I thought I blogged about this already. I honestly thought I did.
A few weeks ago I replaced my aging Altec-Lansing ATP3 speakers with the “latest and greatest” VS4121’s which are alleged to be directly descended from the ATP3’s. As my father frequently says “All the lies people tell you aren’t true.”
Long-time readers will know the depth of praise that I have heaped on the ATP3’s in the past… for their beautifully accurate, clear, and powerful sound. Apparently that’s a page of history now because…
Sorry for the blink, but I had to make sure you got my point. I’m going to dump them on Craigslist for $20 - if I can get that much. I’d feel guilty charging any more.
I could go on and on and on and on about the horrible muffled sound and the complete lack of fidelity, but I wanna skip all that because I don’t want to blow my bandwidth cap this month. The latest problem with them takes the cake.
Lately I’ve noticed this odd ultra-low hum coming from “somewhere” and I couldn’t isolate what it was. After panning all the inputs from my outboard mixer down to zero I discerned it to be the speakers itself and remember making a rude comment under my breath when the culprit was finally found. But hey, I finally found out what it was. Remember how I said these things were so terribly inaccurate? To make them sound natural, I had panned the bass adjustment all the way back as far as it would go, because “flat” (for lack of a better word) these things are so bassy it’s obnoxious. This afternoon I turned the bass knob just a hair back towards the center and the hum disappeared. I turned it back to the far left detent and it came back. The speakers HUM when the bass is completely REMOVED. Give me a technical explanation for THAT one.
In the meantime I use them for multimedia and gaming and stick to my Sennheiser PX100’s for music. I just can’t put music through these things. It just HURTS too much.
I sent an e-mail to Altec. I expressed my concerns and said I was embarrassed for all the free publicity I had given them over the years. Not a response. This is the direction corporate America has gone. “Make crap without apology.” Good old “Made in the U.S.A.” is rapidly getting the same reputation as “Made in Taiwan”, “Made in China” or “Made in Mexico”.
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