On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:07:08 +0200, Lionel
wrote:

Sander deWaal a écrit :
Howard Ferstler said to John Atkinson:


You make me sick. No wonder I need a break.



Relax, pal. It's only a hobby.

Not for all the participants... IMHO.

Boy, THAT'S for sure. Make an simple comment about something, and the
Lionel avocation goes into high gear...

"8 hz" dave wrote :

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:07:08 +0200, Lionel
wrote:


Sander deWaal a écrit :

Howard Ferstler said to John Atkinson:



You make me sick. No wonder I need a break.



Relax, pal. It's only a hobby.

Not for all the participants... IMHO.


THAT'S for sure.

Agreed. You see it can happen...
....when you avoid to speak about things that you don't know.

:-D

"George M. Middius" wrote in message
...


Scottie said:

Mine have a simple plastic bannana jack/binding post. My Hsu sub has
the
spring clips.

Cheaper is better!T

When everything else is equal.

ScottW

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:30:24 +0200, Lionel
wrote:

...when you avoid to speak about things that you don't know.

Yep, that's my usual policy, unlike you, of course.

"8hz" dave is really angry :

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:30:24 +0200, Lionel
wrote:


...when you avoid to speak about things that you don't know.


Yep, that's my usual policy,


I see...
....So, the only solution is to cut your fingers. You idiot.

:-D

"Lionel" wrote in message
...
"8hz" dave is really angry :

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:30:24 +0200, Lionel
wrote:


...when you avoid to speak about things that you don't know.


Yep, that's my usual policy,


I see...
...So, the only solution is to cut your fingers. You idiot.

You know on Sundays... it's moron.... idiot is for weekdays unless its a
french holiday (there are so many)... then it is creton or xenophobe. Try
to be consistent you dumbass.

ScottW

:-D

ScottW said:

Mine have a simple plastic bannana jack/binding post. My Hsu sub has
the spring clips.

Cheaper is better!™

When everything else is equal.

I hope you're not saying spring clips are equal to binding posts.

And fix your newsreader already.

ScottW a écrit :

french holiday (there are so many)...

And we still haven't 50% of the american problem of obesity...
I cannot imagine how fat *you* would be if you have as much
holidays than us. ;-)

"Lionel" wrote in message
...
ScottW a écrit :

french holiday (there are so many)...

And we still haven't 50% of the american problem of obesity...

just twice the malnutrition and 5 times the anti-semitism..

I cannot imagine how fat *you* would be if you have as much holidays than
us. ;-)

You can't get anything right... I usually get more exercise on holidays.
Work isn't physically strenuous for me.

ScottW

"George M. Middius" wrote in message
...


ScottW said:

Mine have a simple plastic bannana jack/binding post. My Hsu sub
has
the spring clips.

Cheaper is better!T

When everything else is equal.

I hope you're not saying spring clips are equal to binding posts.

No, they're superior to stripped binding posts.

And fix your newsreader already.

waste of time.

ScottW

ScottW a écrit :
"Lionel" wrote in message
...

ScottW a écrit :


french holiday (there are so many)...

And we still haven't 50% of the american problem of obesity...


just twice the malnutrition and 5 times the anti-semitism..


I cannot imagine how fat *you* would be if you have as much holidays than
us. ;-)


You can't get anything right... I usually get more exercise on holidays.

Does it means that Mrs ScottW is obliged to patiently wait
for your infrequent holidays ? ;-)


Work isn't physically strenuous for me.


Since you have demonstrated several times that you haven't
any intellectual competencies, I sincerely wonder what you
are calling *work*.

:-D

"Lionel" wrote in message
...
ScottW a écrit :
"Lionel" wrote in message
...

ScottW a écrit :


french holiday (there are so many)...

And we still haven't 50% of the american problem of obesity...


just twice the malnutrition and 5 times the anti-semitism..


I cannot imagine how fat *you* would be if you have as much holidays than
us. ;-)


You can't get anything right... I usually get more exercise on holidays.

Does it means that Mrs ScottW is obliged to patiently wait for your
infrequent holidays ? ;-)

She waits for no man.

Work isn't physically strenuous for me.


Since you have demonstrated several times that you haven't any
intellectual competencies,

I see you're jealous I get paid so much for nothing.

I sincerely wonder what you are calling *work*.

Getting there is the hardest part.

ScottW

ScottW a écrit :
"Lionel" wrote in message
...

ScottW a écrit :

"Lionel" wrote in message
.. .


ScottW a écrit :



french holiday (there are so many)...

And we still haven't 50% of the american problem of obesity...


just twice the malnutrition and 5 times the anti-semitism..



I cannot imagine how fat *you* would be if you have as much holidays than
us. ;-)


You can't get anything right... I usually get more exercise on holidays.

