Onkyo/Denon - who designs this junk? (1 Viewer)

[Dave Moritz]

Do you still have your VOTT's or did you sell them off? My VOTT A-7's are the one part of my system that will never get changed, at least if I can help it they won't.



I am in the middle of saving up for a new receiver and hope that I do not have the issues that some here have had. I have been hooked on home theater for a number of years and it seems that the gear has gotten alot more complex than it used to be. Once I upgrade my Yahama RX-V995, I am sure I will be reading the manuel from cover to cover to make sure I get everything set up correctly.

 

[robert bartsch]

Sold the Altec VOTT speakers a few years ago, WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE!

Anyway, since I married the wife complaned daily about their size so they got moved to the basement where they sat for a few years. My current Klipschs towers are good but the Altecs were a true gem. ...feed them a small amount of power and they produced big clean sound effortlessly. Very well balanced. A few years after I got them in the mid-70s, I added a slot radiator HF tweet from JBL with anotehr X-over. At the time, the units were $700 which was a ton of dough back then.

Want to blow the roof off, feed these guys some moderate power? They never seemed to stress out no matter how much abuse they were thrown.

Maybe I will replace them someday.

The Altec picture in your posts brings back great memories.

 

[Ron Reda]

I have to respectfully disagree with you there, pink...in all my experiences with both companies, I've had nothing but good luck and have been impressed with the sound quality of their gear.

I also think I'm in the minority that I tend to read the manual before I even BUY a piece of gear to be sure it does what I want it to. Then, when I confirm that, I buy it and set it up using the manual as a guide through the tricky or manufacturer-specific tweaks. In fact, I tend to find the manual to be a handy reference.

 

[robert bartsch]

Dave:
...my Altecs were originally sold as a kit by a catalog company. (Back then, you could buy kits for recievers and tuners, etc.) The drivers came in separate boxes and you installed them into a large cherry wood furniture cabnet - no wood horn bottom like yours. The crossover required assembly with a small circuit board and a few components that were soldered.

...the horn looked like yours, but the woofer did not have a silver metal VC cap. I remember the VC was 4 inches and the magnet was like 40 lbs! I put caster wheels on them since they weighed a TON.

I beleive the VC is wound with square wire and the magnet is Alnco V which can attract small metal items like firetrucks from several feet away.

Anyway, if you ever sell yours, you will be sorry.

 

[gene c]

It would be nice if there were more uniform standards that all manufactures would adhere to but maybe that would take away some of the uniqueness of the brands.

 

[Dave Moritz]

I bought the A-7's from my father who used them for his mobil dj service. He had a commercial Yamaha 300 watt per channel power amp driving them at the time. Back then he actually had two pair of the A-7's and I did not know he was selling a bunch of his gear. So by the time I found out he had already sold the commercial amps and one pair of the A-7's. How ever I was lucky enough to buy the last pair he had for $400 for the pair. When I bought them they where all grey and still had the voice of the theater decals on them. I have since started to stip off all the paint and I want to repaint them a piano high gloss black. I will then have some new decals made to finish off the project. The reissued A-7 I beleive are selling for aproximently $8K each.

So I will be keeping these as it would be very difficult to find something to replace them with. I am currently looking at ether a Denon AVR-3808ci or Onkyo TX-SR805 or TX-NR905 for my home theater. Ether one of these should sound great with the A-7's. I am also looking at a Klipsch center channel and Klipsch rear speakers to go with the A-7's.

I have always had good luck with Denon and the Onkyo Integra gear I have owned in the past. I have owned Denon intergrated amp/tuner, CD Player, DAT recorder and DVD player. And Denon has been a work horse IMHO and sounds very good. I think part of the problem is that people are compairing these new receivers to the ones made years ago. When they where very simple to set up and use. Now the receivers offer alot of features and there is alot of software involved as well. IMHO there is not perfect receiver anymore as I think you will find bugs in just about every brand.

 

[robert bartsch]

Wow, I found the speakers I sold a few years ago on E-Bay for $1,800!



Altec Valencia 846A Heathkit AS-101 Voice of Theatre! - eBay (item 150216793832 end time May-16-08 12:25:16 PDT)

 

[dany]

You might be right.
It's not junk because someone can't figure it out. It does take time.

 

[chuckg]

OK - I think I'm getting a sense for what is so confusing. It's all in the complexity and fetures of the receiver. The good old days, we had a bass and treble knobs that you could twiddle until it "sounded right." the adventurous could purchase a graphic EQ, and twiddle that to no end.

These days, everything is done digitally, and the controls are nowhere to be found...you have to wend your way through a long set of menus, and (as you say) be close enough to read the teensy writing on the faceplate. then, you've got three times as many speakers to go through!

Sounds like you need a magnifying glass, and with luck one is available. On my receiver, there is an output for video, and I can display the setup menu on a TV, making it "way more easier" to deal with the setup procedure.

