Best Altec Lansing Speakers Ever (Vintage) - 2022 Edition | Start with the DJ (2023)

Altec Lansing was dominant in the US in movie theaters and "higher-demand" studios and homes from the 1940s through the late 1970s.

It then fell in connection with purchases from various technology/investment companies, with engineers fleeing to other companies like JBL, EV and others.

Any day of the week, the older Altec Lansing outperforms the other companies with better active filters and PEQs in terms of audible distortion and frequency response.

Altec Lansing is in a class of its own for high-sensitivity vintage loudspeakers.

The popularity of Altec Lansing theater loudspeakers among audiophiles waned in the mid-1950s with the promotion of the Acoustic Research/Janszen hybrid dynamic/electrostatic loudspeaker.

Horn-loaded loudspeakers (for example, all at Altec) gained a reputation for harshness on HF and midrange coloration, and consumer demand for them all but dried up by the mid-1970s.

My colleague has a 15″ Lansing element from the 1930s and several Altec Lansing 311b, 604, 811b, Model 19, plus a few other models.

In this article, I'll do my best to pick out the best vintage Altec Lansing speakers and review the ones I've tried.

1. Altec Lansing Modelo 19

This is a speaker for the audiophile as well as the casual listener. It has a fantastic design as it is a simple two way type.

However, this is not just a simple two-way speaker.

The heritage behind the Model 19 is theAltec Legacy Voice Theater🇧🇷 This is a scaled down version of the venerable VOTT, but with better frequency extensions.

The "Tangerine" horn driver has extended range capability that not many, if any, had when they were initially built. At the time, it was revolutionary for a horn driver of this size to retain the farthest high frequency capability this driver offered.

The horn lens has excellent dispersion characteristics for excellent room coverage and smooth frequency response. The horn is efficient and has a design well established by Altec. Pairing the 811 lens with this controller was pure audio art!

The 16″ Altec woofer offered excellent high-end range to better match the bass capability of the big-horn combo.

Combining this particular midwoofer with that set of horns made perfect sonic sense. They mixed and matched so well that their sound is renowned in the audiophile community; Finally, truly BIG sound in a sleek, precise package.

Another plus is that this midwoofer was beefy and had true 30Hz bass capability; even better than all that, it could be loud with an efficiency of 99 db., which again helped pair it with the ability for breath combos to play loud and clear.

The 15″ bass driver produces some of the cleanest, clearest bass I've ever heard.

The speakers will pressurize the room, rocking it with deep bass where the source calls for it, but the bass is free from rumble or excess. They have slam galore, but also finesse.

As good as the driver combination was, the crossover made it all possible, an extremely smooth transition assisted by a pair of L-Pads, where it was possible to adjust the higher frequency ranges or even the lower vocal ranges.

The crossover was a charm for me and gave these amazing speakers their soul of sound reproduction.

Another amazing thing is that you don't need a big muscled amp - a simple, modest, well made tube amp plays easily with them.

Cabinets came in either robust oak or elegant walnut wood styles. They were very stable and heavy. They didn't rattle or get stuck, but they did provide a solid platform for the lower bass extension port to accommodate the drivers in wonderful style.

They were great pieces of furniture and looked great with beautiful workmanship and exquisite construction. Although they housed the drivers, they extended and allowed sound to flow and feel like no other speaker made since.

In short, the Altec Model 19 is in a niche of its own. It's one of those speakers that you remember when and where you first heard it.

You remember BIG, probably most of all: BIG sound, cabinets, everything! You remember the huge bass, the clean and clear vocals. You are captivated by a sound that is more than unique.

2. Altec Lansing 604-8G (Modelo 17)

One of the first true coaxial loudspeakers, Altec's Model 604 was adopted for home amateur use and, after various modifications, is still widely used today for monitoring record recordings.

This loudspeaker is a duplex (coaxial, concentric) loudspeaker in a 620 cabinet sold as the Altec 17 model.

It is large (40″x26″x18″) and has an entrance door. It features a multi-cell horn/bass driver placed concentrically in the middle of a 15″ bass driver.

All drivers include Alnico V magnets (2.5 times more energy than a ferrite magnet of similar weight). The huge alnico magnets are one of the reasons it's so sensitive (105dB), from 30Hz to 22kHz.

In fact, one of the greatest orators in the world today. Altec was ahead of its time, leaving most of today's speakers to shame.

These speakers do everything great, from sparkling highs to incredible mids and rumbling basic realism.

I have yet to hear a speaker that can play them in the areas that count. They are especially good on vocals. It's so terrifying as if the voices were right there in the room.

All in all, these speakers are awesome. You can perform macro and micro dynamics like there is no tomorrow.

Offers the power of music. Play effortlessly with ease, making the preamp flow effortlessly.

It has tonal accuracy, amazing transients, low distortion at all volumes, clarity and coherence.

Due to their age, they are not easy to locate, and most of these gems were shipped to the Far East, where they are highly prized, but if you search hard enough, you can still get them.