Does it means that Mrs ScottW is obliged to patiently wait for your
infrequent holidays ? ;-)


She waits for no man.


If she's staying at home, I understand. ;-)


Work isn't physically strenuous for me.


Since you have demonstrated several times that you haven't any
intellectual competencies,


I see you're jealous I get paid so much for nothing.


Really ? Contrariwise, in this case I would congratulate you.


I sincerely wonder what you are calling *work*.


Getting there is the hardest part.


I start to find you friendly... ;-)

ScottW "The Môron" wrote :

Ooops, I missed this one.

and 5 times the anti-semitism..

Scott please !!!!
Do you seriously think that a scary xenophobic guy like you
can give lesson of virtue to the rest of the world ?

:-)

"Sander deWaal" wrote in message

Howard Ferstler said to John Atkinson:

You make me sick. No wonder I need a break.


Relax, pal. It's only a hobby.

Sander,

I think they said the same thing about football before El Salvador and
Honduras went to war over a disputed World Cup qualifier! :-)

"Lionel" wrote in message
...
\

Since you have demonstrated several times that you haven't any
intellectual competencies, I sincerely wonder what you are calling *work*.

Something a little more involved than inspecting sewers, no doubt.



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"Schizoid Man" said:


"Sander deWaal" wrote in message

Howard Ferstler said to John Atkinson:

You make me sick. No wonder I need a break.


Relax, pal. It's only a hobby.

Sander,

I think they said the same thing about football before El Salvador and
Honduras went to war over a disputed World Cup qualifier! :-)



Dunno about that, but Howard used this expression many times when the
audio debate got a bit heated .
It only seemed appropriate to me to use his own words in this case.

--
Sander de Waal
" SOA of a KT88? Sufficient. "

wrote:

Wow, you really are a miserable person. All that hate over a hobby. It
must suck to be you.

Scott Wheeler

It causes me quite a bit of grief to realize just what you
tweako dirtbags have done over the past few decades to wreck
audio as an intelligent person's hobby.

Fortunately, unlike you freaks my world does not revolve
around my audio systems. I can back out of the enterprise
and not give up a thing. On the other hand, for guys like
you there is no such thing as self esteem without your
tweako-grade audio systems.

Enjoy your toy, freako.

Howard Ferstler

MINe 109 wrote:

I'm wounded: I've been hounding you for more-or-less the same things and
you never got sick.

The straw that broke the camel's back. You are way more than
wounded, pal.

Enjoy your audio rig.

Howard Ferstler

"George M. Middius" wrote:

Harold, are you still there? I just bought some video cables. I got two
sets, one inexpensive and one moderately expensive. (I might have gone for
a set of overpriced ones too, except I didn't inherit a six-figure
windfall like some others, so I still have to spend money prudently.)

How would you go about comparing their performance? I want to be
scientific 'n' stuff. The more rigmarole and mind-numbing rituals, the
better. My goal is a 'borg-proof analysis. Please advise me.

They do not need to be compared. You blew your money on
those moderately expensive ones. Trust me.

Howard Ferstler

Sander deWaal wrote:

Howard Ferstler said to John Atkinson:

You make me sick. No wonder I need a break.

Relax, pal. It's only a hobby.

I have been at it for a long time. It is a crying shame to
see what the tweakos have done to wreck it.

However, it is actually going down the tube pretty much all
by itself. One need only look at how much stress is placed
on expensive stuff like video monitors and video games and
how little effort is put into good, mainstream audio
products.

The ironic thing is that possibly in a few years the only
high-end, expensive stuff left will be not much more than
overbuilt and overpriced junk that is anything but exacting
when it comes to reproducing sound.

This should suit you just fine.

Howard Ferstler

Howard Ferstler said:

I have been at it for a long time. It is a crying shame to
see what the tweakos have done to wreck it.

However, it is actually going down the tube pretty much all
by itself. One need only look at how much stress is placed
on expensive stuff like video monitors and video games and
how little effort is put into good, mainstream audio
products.

The ironic thing is that possibly in a few years the only
high-end, expensive stuff left will be not much more than
overbuilt and overpriced junk that is anything but exacting
when it comes to reproducing sound.

This should suit you just fine.


Nope. I just keep on building the stuff myself.
A rewarding hobby, and it keeps me off the streets.

--

"Audio as a serious hobby is going down the tubes."
- Howard Ferstler, 25/4/2005

Now Howies been ranting for a while
Been spewin' out a whole lot of bile
He called John a phony
But he full of bologna
'Cause showin' respect ain't his style.

Hammingway

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

I'm wounded: I've been hounding you for more-or-less the same things and
you never got sick.

The straw that broke the camel's back. You are way more than
wounded, pal.

No, I'm better now.

Enjoy your audio rig.

The one you say I should be anxious about? The speakers based on 1941
and 1929 technology and using miles of wire? The $400 amp I bought even
cheaper used? The cd player you say can't be bettered?

