maanantai 9. huhtikuuta 2018 1.19.24 UTC+3 Dave Plowman (News) kirjoitti:

The 3/5s was made for pro use.

:-) That's an interesting assertion. Made for pro use, but not used
by pros outside the BBC.

In contrast the Tannoy Lancaster was made for domestic use
(as Tannoy had no professional division back then) yet it
was adopted as a reference monitor by countless studios,
and cutting/mastering facilities.

And very highly regarded
by them. For the job it was intended to do.

The first time I head the LS3/5a was when the BBC invited recording
professionals from UK record companies and independent studios to
come to listen to their newly equipped OB vans, three of which were
parked outside their Maida Vale studios.

One of the group in front of ours was an engineer from Trident Studios.
As he came out from the van he remarked drily, "The king has a new suit
of clothes"

At the demo I attended we listened to a 15 ips non Dolby tape of Richard
Burton reading Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood" played from a Studer B62.
It sounded very good indeed. After some ten or fifteen minutes, someone
asked "Can we listen to some music?" We were told that that LS3/5a was specifically designed for OB use to record speech. After some
minutes a tape of Ralph Vaughan Williams was brought in. The Cor Anglais
was so "rich" that is could have easily been mistaken for a bassoon. No
wonder Richard Burton sounded so good:-)

Trevor wrote:
The goal
of a high fidelity system is to recreate, as closely as possible, the
original musical event.

Dave replied
Ah - right. What sort of music would that be?

Me:
Surely a loudspeaker is designed to reproduce sound (music, speech,
birdsongs, or even a jack-hammer) with the closest possible fidelity.

Trevor:
The LS3/5a is incapable of performing this.

Me:
Correct!

Dave:
It's not very good at reproducing a 32ft stop.

Me:
It is not good at all at reproducing music.


Other small speakers can do the job far more convincingly.

Given the 3/5a was designed some 50 years ago it would be quite surprising
if others hadn't caught up.

Caught up. That infers that at some point the L3/5a was leading the field,
which is incorrect. It may have been good for OB drama, but not suited
for music (the purpose for which most people would use it)

There a a number of speakers designed *for* and not *by* the BBC back then
that still sound excellent. Both the Kef K1 and the Lockwood Major are very good examples.

Interestingly just a couple of weeks after the BBC car park demo,
Marquee Studios had put together a small OB vehicle which they
demonstrated. It was actually a converted "gown van" on a Bedford
chassis, with a small Neve desk and Tannoy LRM speakers. '
It probably cost a tenth of what the BBC had spent at the taxpayers expense, but sounded very good indeed.

Iain