To borrow from Dina Washington's album, What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!, the title certainly describes the results of the listening session that Ron, Leo, and I had on Sunday afternoon with the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers that were so lovingly restored by Gary Fischer.

The Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers: What a Diff'rence a Day Makes!

When Ron and I first listened to the A5 VOTTs cold out of their shipping crate, we were taken aback by their sound quality, which was ... ah ... wanting.

I am sure that behind the screen in an old movie theatre, blasting out into the audience during a gripping scene, that the A5's were sublime doing what they were designed for, but in my listening room they were rather frightening sounding.

I was surprised there was such a difference between the A5 VOTTs' presentation and the ravishingly beautiful presentation of the custom Stokowski VOTTs.

The legendary Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers.

Ron tried to comfort me by telling me that when he first brought his Klipschorns home to add to his loudspeaker collection, that almost the same exact thing had happened to him. I can attest that Ron's Klipschorns now sound fantastic, but it took Ron a while to build custom crossovers and new wood horns to get them sounding like they do now.

Well, on Sunday the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers were sounding really nice, and they were much more musically enjoyable as we played 45RPM records through them.

So what happened in that short span of time?

A5 VOTTs with Werner Jagusch's autoformer based crossovers and Western Electric WE16GA wiring.

The first thing that happened was that we ditched the Altec 500C crossovers (one of them was malfunctioning) and replaced them with a pair of autoformer based crossovers that I had Werner Jagusch in Germany build for me.

Werner’s A5 crossovers are minimalist in parts count, and allow adjustment of the output & roll-off of the high-frequency horns, so you can match the sound to your room & tastes.

For an affordable (€549 Euros/pair) high-performance crossover for the A5 VOTTs, it is pretty hard to go wrong with Werner's crossovers, and they go a long ways towards taming the A5's for home use. But not all of the way.

A5's with Werner's crossovers and Western Electric WE16GA wiring.

What also helped is I wired the A5 VOTTs with the Yazaki-san recommended vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, which as many of you know, is one of the quickest & easiest ways to add some beautiful vintage tone to a pair of loudspeakers.

Vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire.

I had known all along from reading the literature that taming the mighty A5 VOTTs for a home listening environment was a formidable task, but I was still caught off guard by the rawness of the sound I heard on that first listen.

Now with Werner's crossovers & the Western Electric WE16GA wire in place, I set about getting the crossovers dialed in better, and working on the room position and setup of the A5's.

Those three steps have helped a lot, enough so I've been impressed with what I'm hearing from the A5's, and am looking forward to our upcoming custom crossover project for them, which I'll be detailing for you as we go along.

Those Alnico magnets in the 288C and 515B drivers really have gorgeous tone, and the sound is very 'real' from a timbral standpoint, and they communicate a high level of emotional content from the music - all which are really good things.

I still hear a number of 'issues' in the sound that we'll have to work through as we build & voice the custom crossovers we have planned, but overall we're off to a very good start, I think.

I believe there is a level of performance potential in the A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers that we are just barely glimpsing at this point in the project, and I am very excited for what is to come.

Please join us as we explore the heights of performance that these Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers are capable of.

I'll do my very best to describe to you what I hear along the way, and we'll find out together what has made these vintage Altec Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers so legendary.

Thanks for stopping by!