Face it, your fantasy of a golden age of audio gentlemen is bunk. Audio
was a business, including branding and marketing and all that goes with
that. Your idols, and mine, have been supplanted by the enormous
electronics commodity business. Sure you're thrilled to add another pair
of surround channels every other year, and I'm thrilled at the prospect
of overkill high-rez media, but if they don't make money, it's on to the
next techno-wonder: expensive but crappy tv screens, convergence
products, and anything else that will sell (Dualdiscs?).

And you think use and listening articles with measurements are a problem.

Stephen

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message

The ironic thing is that possibly in a few years the only
high-end, expensive stuff left will be not much more than
overbuilt and overpriced junk that is anything but exacting
when it comes to reproducing sound.

This should suit you just fine.

Though I agree with some of the things that you are Krueger says (or
Krooborg, as he is better known in some parts of RAO) - I am pretty
skeptical of concepts like cable break-in and the value of Nordhost power
cables - I do definitely believe that two CD players, preamplifiers or
tuners can sound markedly different.

That being said, high-end audio is sort of akin to exotic cars. I don't
think every Ferrari or Maserati owner is planning to fly down the freeway at
200mph. There is inherent pride and joy in owning a Porsche or, for that
matter, the JMLab Grand Utopias. It's just that simple.

Everyone knows where you, Arny and Tom stand. You don't have to ram your
philosophy down everyone's throats.

"Schizoid Man" said to Howard da Blowheart:

Everyone knows where you, Arny and Tom stand. You don't have to ram your
philosophy down everyone's throats.


Hey, who are we to deny an old man his only pleasure?
That, and letting others fight his battles for him.
I mean, at least Arny has the balls to actually venture out of his
house and fight the E.H.E.E., impersonated by John Atkinson, while all
Howard does is standing aside yapping "Hit him, Arny! Below the belt
is a good spot!".

Pathetic.

--

"Audio as a serious hobby is going down the tubes."
- Howard Ferstler, 25/4/2005

Schizoid Man wrote:

"Howard Ferstler" wrote in message

The ironic thing is that possibly in a few years the only
high-end, expensive stuff left will be not much more than
overbuilt and overpriced junk that is anything but exacting
when it comes to reproducing sound.

This should suit you just fine.

Though I agree with some of the things that you are Krueger says (or
Krooborg, as he is better known in some parts of RAO) - I am pretty
skeptical of concepts like cable break-in and the value of Nordhost power
cables - I do definitely believe that two CD players, preamplifiers or
tuners can sound markedly different.

This would be fairly easy to prove: do level-matched
comparisons with the two players closely synchronized. Given
what players do in the way of keeping distortion low, I fail
to see how two decently built versions could sound
different. However, if a high-end manufacturer, after
purchasing a transport and digital section at a modest price
from China, and then installing those items in an overweight
chassis, wanted to contour the analog output to make the
player sound different, well, yes, then it would sound
different. It just would not sound as accurate as a modestly
priced mainstream player.

That being said, high-end audio is sort of akin to exotic cars.

For some people, obviously.

I don't
think every Ferrari or Maserati owner is planning to fly down the freeway at
200mph. There is inherent pride and joy in owning a Porsche or, for that
matter, the JMLab Grand Utopias. It's just that simple.

Pride, at least real pride, usually involves doing something
yourself. I find it hard to believe that somebody would feel
pride in spending big bucks on an overkill audio product.
That simply does not make sense. You might feel pride in
spending sanely for an audio product that does what it is
supposed to do, though.

Everyone knows where you, Arny and Tom stand. You don't have to ram your
philosophy down everyone's throats.

If tweako audio was an isolated situation that was not
damaging the hobby in general I would agree with you.
However, the tweakos have made the hobby into a joke among
the engineering establishment and have demeaned and insulted
the good engineering and design work of a lot of responsible
people - and so a bit of ramming is in order.

Howard Ferstler

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

Enjoy your audio rig.

The one you say I should be anxious about? The speakers based on 1941
and 1929 technology and using miles of wire?

I really would like to review a pair of those things.

The $400 amp I bought even
cheaper used?

With conventional speakers this amp should be fine. I do,
however, have reservations about its linkup with an
electrostatic load. It might be just fine, however.

The cd player you say can't be bettered?

Yep.

Face it, your fantasy of a golden age of audio gentlemen is bunk. Audio
was a business, including branding and marketing and all that goes with
that.

Read this tidbit from a recent Stereophile issue:

A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison

David Lander, January, 2005 (From Stereophile).

