Art Dudley Listening

The second great discovery took longer to unfold, but began before I'd even made it all the way home with the speakers. I paused for lunch at a rest area on the New York State Thruway, where I also opened the Tiguan's hatch, photographed the Flamencos—lying face up, side by side, taking up virtually all of the car's interior, from the rear window to the backs of the front seats—and attached the photo to a text to my wife. Within seconds, she texted back:

"Holy shit—gorgeous "

Naturally, I thought she was being sarcastic. That impression persisted until the end of the day, when she came home, saw the Flamencos in person, and made it clear, in tone and expression, that she does in fact consider them the most attractive loudspeakers she has ever seen. Titania, meet Bottom.

Then: A little over a week later, during my daughter's visit home from college, she glanced into the music room, spied the Flamencos, and—after nearly five seconds of stunned silence—exclaimed, "Those are the most beautiful things I've ever seen." For the record: She has been to Versailles.

The penny dropped: Women love Altec Flamencos.

Closet Orientalists, all
But I wondered, reasonably: Would my new-old Flamencos sound different from my old-old Valencias?

The short answer: Yes—a little.

Before I even called my New York friend to let him know he could have my Valencias, I needed to make sure that the Flamencos would fill the bill. So I removed the Valencias from the roughly 13"-tall stands I'd made for them and lifted the Flamencos into their places. (It sounds a lot easier than it was.) An immediate, direct comparison proved unfeasible: As with many such things, the Flamencos hadn't been used in a very long time and required a few days' run-in, to extend the frequency and amplitude ranges of their bass drivers, and to work the excess grain and tinge out of the treble drivers.

That done, I found a slim mix of differences, good and bad. On the good side, the nettlesome bite I'd become accustomed to hearing in the Valencia's treble range was less severe in the Flamenco's—a result, perhaps, of that extra chunk of fiberglass?—and the Flamencos delivered a more convincing soundstage: deeper, wider, with more precise image placement.

On the bad side, the Flamencos sound slightly more hi-fi—a little less physical—than the Valencias. With dynamically intense recordings—such as my 10" 78s of Louis Armstrong (Parlophone) and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France (Columbia), or even my early-LP-era 78s by Hank Williams (MGM)—the Flamencos sounded fractionally more compressed, fractionally less volatile, than the Valencias. That said, the Flamencos still had 80–85% of the intensity, the danger, of the Valencias—which is to say, they were still miles ahead of most loudspeakers being manufactured today.

All that, and woman appeal, for less than $2000/pair.

The catch? You have to drive somewhere, maybe a faraway somewhere, and haul them home yourself. If you live in the Northeast, you might get lucky and find a pair one state over from where you live—perhaps a four- or five-hour drive. If you live in Montana, you might get lucky and find a pair in Wyoming. Pack a lunch.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong
When I drove my Valencias down to my friend in New York, I included the stands I'd made for them. After that, even though the magnificent Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema loudspeakers I reviewed last November were still in-house, it was time for me to get on with my bad, budget-conscious self and to press into service my new-old Altec Flamencos, without benefit of stands. (I'm making them now, during breaks between splitting firewood, painting the house, and writing up the December issue's 2016 Products of the Year feature. It's taking forever.)

When Flamencos are used without stands, the centers of their midrange-treble drivers are 21" above the floor. Given a chair or sofa of typical height, even a seated hamster would have to decline his head somewhat to hear properly balanced trebles from such a thing. But that's how the Altec engineers designed it. Yes, giants once walked the earth, but they pulled their pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else—and sometimes mixed plaids with horizontal stripes.

There, perhaps, is the answer to a question that had been bugging me all along: On the back of every Valencia and Flamenco is a treble-output control that goes from "0" to "10": counterintuitively, "10" provides the lowest treble level possible, and "0" provides a treble level that I find uncomfortably bright when the high-frequency horn is raised to more-or-less ear level. On the back of every Valencia and Flamenco is also a factory-applied label that recommends a setting of "2" as "correct" for "average conditions"—and for over three years of Altec ownership, that has puzzled me.

The reason is now apparent: If it is to be installed with its uppermost surface only 28" above the floor, a big speaker must also be a bright speaker. Those Altec engineers knew that their customers weren't crazy enough to jack up on stands their handsome, furniture-quality Flamencos or Valencias, any more than they were crazy enough to wet-wash their LPs, or tolerate amplifiers that run hot enough to heat a room, or hook up their gear with anything heavier than lamp cord.

The engineers of yesterday imagined a lot of wonderful things, but they never imagined us.

Until I finish making my new Flamenco stands, which I hope will be just a week or two from now, I'm running them with their treble controls almost wide open, as the people who designed them expected. Even so, as I think I said of my Valencias soon after I bought them, the Flamencos are reliably skilled at turning groove-bumps into goose-bumps. Of how many other loudspeakers, howsoever good at soundstaging and neutrality and wideness of frequency range, can you say such a thing?

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Footnote 3: John Atkinson's follow-up review of the Hommage Cinema, including its measured performance, can be found here.—Ed.