Old Dynaco Speakers?


Help me - I think I'm losing my mind. I have held on to a excellent pair of Dynaco A-35s, but have not listened to them since I put together my system. Just for a laugh I hooked up the Dynacos in place of my Vienna Acoustics Mozarts. While the $2500 Mozarts sound better overall, it's scary how close the Dynacos came. The last time I listened to the A-35s they sounded good, but that was with much lesser quality electronics. To make matters worse, I was just on a listening binge with better VA speakers, Sonus Fabers and Martin Logans. While arguably the A-35s were the best of the Dynaco line, I guess that I'm a little shocked how good they can be. David Hafler may you rest in peace.

Creek 5350SE Int. Amp
Rega Jupiter CDP
Cardas Cross Interconnect and Quadlink powercords
Acoustic Zen Satori speaker cables
crega
Amazing how we forgot how good the old vintage stuff sounds -turntables, speakers & event the solid state amps, tuners & rcvs. & built to last
If i remember correctly, the old Dyna speakers used Seas woofers in an aperiodic ( vario-vent ) cabinet and were pretty good sounding for what they were. I can't remember what kind of tweeters they used though.

Quite honestly, thanks for posting what you did. I've discussed this very subject with quite a few folks and many people swear that "old speakers suck" and "can not compare" with newer models. All i can tell you is that if you took those Dyna's and upgraded the crossover parts / wiring, you might not like your VA speakers too much anymore, especially for the price differences : )

The "old school" speakers that were sealed / aperiodic / transmission line designs are typically much better sounding than newer designs using ports and passive radiators. Granted, drivers HAVE gotten better and technology has moved forward, but the concerns over efficiency ( quantity of sound ) have typically caused the quality of sound to take a beating. This is not to mention the increased profit margin that most "high end" manufacturers and dealers want to make resulting in a lower grade product with more corners cut selling for a higher price. Sean
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Sean, I wonder how many of the current posters here on this forum were around with these speakers to know if they "Sucked" or not. Kind of hard to get a pair this old in "Perfect" working order to compare to newer speakers.
I agree with you. I sure wish I'd kept a few to "Upgrade" with todays cap technology.
loudspeaker designs have not necessarally moved forward. in fact one might say they've gotten a lot worse. the trade off for making speakers 'disappear' is making the music disappear with them. just several of hundreds of examples ....compare the b&w 801 matix to the newer model...compare any of the classic klipsch designs to the newer models...and yes even the earlier sonus faber models will sound better than any of the new stuff...does anyone remember the paridigm export or the celestion ditton line....i could go on and on and......