If you find a pair, be sure to try them out. You'll probably get hooked too.

3. Altec Lansing 301

The Altec Lansing 301 is Altec's mid-range consumer line. Its appearance is normal (a simple box), with minimal internal reinforcement.

The diffuser woofer is made of carbon fiber, which combines lightness with a remarkable degree of rigidity in search of the perfect woofer: true piston action.

Carbon fiber construction eliminates deterioration, warping, and stress on the woofer cones.

In Altec Lansing 301 Acoustics, the midrange drivers and tweeters are made from a thermosetting plastic called polyimide, which is resistant to temperatures up to 600°F.

On the surface of this plastic is a 4 micron thick layer of titanium, one of the strongest and lightest metals I know of.

Additionally, the voice coil of each HF loudspeaker operates in a fluid ferromagnetic medium, which provides effective damping and heat transfer from the voice coil to the surrounding magnetic structure.

In other words, speakers are made to absorb all kinds of overloads!

To say the Altec 301 speakers sound distinctive is to say you've never heard them before! Listening to them, that “upper class” person marvels at the delivery of sound material.

It does not mean that these Altec Lansing 301 return us to the primitivism of audio. No, they have a very different sound than what we consider acceptable today. You'll hear the "rich sound" of the Altec Lansing 301 speakers.

They sound very interesting, almost aggressive in an energetic and incredibly lively way!

They reproduce some songs very fluidly, with the treble more open and with a degree of transparency and almost electrostatic detail.

Woofer quality is surprisingly good, considering its simple enclosures. Altec Lansing 301 loudspeakers deliver a clean 28Hz.

Records with strong bass sound good, but those with mid-bass aren't as good anymore.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the Altec Lansing 301. While the Altec 301s do some things worse than any audiophile speaker I've ever heard, they pack a strong personality (well, call it colorful if you want).

4. Altec VOT 7

These are the PAs. theater voice They have 808-8A high frequency drivers, 511-B speakers, 15″ E/V woofers and Altec N501-8A partition network.

They are wider than a door frame and are over four feet tall. They are definitely not small speakers.

My friend put genuine new drivers in the speakers as they needed to be replaced when he bought them. The speakers sound better than any speaker he owns or uses.

They are very efficient and can be driven at very high volumes with amplifiers of 5 to 10 watts per channel.

The sound is so alive it feels like you're listening to the band live or in the studio.

Altec horns have the sweetest highs I've ever heard and will send shivers down your spine. We connect them to aYamaha M45 Amplifier, preamp and an old Pioneer CD player.

If you can find a pair of VOTs I recommend buying them. You'd have to spend at least $3-4k to find a new pair of speakers that come close to the VOTs of the preamp, and even then, I don't think you'd do better.

I plan to purchase two VOT A-7 loudspeakers with 811 horns and 802D drivers and 515B woofers with 500Hz ALTEC crossovers.

These speakers will sound great. It seems that the older they get, the better they sound. I was told that ALNICO magnets sound better with age.

A Brief History of Altec Lansing

Altec spun off from Western Electric. So Altec bought the Lansing company andcalled the company Altec Lansing🇧🇷 JB Lansing then dropped out and started JBL.

The products that Western Electric made were not for home use, but were used primarily in theaters such as movie theaters, so the unit price of the product was an order of magnitude different than for home use (only rented, not sold). .

Because of this, they were able to advance product development and it is said that by the 1920s and 1930s they had already established technology equivalent to today's loudspeakers.

ALTEC was originally a “theater sound equipment maintenance company”. Still, due to his commercial success and financial strength, he purchased the manufacturing rights to Western Electric products and became independent of Western Electric engineers.

In 1983, Altec abandoned attempts to bring its products to the consumer market and continued to supply equipment to professional users even after its sale to Gulton Industries in '84.

In 1985, car audio manufacturer Sparkomatic bought the rights to market consumer loudspeakers under the Altec Lansing name. They put together a line of publicly available systems and introduced them at CES '86, the Model 301, for all to hear again.

Altec Lansing ruled cinema audio

Until the early 1950s, the undisputed best archival sound of the day was optical sound glued onto reels of film.

The sound of the 1940s Disney film 'Fantasia' could easily pass for genuine hi-fi today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was then also in film sound that Altec Lansing's "cutting edge" technological developments took place.

The biggest player at the time, from the 1930s to the 1980s, was undoubtedly Altec-Lansing, who produced variants of the 'Voice of the Theatre' theme, all originally two-way horns based on a 15-unit unit. inches in a cabinet. Very little bass reflex complemented by a short front-loaded horn with a horn-loaded driver.

And originally, always with the obligatory diaphragm frequency of 500 Hz prescribed in all cinema manuals to guarantee homogeneous sound coverage in the theater.

ver,Esit was the thing and can, in many ways, wreak havoc in today's hi-fi because it prevented a frequency cutoff in the most sensitive area of ​​the ear, not the reason for the choice, just a lucky side effect.