Editor's Note: In 1954, a quiet, bespectacled New Englander
reinvented the world of audio with the modest-looking
Acoustic Research AR-1 loudspeaker. A small fraction of the
size of the behemoths that were then de rigeur for the
reproduction of bass frequencies, Edgar Villchur's
loudspeaker went as low with less distortion. Perhaps more
importantly, the AR-1 pioneered both the science of speaker
design and the idea that a low-frequency drive-unit could
not be successfully engineered without the properties of the
enclosure being taken into account.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Villchur's
revolutionary idea and his founding (with the late Henry
Kloss) of the Acoustic Research company, I asked David
Lander to interview not only Villchur but also Roy Allison.
Allison played a major role in the company's fortunes before
leaving in 1972, but more importantly, extended Villchur's
idea of system engineering to one where a complete
loudspeaker should not be designed without taking the
properties of the listening room into account.-John Atkinson

Edgar Villchur: Thinking Inside the Box

Edgar Villchur's acoustic-suspension loudspeaker was an idea
as big as its cabinet was small.

By the time he entered the City College of New York in 1933,
Villchur knew he wanted to be an inventor. He was attracted
to engineering, but a passion for painting and theatrical
set design led him to major in art, and he earned a master's
degree in that field. Not long afterward, World War II
began, and he was drafted. Villchur spent five years in the
army, about half of it in the Pacific. He worked in
electronics and rose from private to captain.

After the war, Villchur opened a radio shop on West Fourth
Street, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and built custom
hi-fi sets and made repairs. He also spent considerable time
in the New York Public Library reading on his own, and took
courses in engineering and math. He also worked as a
teacher, creating and presiding over a novel course at New
York University called "Reproduction of Sound."

But Villchur longed to live in the country, and decided that
becoming a writer would allow him to do so. His first
editorial client was Audio Engineering magazine; when he
submitted an article, editor C.J. McProud asked for a
series. Saturday Review also agreed to regularly publish his
work. In 1952, Villchur and his wife, Rosemary, moved to
Woodstock, New York, which had long been a haven for
creative people. They still live in that Catskill Mountains
town.

Villchur, whose friends call him Eddie, is now a youthful
87. Stereophile readers tend to know him for having
developed the acoustic-suspension woofer and dome tweeter,
and as a founder of Acoustic Research. Some also remember
his many magazine articles and his two authoritative books
on high fidelity. [His 1965 book, Reproduction of Sound in
High-Fidelity & Stereo Phonographs, is available as a Dover
reprint.-Ed.]

Others recognize a separate set of achievements. After
selling AR in 1967, Villchur founded and funded a nonprofit
laboratory, the Foundation for Hearing Aid Research, and
went on to develop a prototype device whose basic design is
used widely in today's hearing aids. He also wrote some two
dozen papers relating to audiology and, in 2000, published a
book on the subject, Acoustics for Audiologists.

David Lander: You've said you turned your attention to
loudspeakers because, back in the early 1950s, they were the
weak link in the hi-fi component chain.

Edgar Villchur: In those days you could buy an amplifier for
home use with 0.5% distortion or less, even at the frequency
extremes and at full rated power. Loudspeakers showed
distortion levels in the low bass of 20 to 100 times that
amount. The problem was the mechanical suspension that held
the cone in place. When the cone moved a large distance, the
suspension would stretch. It wouldn't allow the cone to
travel the full distance in response to low-frequency
waveform peaks. I thought, Well, what we need is a linear
restoring force, one that doesn't bind, one that allows the
cone to move a large distance and brings it back
elastically. That's when the light went on. This linear
spring had been there all the time. The cushion of air in
the cabinet was exactly the kind of spring I wanted.

Lander: So you decided to reduce the springiness of the
mechanical structure and replace it with air.

Villchur: By reducing the stiffness of the mechanical cone
suspensions and then reducing the size of the air
cushion-which is to say, reducing the size of the cabinet.
The latter is something you have to do; it won't work
otherwise. You end up with a linear restoring force,
radically reduced low-frequency distortion, and-as an extra
dividend, not a primary dividend-a small cabinet.

Lander: You built the very first acoustic-suspension
loudspeaker system soon after moving to Woodstock. How long
did it take?

Villchur: It was a matter of a couple of weeks before I had
a working model. I miscalculated the size of the cabinet in
the first prototype. It was too small; the bass dropped off
at much too high a frequency. Otherwise, it worked the way
it should have. I was encouraged by that, and once I had the
data, I could calculate exactly the size of the cabinet
needed. So the second prototype worked like a charm.

Lander: What did you use for the acoustic-suspension woofer
itself?

Villchur: A cannibalized Western Electric 12". I cut away
the entire rim suspension and replaced it with mattress
ticking. Then I cut away part of the spider. The whole thing
had a very floppy mounting. I left just enough stiffness in
the suspension to center the voice coil.

Lander: What did you do once you realized what you'd
wrought?

