Greetings friends, I hope you are well!

As you know, I really enjoy vintage Altec loudspeakers, and the focus of this page is my vintage pair of Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers that are the cornerstones of the audio system in my master bedroom.

I know, I know, my Altec enthusiasm is out of control, as I now have three vintage Altec-based audio systems. They each have their own unique performance, charm, and appeal. 

What do I particularly like about my vintage Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers?

Compact size (for vintage Altec loudspeakers anyways), room-boundary cabinet design (i.e. designed to fit in room corners), high-sensitivity, superb drivers and horn complements, the cool looking and historic California Modernist cabinets made by craft furniture maker Glenn of California, their ultra-performing Duelund CAST copper crossovers, and their excellent musical and visuospatial performance.

In today's world it is becoming more common for us audio enthusiasts to have a limited amount of space for our audio systems, which essentially means we have to figure out how to integrate our audio systems into smaller living spaces without compromising their performance. It can be done. 

My favorite approach for integrating audio systems into smaller domestic listening spaces is to choose smaller loudspeakers designed for room-boundary positioning, which gets the loudspeakers out of the middle of a room and into room corners, which frees up living space.

The Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers are intended for domestic use, so they are much smaller than their more industrial cousins that are designed for professional use, the A5s and A7s. 

However, the Corona 832As are still fairly large speakers (W37 3/8" X H39" X D24 3/8") that weigh in at 122 pounds each, but their saving grace is that their triangular cabinets were designed to allow them to be placed into room corners in a hand-in-glove fit that gets them out of the way of living space.  

The Coronas' cabinets were custom made for Altec by Glenn of California, which was a craft furniture maker producing furniture in the California Modernist style that was popular in the 1940s-1950s, and the cabinets were one of the Coronas' selling points. 

Glenn of California customers could order Coronas that were smartly styled to complement the Glenn of California furniture they had in their home, and as such were intended to "disappear" into room corners as stylish and functional furniture so they weren't too room dominating. Coronas were considered to be high-performance "art speakers" for a well decorated Glenn of California furnished home.

High-sensitivity is super important to me with loudspeakers, as I really enjoy low-powered amplification, particularly low-powered vacuum tube amplification, so high-sensitivity is a must. 

Another thing I really like about my Corona 832A loudspeakers is their superb drivers and horn complement, with 803A bass drivers (1947-1958), 802D compression drivers (1957-1972), 811B HF horns, and N800E crossovers. 

When I saw my pair of vintage Altec Corona loudspeakers for sale at LA Jazz Audio, I was reminded of what Keith Aschenbrenner of Auditorium 23 told me some years ago, that the 803A Altec driver was one of his all-time favorite low-frequency drivers for its articulate bass response, which of course added to the intrigue I had for this particular pair of Coronas.

That components complement would place these Coronas' production circa 1957-1958, which was about the same time I was produced, so they are now over six decades old and perform like they are brand new off the showroom floor, unlike me.

Now let's talk about my Coronas' ultra-performing Duelund CAST copper crossovers (above).

The Achilles heel of vintage Altecs is their crossovers age out and need to be replaced to realize their full performance potential. 

While Altec had excellent pro-derived adjustable crossover designs that made them easy to get dialed-in in any room, after 60 plus years of use, their capacitors, inductors, and resistors age out and need to be replaced.  

Frederik Carøe (Duelund Coherent Audio) and I have done several projects where we developed ultra-performance crossovers, the first being for my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), and the second being for my vintage custom Altec loudspeakers that were developed for Conductor Leopold Stokowski way back when HERE. 

Frederik and I once again rolled up our sleeves to develop ultra-performing crossovers for the Coronas. You can read all the details about this build in The Duelund-Corona 832A Project - Serendipity to Ecstasy! article HERE. 

The quality of components in a crossover circuit will determine the ultimate level of performance the circuit is capable of, just as with DACs, preamplifiers, and amplifiers. Average components give average results, and state-of-art components give state-of-art results. Want to hear the best that your loudspeakers are capable of? Use the best components to build your crossovers.

We chose to use the stock Altec N800E adjustable crossover circuit, but with state-of-art Duelund CAST copper-foil paper-in-oil capacitors and inductors in the low and high-frequency crossover circuits, and vintage Luxman AS-10 transformer based constant impedance attenuators to provide high-frequency attenuation and adjustability instead of resistors. 

The resulting performance of the crossovers is spectacular, with beautiful tone, high-resolution, superb musicality, and remarkable visuospatial performance. 

Above is a diagram to help you visualize how the Coronas are positioned, along with the respective listening positions. 

The Corona loudspeakers are positioned 14.5 feet apart in the room corners. If I'm in listening position 1, I am facing the left loudspeaker, and it is firing directly at me diagonally across the room from about 20.5' away. Ditto for listening position 2, but in reverse orientation.

I stumbled upon something remarkable with this system setup. While these listening positions are decidedly unorthodox, and were chosen purely for practical reasons, it turns out these listening positions provide a remarkable visuospatial benefit. 

I had worried that my Corona loudspeakers being positioned 14.5 feet apart in the room corners would be too wide to get adequate center fill between them. It turned out that center fill was just fine, and the loudspeaker placement delivered a particularly wide soundstage with higher-fidelity recordings, a soundstage that filled the room's width wall-to-wall.

What really surprised me was that with higher-fidelity stereo era recordings, the soundstage and aural images projected out into the room a good six or seven feet from the front wall, and with the room being filled with the ambient sense of space of the recordings. Essentially this creates a room-filling "soundspace" that I'm immersed in instead of just a soundstage. 

So with this arrangement I get the sort of soundstage/soundspace visuospatial performance of the best rule of thirds/fifths audiophile-style placement of loudspeakers, but with the benefit of room-friendly room-boundary loudspeaker placement that frees up living space.  

You can read all the details of this in The Duelund-Corona 832A Project - Serendipity to Ecstasy! article at Positive Feedback HERE. 

I bought my pair of vintage Altec 832A Corona loudspeakers from LA Jazz Audio. 

I am absolutely crazy in love with my vintage Altec 832A Corona loudspeakers. With their Duelund CAST crossovers they are truly something special, and make music come alive with a live-likeness that few speakers can approach.

The Coronas sold for $762 a pair in 1957, which in 2026 dollars would be about $8800, an increase in value over time of 1,057.48%. As a comparator, a Chevrolet Corvette sold for $3176 in 1957. 

These days Corona 832As are getting harder to come by, and are selling for around $10K for ones in excellent condition with the desirable Altec 803A low-frequency drivers. 

LA Jazz Audio is listed on eBay as 9957easy, and with 100% positive feedback. I highly recommend LA Jazz Audio for their superb products and excellent shipping service. 

My Altec Corona 832A system is just getting started, as I need to pick up an audio rack for it and a few other things, but for those evening listening sessions I totally marvel at how musically engaging and life-like this system is.

More to come on my vintage Altec 832A loudspeaker based system as I get a chance to develop it a little more.

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you! 🙂