And, from another thread, and now here, I see that you have not been able to get any output from your subwoofer. Let's see if we can fix that.

Temporarily connect your subwoofer cable to the Left line level out on the back of your receiver. Keeping the volume quite low, turn it up just enough to see if you do get some kind of sound in your sub this way. That will tell us if your sub is, indeed working.

Assuming the sub is fine, plug it back into the subwoofer output on the back of your receiver. Make certain that the subwoofer crossover knob (on the sub) is turned to the highest possible frequency. Go through your audio setup menus and just look for a page that sets whether or not you have certain speakers connected. there should be something that says "subwoofer" that you can set to "yes", "on", "enable" or something that sounds like an affirmative. In each of the other speakers, you should select "small" to send all the low bass from that speaker to the sub. If there is a selection for bass handling, set it to "subwoofer" rather than "front"

I think that may help as a start....hang in there, it will start making sense some day!

 

[robert bartsch]

Thanks....

I finally got the sub to work after much reading. One frustrating part is that the screen shots in the Onkyo user manual do not match the text display on the receiver. Yeh, I checked the documentation manual and it is for an SR805 Onkyo receiver.

I think they must have changed the chip set or something because these do not match at all.

Anyway, the screen shots for many of the set-up functions do not match. I spent at least one hour this AM trying to use the automated speaker set up. Once again the screen shots in the manual do not match the text in the receiver.

 

[dany]

Don'y use the manual.

 

[robert bartsch]

Dave:

What do you think of these for less than $600?


JBL Professional 3677 at Performance Audio



My busted Denon is coming home from the repair shop and I may throw it inthe living room with a set of these. They seem like a real bargan to me.

 

[Dave Moritz]

I would see if you can find a place to listen to them first. Some of those speakers need a EQ to sound right. I was trying to find the minimum power requirements but did to find them. Those look like what I should be using for surrounds with my Altec A-7's.


What Denon do you have?

What is the power rating of your receiver?

There is a good chance those could sound really good but to be honest I have not heard them in a home enviroment, only in the theater and not up close. And they where being used as surround speakers so I have no idea how they would work out for mains channels.

Now if I was living back in California still in the place I was living before I would purchase 2 pair of these for surrounds in a 7.1 configuration. But of course I would do some critical listening first before buying.

Thanks for providing the link, I am going to have to look into these in depth.

 

[robert bartsch]

The Denon is old - 10 years. Just replaced it with a Onkyo 805 (130W @ .05% THD)

Anyway, for The Denon is rated at 105 watts x 5 at .05% THD. The repair shop said it is a good unit, but it has been back to Denon twice and now needed repair for a third time.

What is the sensativity rating of your A7's? ...my VOTTs would crank with a few watts of power, so I'm thinking the JBLs at 99DB sensativity would be fine with 105 watts.

 

[robert bartsch]

One other thing....

Some folks in the speaker forum here have the view that VOTT speakers are not accurate and are only designed for soundstages, etc.

IMO, my old VOTT from 35 years ago out perform my set of high end Klipsch floors I have in my main system now.

Do you beleive the VOTT outperform any home speakers you have tested? I suspect the JBLs would be very similar but don;t know anywhere that I could test them.

 

[Dave Moritz]

I am sure there are some people here that would think that. I am not sure I could find anything to match them under $5k a pair. And I hear the reissues of the A-7's are going for $8k each.

Here is what the decal looked like exactly and the same color.

 

[robert bartsch]

I've hunted around a bit and, apparently, Altec is not making professional components anymore.

The JBLs seem close and cheap at under $600. My Klipsch's are $800 or so and they can"t touch the old Altecs. At 92DB you need to feed them moderate power to get any sound and that could be one significant difference. There is a lot less distortion at lower power levels.

My wife moans about big speaker in the house so the JBLs are not real big which is a +.

 

[chuckg]

SO far off topic, but....
I worked at a stage theater where we needed a big old subwoofer for an avalanche effect. After the run of that show, this behemoth Altec sat under the seating, quietly gathering dust. One day, or it might have been night, someone needed a bit of extra light and so they plugged in the stage plug that they thought was connected to a stage light down there.

Big mistake. That plug was actually connected to the subwoofer, which is a 18" speaker in a cabinet about seven feet wide, four feet tall, and 2.5 feet deep - it's a folded horn, and frighteningly efficient.

The subwoofer just sat there, cranking out 150 dB of pure 60 Hz. Man, was that ever hilarious!

 

[Douglas Monce]

The biggest problem I have with user manuals is when they are obviously written by someone for whom English is not their first language.

Doug

 

[robert bartsch]

Yikes! ...those old drivers are pretty rare and I would have thought they could be damaged with 120 volt current.

What ever happened to the old horn?