Listen to Historic Speakers - from 1924 to 1944 - Part 1 

Many of these speakers can't hold bass properly, as you can notice on some of these. Modern pop music normally has a hell lot of bass, and it may even damage the speakers if not played at a low volume.

For what its worth they could never compete with modern technology, and the need to have a field coil is quite cumbersome. You can see one speaker at 6:32 needs to use a selenium rectifier to have a DC source to energize the field coils (AlNiCo and similar magnets were not widely used until the 40's). They would never be able to have the efficiency or linearity of a more modern permanent magnet speaker. The permanent magnet is quite useful as, in combination with a low impedance amplifier, allows both efficiency and for the back-EMF to help linearize the speaker cones motion with respect to the audio waveform. They are interesting historically, that's for sure! Quite instructive to see how things were done before anyone had an idea of what a speaker should look like or so.

@@mysock351C What people like about them is not their linearity... It's their non-linearity... Music from their era sounds more authentic through them, than through a sterile aluminium cone monitor speaker...

@@westelaudio943 If that’s all you listen to then I could see it being desirable, which is why I did not make a definitive statement above. My late grandfather’s Magnavox Astro console did sound kinda cool with the older music, but it would be intolerable for modern recordings, even classical.

@@mysock351C You know you can have more than one set of speakers, right?... Most speakers are designed for the music of the era. And yes, classical is quite demanding, that's why most improvements in HiFi gear towards more linearity and lower noise were first marketed to listeners of classical. I think 1950s - 1970s acoustic suspension speakers offer the best compromise between that "old school paper cone sound", decent highs and lows, acceptable linearity and cozy looks. That's why the speakers I build are inspired by those designs.

@@westelaudio943 Well _duh_ you can have multiple speakers but the audio is terrible from those in objective terms. There's only a limited scope of music that can be listened to and still have some air of credibility. The main issue is, of course, bandwidth. Same applies with the old school acoustic suspension speakers. Classic rock sounds ok on them, but it also sounds pretty darn good on the overhead PA system at the local drugstore. Its all they play, and I kind of like it. But this is due to the limited bandwidth of the recording. Its a bit like stereo AM quality broadcast. It wont sound any better over full digital as the bandwidth is limited. But for modern live rock, folk, and classical with their extended bandwidth and very low SNR, old speakers fall quite short.

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The first four speakers are early moving iron speakers, (The piece that vibrates is an iron plate instead of a coil) they were used for radios mainly in the 1920's and barely can handle any bass (The third is going fine though) they weren't meant to do so, like many of these early speakers. The later recordings by Chris Barber featured here have too much low frequencies for this speakers, so the coil hits the bottom of the magnet if playing too loud, or the cone starts to vibrate in unwanted ways.

thank you for explaining that, i never knew much about early speakers and that's neat information!