Villchur: My measurements showed that my little prototype
had better bass and less distortion than anything on the
market, yet it was one quarter the size. I thought, This has
got to be the future of loudspeakers. But the last thing in
the world I wanted to do was get into business. For me to be
a corporate president is anathema. So, I thought, I'd sell
it to a loudspeaker manufacturer. I made up my mind to ask
$10,000 and, if they offered me $5000, to take it. I called
somebody I knew at Altec and told him what I had, and he
said, "You know, Ed, we have a pretty good staff of
engineers here. If there were something around such as you
describe, I think they would have found it."

Lander: You've also said that a friend of yours approached
Rudy Bozak, and he turned it down.

Villchur: My friend asked why, and Bozak said, "Because what
you describe is impossible."

Lander: Enter Henry Kloss, who was in the army, stationed in
New Jersey, taking your NYU class.

Villchur: I had hinted to my class what I was doing, and
Henry started acting like a terrier. He wanted to know about
it. At first I said, "Look, this has got to be done by a
major speaker manufacturer," but when I saw what the
manufacturers' attitude was, I said, "Well, okay, let's talk
about it." So one night in the spring of 1954, after class,
we got into my 1938 Buick and went to Woodstock. I explained
it to him in the car on the way, which was no problem
because Henry worked from fundamental principles of physics.
We must have got in sometime after 11. He heard it, and
right then and there suggested we use his loft in Cambridge
[Massachusetts], where he was building cabinets for
Baruch-Lang speakers, to make it.

Lander: You agreed and, in effect, the two of you started AR
on the spot.

Villchur: Yes. On the basis of my working speaker, with my
patent application already in Washington, we started AR. I
wanted to pick a manufacturer we could rely on for the
woofer and tell him how to make the new-type suspension, but
Henry said, "No, I'll do the whole thing." He educated
himself to make a woofer from scratch.

Lander: The AR-1 was a two-way system. Where did the other
driver come from?

Villchur: It was made by Western Electric, their 755A, and
later by Altec.

Lander: You've given Henry credit for 75% of the production
design on the AR-1.

Villchur: The production design. That's accurate.

Lander: You unveiled the AR-1 to the public at the New York
Audio Fair in the fall of 1954. As it happened, an article
by you describing it had just come out in Audio magazine,
which was the name Audio Engineering had adopted a few
months earlier.

Villchur: By that time, we had three or four made. At the
show, some people were bowled over. Other people were
skeptical. One guy who was an engineer said, "It violated
every principle I learned about speakers, and then I went
home and read your article." And he put his finger to his
head as though it were a pistol and said, "Of course."

Lander: When did you begin delivering the AR-1?

Villchur: March '55. We started to ship 15 or 20 a month.
Maybe fewer in the very beginning. In 1955, we shipped 455
speakers. I remember that number because it happens to be an
IF frequency from my old shop days. About half were AR-1s
and half were 1Ws.

Lander: The AR-1W was a woofer-only unit. Arthur Janszen
used to demonstrate his electrostatic tweeter in combination
with it.

Villchur: Henry knew him, and we went to his house, and
Arthur compared the AR with a giant, four-woofer Bozak. His
decision was just as quick as Henry's. It was an obvious
decision. How many people were going to buy this giant thing
when they could buy his tweeter with an AR?

Lander: At that point, Henry Kloss was in charge of the AR
factory. What did the two partners he had brought in to help
capitalize the company do? Were Tony Hofmann and Malcolm Low
active? And what were you doing?

Villchur: Tony, a distinguished physicist, was keeping the
books, and he did a beautiful analysis of the relation
between speaker elements. Malcolm wasn't really active at
first. I started paying a lot of attention to writing
articles and talking to people who would write articles. At
the 1955 Audio Fair, we had about six magazines on display,
each with a whole article on the AR speaker.

Lander: After about a year and a half, Kloss, Low, and
Hofmann sold their AR shares to you. Was there friction?

Villchur: There was friction. Henry really needed to have
his own company; you can't have two presidents. Part of the
agreement was that, whatever company they formed-which was,
of course, KLH-they would take a license from us that would
allow them to produce acoustic-suspension speakers. I took
over production at that point. Henry left an AR-2 that
wasn't ready, and a lot of work still had to be done. Then
we hired somebody for production who could have been a good
slave overseer for the Egyptian Pharaohs. That's when I
called in people I knew.

Lander: Right. You enlisted Abe Hoffman, a CPA, for the
position of vice-president and treasurer. He became AR's
president after you sold the company to Teledyne in 1967,
and he later teamed up with your former chief engineer, Roy
Allison, to form Allison Acoustics. Harry Rubinstein, a
music teacher who had studied mechanical engineering and had
managed a small factory during World War II, came in to run
the plant. You also brought in a sales manager and a
materials manager. These were people you knew and could
trust. They freed you to spend your time doing what you did
best.

