I disagree about it all being bollocks and I'm as entitled to my experiences and memories as anyone else. Sharing these experiences can be a help to people to make their own mind up and hopefully listen for themselves.
I'm thinking back to the mid to late 60's. yes, I was fairly young then, but I listened and read and listened again and was lucky to have regular trips to Watford, where there was a music/Hifi store called Hammonds, and where all the best gear of the times were available, this being long before KJ Enterprises/Leisuresound, IMF, Spendor and all the others. Compared to Goodmans, Wharfedale, Mordaunt Short and Celestion and with the sole exception of the tricky Quad 57's, KEF always sounded better to me on spoken and sung voice (Hammonds was very 'VHF Home Service' back then).
So back in the late 60's, what was available to the likes of the BBC, where accuracy of spoken voice was as important as loads of volume on their biggest monitors. It's my thought that cinema speakers had to be adapted and I believe EMI used large cabs with Altec Duplex? drivers in (with the 'honeycomb' tweeter waveguides in front of the main driver) and these would have been deemed too coloured = EMI looked to have gone over to custom big Quad 303 driven Tannoys by 1970 (I have a pic to prove it regarding Abbey Rd Studio 2). JBL would have been expensive and anyway, huge L200 apart, their boxes were awful I thought from midrange upwards back then. As for Acoustic Research, I don't remember when they began to be represented in the UK (very late 60's?), but they weren't any great shakes by then, the sound coloured, dry in perspective and very dull. I remember the AR3a sounding nasal, 'dry' and with not much top when I first heard it, but the 3a Improved version was rather better and anyway, the 10Pi model was amazingly good and way removed from those AR's of several years before - in my opinion and experience. The first AR's which blew me away were the LST's and I'm so glad I annoyed everyone at KJ Watford in getting the bloody things out - large, heavy and rather different in design, these were perfect for larger rooms but had a more modern balance than the previous models I thought. The only older UK speakers that sounded good to me were Ditton 66's and Quad 57's and neither were universal in application. Tannoys were silly-coloured in the early 70's, with tinsel for treble and a 'dirty' sounding midband - speech was laughable, although I'm sure that modern restoration and crossovers sort most if not all of this out.
Paper cones WERE difficult to make consistently and if one main person who made the formula up went sick, it was difficult for someone else to step in and take over. JBL may have got it to a fine art, but in the late 60's UK speaker market, I'm not sure that was relevant to be honest as these speakers would have been far too expensive assuming they were available at all. These days, it's all computer monitored, so not at all an issue.
here's a link to JBL late 60's monitors with some history. Not sure how many of the larger ones came here to the UK, although the 4310 was known and disliked for its squawky midrange -
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/histo ... /1960s.htm
So, where does this leave old Auntie Beeb? ALL of their monitors, big and small, were customised for THEIR OWN PURPOSES! The LS3 models were NOT first grade monitors and when they found a niche for the then new Spendor BC1 (the sister LS3/6 followed on but not many were used apparently), these were used for general sound duties and *usually* placed hanging from the ceiling around five feet off the ground - no bass 'honk' when used like this. I believe the BC1 is related to the mono wedge shaped sideways mounted corner/ceiling speaker (LS3/4?) used in vans before the LS3/5A came along, but can't be sure. BC2 and BC3's were domestic spinoffs I think, so nothing really to do with BBC monitors, although the later improved BC2/SA2/Prelude driver as mine now has was used as a drop-in replacement for one of the BBC niche speakers in the 80's I believe - the BC1 was phased out at the BBC in 1987 I think. As for the bigger main monitors, I've only heard LS5/5's once or twice years ago, but I liked them a lot I remember. These were sat on 24" or so stands and sited in properly designed studios, so no idea how they'd fare in a relatively horrible domestic environment. BC1's and all their cousins from Rogers were usually sat FAR TOO LOW on their tiny floor-trolleys and where the BC1 actually got better as it went along, Rogers speakers got worse (Studio 1's and so on, which boomed badly).
So you see, it's not all cut and dried in my book. AR made some lovely endearing speakers in the mid 70's based on the rather dull sounding 60's ancestors (I read the treble was deliberately set down on these for their home market and shall have to find the reviews of the period). Ditton 66 apart, Celestion were rather old fashioned when I joined KJ in 1974 and so were Goodmans, although I'd like to hear Goodwoods and Magnum K's off the floor, as the KEF Cadenza and Concerto took on a new lease of life used thus. OK, my comments above may not jive with some others here, but they are as genuine as I could give from actual experience of the speakers themselves and not just regurgitated from things I've read here and there.
Anyway, all boring to most of you I suspect, but it's interesting for me to remember, research further and learn afresh