compression driver, modified paper cone woofer with heavy magnet system, sophisticated elliptic filter crossover and silver wiring are all fit into a very solid and resistant – free cabinet. Its stiff construction is made of carbon fibre, glass fibre combined with multilayer wooden particle sandwich which eliminates by its internal damping any unwanted resonance and standing waves.
Listening to «Vintage» speakers makes you stop from thinking about the set-up. It just makes you feel the essence of music.
Features:
– 100 dB/w/m efficiency
– 8 ohm impedance
– 120 dB maximum SPL
– 1 W to 200 W amplifiers compatibility
– 2 way concept
– 25 mm throat, 44 mm coil compression tweeter driver
– aluminium cast solid horn
– flexible horn assembly
– 30 cm modified papercone woofer, with heavy ceramic magnet system
– graduated slope crossover with elliptic filters
– all audioband phase coherence
– silver ribbon internal wiring
– dimensions (W x H x D): 380 x 1020 x 470 mm
– weight – 50 kg each