Villchur: Exactly. I did the technical correspondence at
that time, and I did all the advertising with an old friend,
Seymour Einwohner, who was in an art class at City College
with me. I would send him the ad copy and photographs if I
had any or an indication of what I wanted drawn, and he
would send me back layouts. I believe these ads gave AR a
distinctive image.

Lander: Some years after the acoustic-suspension woofer, you
designed the first dome tweeter. You've said it was
initially intended for the AR-1, because the driver made for
you wasn't up to the quality of the woofer, and because you
were relying on a competing company for it. How long did
that project take, and why did you decide on a dome
configuration?

Villchur: Building the woofer prototype was a matter of a
couple of weeks, but this took a year and a half. Of course,
I had other things to do. As for the dome, it wasn't so much
the shape of the diaphragm as the fact that the diaphragm
can be made very small while the speaker still carries
adequate power. This is accomplished by putting the voice
coil at the large diameter of the diaphragm rather than at
the small diameter. A small radiator provides the best
dispersion and power response, along with extended, smooth
high-frequency response. A different shape could be used for
the diaphragm, but it would have a greater tendency to break
up. The AR-3 was the first speaker to use the dome tweeter,
which wasn't imitated in other speaker systems for about 10
years.

Lander: In 1956, you were awarded a patent for the
acoustic-suspension speaker. You wrote the description
yourself rather than relying on a patent attorney. Why?

Villchur: The estimate the patent attorney gave me was too
high. I said, "How about if I just come talk to you and you
tell me what I need to do to write my own? How much would
you charge for that?" He said, "$30 an hour," and I said,
"I'll take one."

Lander: But a 1962 court ruling found your patent invalid
because of one that Harry Olson and John Preston, of RCA,
had gotten in 1949. How did that come about?

Villchur: We filed a suit against Electro-Voice for patent
infringement. We already had licensees, KLH and Heathkit,
that were paying us royalties. Rather than pay,
Electro-Voice offered us an exchange deal for a useless
patent of theirs. So we had to sue.

Lander: Do you think using an attorney at the time you
applied for your patent would have prevented the ruling
against you?

Villchur: Yes. He would have had a thorough patent search
made. If I had been aware of the Olson patent beforehand, it
would have been easy to protect my patent, which was quite
different. But sufficient protection wasn't written in
because I hadn't had an adequate patent search made. Again,
a matter of money.

Lander: What did the Olson patent actually describe?

Villchur: The central feature was a compliant-mechanical-rim
suspension design. There was no general claim for a system
that had a speaker mechanism with a free-air resonance
frequency substantially below its optimum operating
resonance, and which therefore required a small enclosure.
That's what an acoustic-suspension system is, but the judge,
who was totally nontechnical, ruled against us. I guess I
feel vindicated by the fact that the Smithsonian
Institution, in its exhibition on the history of technology,
shows two speakers: a bass-reflex unit and the AR-3.

Lander: When asked why you chose not to appeal the ruling,
you've cited the example of Edwin Armstrong, who invented
the superheterodyne circuit and FM radio.

Villchur: He spent his life in litigation. I figured, "Why
waste my time? I have better things to do."

Lander: One of them was promoting AR, and one way you did
that was with live-vs-recorded music demonstrations.
Audiences at those events got to compare a live string
quartet with recordings of the same musicians playing the
same pieces.

Villchur: We did them all over the place. We did one at
Carnegie Recital Hall. The Washington Post gave us half a
page when we rented a hall and did it there. We got
tremendous publicity. Then we opened up the Music Room in
Grand Central.

Lander: That was an offshoot of a display established by
Milton Sleeper, a founder of High Fidelity. It was in New
York City's Grand Central Terminal, where the traffic is
unbelievable and a lot of people have nothing to do while
waiting for trains.

Villchur: We bought it from him and revamped it so that it
looked entirely different and, most important, sounded good.
One year we counted a hundred thousand visitors.

Lander: You also maintained a similar facility in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. And you had a demo room at the 1963 World's
Fair, in New York. AR speakers were never sold in those
places, but they must have done a lot for sales.

Villchur: Stereo Review used to do an annual survey [of
market share by component category]. In the late '50s, we
became number one in speakers, and our share increased and
increased.

Lander: In 1966, the year before you sold the company,
Stereo Review put AR's share at just over 32% of the speaker
market.

Villchur: And number two would have been 10 or 12%.

Lander: Along with innovative speakers, which you backed
with blue-chip warranty service, the textbook-quality ads
you wrote, and ingenious promotion, your unique style of
running a company had to be a factor in your success. For
one thing, you gave your employees substantial benefits.
Tell us about that.

