SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
Well, if you'll notice in my first post talking abut my old RS10s that I mentioned "pre-Japan" Infinity. This is no dig against Japan, just a convenient way of making a historical distinction. This also dovetails into what I think is another important point, the importance - or lack thereof - of brand name. Stick with me for a minute...EDAN said:
I specified "pre-Japan" RS10s for a reason. In the early 80s Infinity was a good and growing domestic brand. The initial RS-10s that I had (I purchased them sometime in 1982 or '83) were very nice loudspeakers that performed well beyond their size. A couple of years later (85?), the Infinity brand was bought by another company and they either moved their production facilities or changed compunent sources. It just so happens they moved much of it to Japan.
That in and of itself was not important; what was important was their designes changed. They moved to lesser-quality components and construction so that they could affourd to expand distribution from audio specialty stores only to department store chains and whatnot. I remember going to a Sears or JC Penny's and seeing a new model of RS10 - they still called it the RS10 - that had entirely different woofer and tweeter components. The surface area of the woofer cone had reduced and the cone material had gotten cheaper and less rigid. The tweter was different also, though I don't remember how. The most important thing, though, is they now sounded like crap. They didn't sound any different than half of the crap compact system speakers lined up next to them on the department store shelf. I was truely disappointed.
After that I pretty much lost interest and lost track of Infinity. I really don't even know if they still exist, and if they do, whether they are any good these days or not.
Which brings up the other point I teased earlier. Brand name in and of itself guarantees nothing. In Infinity's heyday, they made some very good sounding speakers. But not all of them sounded great. I personally felt that the little RS10s had a superior sound to half of their larger models. In fact, the second-largest (and second most expensive) model of Infinity that we sold at the time were called the RS2. These RS2s were 4 or 5 foot towers that sold for something like $2000 each. They were farily lousy sounding speakers that couldn't translate the lows or the highs properly if the language were the same and only the dialect were different
. There were plenty of other high-end towers available for similar prices that were far superior (anybody remember the DCM Time Windows, or even the big brothers to the RS2s, the RSMs? 
). The RSM, BTW, stood for "Reference Studio Monitor". They were possibly good enough for a decent mastering suite, but I doubt that a single one ever actually stepped inside a real studio; they were marketed to audiophiles, not engineers.So not only did the words "reference" and "studio" stamped onto the box have practically zero meaning, but the Infinity nameplate didn't carry it either. There are similar examples today. I now own and use a pair of Mackie 824s. I know, I know, a lot of you guys don't like them. That's fine. I don't want to get into that, it's a personal taste thing only. For me and my room they work excellent and I wouldn't trade than for anything until I got well past twice the price range. However, you couldn't give me a pair of 624s or even 626s to mix on; they just don't cut it for me. Somebody may disagree with on the specific models, and again, that's fine. That's not the point (though it is a different good point).
The point is that just because they have the name Mackie (or Tannoy, or KRK, or Genelec, or Adam, or Infinity, or Polk Audio) stamped on them does not mean they are automatically good or automatically bad any more than whether they have the words "studio monitor" stamped on them automatically means good or bad either.
The only way to judge any given loudspeaker for its applicability to any given task is to *listen to it* in a proper setting. Period. What anybody else says is irrelevant, because their ears and tastes are different, and what brand or description is stamped on it is equally irrelevant* because every model within a brand sounds different and the description as "studio" or "hi fi" is only a decision of the marketing department, nothing more.
*Well, brand can be important in helping determine things like company support and reliability, quality of construction, and stuff like that. But not necessarily for actual sound quality.
G.
.
.