Villchur: We had medical insurance for everybody, unheard of
in the late '50s, especially for a company our size. And we
had profit sharing, which is meaningful only when wages are
up to scale or better. We had twice-yearly meetings at which
I'd announce what the profit sharing was. The highest figure
was 21% of earnings for half a year. That was for the
ordinary joe; foremen and top management got more. While
it's what I believed in, it really is very good business,
because the employees know that the better the quality of
their work, the more their bonuses will be. We also made it
clear to them that when something comes back because it
fails, it takes far more out of the profit-sharing kitty
than it ever contributed. Profit sharing stimulated
efficient but careful work.

Lander: Tell us about the genesis of the legendary AR
turntable, which Roy told me was your baby.

Villchur: I wanted to make a complete system, and I thought
the next thing should be a turntable, because our forte was
mechanical rather than electronic. I hired a consultant for
the job, but about a year and a half and maybe $25,000
later, what he had was useless. So I had to do it, and I did
almost all of it in my lab in Woodstock in the late '50s and
early '60s, just after the AR-3. We thought we could bring
it out at $58, but that was an error. Not too long
afterward, we had to raise it to $78-complete, with
everything but a cartridge. By that time, we had a
reputation. When we announced we were bringing out a
turntable, we had orders for thousands.

When I brought the prototype in from Woodstock, Abe said to
me, "How many of these are we going to sell?" And I said,
"How should I know?" He said, "Well, you have to make an
estimate, because I have to know what to invest in tooling."
So I said, "Okay. I'll be optimistic. I believe in this
thing. It's a superior device. We're going to sell 50,000 of
them before we're through." About 10 years after that-I was
long gone from AR, and I was talking to Roy-I asked, "How's
the turntable doing?" He said, "It's doing okay. We'll sell
maybe 50,000 this year."

Lander: However long gone you may be from AR, you maintain
strong views about hi-fi. In fact, you initially balked at
doing this interview because you feel that many aspects of
high-end audio, such as expensive cables and equipment
break-in, are meaningless.

Villchur: The concluding paragraph of a talk I once gave at
an Acoustical Society meeting sums that up. I'll read you
part of it: "Scientific method allows investigators to form
hypotheses in any way they please: out of a cold assembly of
facts, intuition, or a drunken stupor....Once a hypothesis
is proposed, however, it must be demonstrated rigorously.
The audio discipline needs to be brought back to the world
of reason."

Lander: Is there room in that world for subjectivity?

Villchur: Objective measurements in audio are primary, but
they're useless unless they've been subjectively validated
as predictors of musical accuracy. The validation method we
used at Acoustic Research was the live-vs-recorded, or
simulated live-vs-recorded, comparison. The standard I use
today is set by our Woodstock chamber music concerts.


Allison Interview

Roy Allison: Bending Boundary Effects

Before other people paid attention to the phenomenon, Roy
Allison noticed that loudspeaker measurements taken in
conventional home living rooms typically revealed a dip in
power response in the 100-300Hz range. That was in the late
1960s, when Allison was VP for engineering and manufacturing
at Acoustic Research. In 1972, after designing or
supervising the design of nine models at AR, he left to
begin an investigation of real-room speaker behavior. Next
he teamed up with former AR president Abe Hoffman and two
other colleagues from that company, Sumner Bennett and Frank
Callahan, who had worked in sales and quality control,
respectively. The quartet founded Allison Acoustics to build
loudspeakers expressly designed to perform optimally where
speakers were generally placed: in the home. The first of
them, the Allison Model One, appeared exactly 30 years ago,
at the end of 1974. Though the firm curtailed operations
about 10 years ago, versions of three original Allison
designs are now available from a reincarnated Allison
Acoustics, which was later re-formed under new ownership.

David Lander: The US Navy provided your first formal
training in electronics. You enlisted at age 17, during
World War II.

Roy Allison: Yes. They were recruiting electronics
technician trainees and giving something called the Eddy
test-there was a Captain Eddy in the Navy-to weed out the
people who might not be suitable. One of my friends from
high school suggested we both go take it because we were
both technically inclined. Ironically, he failed and I
passed, so I spent just about a year in very intense
training in electronics, with emphasis on radar maintenance.
Then they sent me to Hawaii as an instructor. After a little
more than two years of active duty, I re-upped in the
reserves for six years, and they sent me home. I refused a
significant advancement in rank, which I would have gotten
if I were willing to ship out for the first atom-bomb tests
in the Pacific.

Lander: Enlisting in the reserves led to your being called
up again during the Korean conflict. What was your
assignment then?

Allison: I was still an instructor, but in Rhode Island, on
a submarine that never left the area. That lasted eight
months, then my enlistment was up. I was offered officer
training but refused.

Lander: After your first period of active duty, you studied
engineering at the University of Connecticut. When did you
get your degree?

Allison: I never got a degree. I got married-in May 1948,
two days after my 21st birthday-and my wife, Nancy, gave
birth to our son about 13 months later. I left UConn a year
short of a BSEE degree to support them, but I never stopped
studying. I soon qualified for membership in the IEEE and
then the Audio Engineering Society. The AES eventually
granted me a fellowship for original contributions in audio.

Lander: Your first job after that was with a magazine, Radio
Communications, a trade publication that covered mobile and
point-to-point radio. How did that come about?

Allison: On a break from school, I brought my car into Great
Barrington [in western Massachusetts], where we were living
with Nancy's folks, to have the oil changed. I wandered into
a drug store on Main Street and saw these two fellows
sitting at the counter having coffee. It was Milton Sleeper
and Charles Fowler, and I overheard them talking about
needing a draftsman to draw circuit diagrams. I had taken
drafting, so I offered my services. That was in 1949. Radio
Communications barely eked out a living for them. Once in a
while, we would run an audio article, and that's when the
magazine would make money.

Lander: So Sleeper and Fowler, who at the time were
co-owners of Radio Communications, started a new magazine
called High Fidelity. And you, having edged into editing and
writing, became one of its-and the hi-fi industry's-first
reviewers (footnote 1). Tell us about that.

Allison: Radio Communications ceased publication, and I
joined High Fidelity. Fowler had done subjective testing for
the magazine, but I wasn't satisfied with that. We started
building and reviewing kits, which were big then, and
measuring them. I gradually built up test equipment for
making some basic measurements. We didn't really test
speakers because they were unknown territory at the time.

Lander: What equipment did you own back then?

Allison: The woofers of choice then were Bozaks. I had four
in this huge enclosure stuffed with fiberglass. It was 10'
long and nearly spanned my living room. It had to be big
because these were not acoustic-suspension woofers; put four
Bozaks in a small enclosure and you almost had tweeters. On
each end of this box was a Janszen four-panel electrostatic
tweeter.

Lander: And the associated equipment?

Allison: At that time it would have been an UltraLinear
amplifier from Dyna; UltraLinear was a circuit design. I
think the preamp was a Heathkit. And a Minter
turntable-string drive. The string was slightly elastic. Wow
and flutter were actually very good because the turntable
weighed about 25 lbs. I was probably using a Fairchild arm
and a Fairchild cartridge.

Lander: In 1959, you moved to the manufacturing sector as
assistant to the president of Acoustic Research, Edgar
Villchur, and for a time supervised customer service. Tell
us about that assignment.

Allison: We had an extremely liberal policy. Even after the
warranty period, it was almost impossible to pay for a
repair unless there was blatant abuse, and even then we very
often fixed the speaker at no charge. Some customers
actually sent gifts-a crate of oranges, for example, from
people down here [in Florida, where Allison and his wife now
live]. We got that more than once. Customers then were
mostly professionals-doctors, lawyers-anywhere from age 30
on up. College kids were brought into the fold with the AR-4
in the early '60s, and with the less expensive speakers that
followed.

Lander: In 1967, when building conglomerates was the rage,
Teledyne added AR to its portfolio of companies. Ed Villchur
left at that point, but you got a five-year contract and,
along with other senior managers, stayed on.

Allison: To Eddie's credit, he insisted on very generous
contracts for all of us.

Lander: You've said he would spend about three days each
week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the company was
located, but his home was in Woodstock, New York, a haven
for artists. Does that hint at his management style?

Allison: Almost every day that he was in Cambridge, after
the workday was over, we went into Eddie's office and had a
conference, which consisted mainly of eating macadamia nuts
and drinking Johnnie Walker scotch.

Lander: Red or Black label? [laughter]

Allison: Black. There was a liquor locker with all kinds of
alcoholic beverages available for the senior executives,
including fine wines like Chteau Lafite. We all had company
cars-Chevrolets. We didn't even have to buy gasoline; we had
a caretaker who checked the cars and filled them with gas.

Lander: A manager could justify all that by saying it kept
you at work longer.

Allison: Actually, some useful discussions occurred over the
little jiggers of Johnnie Walker Black.

Lander: I'm sure the corporate overseers from Teledyne
employed different management techniques. How did they
behave?

Allison: We had a relatively uneventful five years under
Teledyne, but they bedeviled Abe Hoffman, who had been
financial vice president and became president after Eddie
left. They insisted on very detailed financial reports,
which of course we provided. They insisted on profit plans,
which Abe said was like telling fortunes. We did
electronics-first an amplifier and then a receiver-and
several more speaker models. All the speakers, with the
exception of the AR-5, were phenomenally successful.

Lander: The legendary AR turntable remained in the line, of
course.

Allison: The turntable provided a big profit. I don't know
how many hundreds of thousands sold. That was Eddie's
concept. What I did was help in production engineering.

Lander: In 1966, Stereo Review's annual market survey
indicated that AR had just under a third of the speaker
market locked up. What happened between 1967 and 1972, when
you left?

Allison: In those five years we doubled sales and doubled
profits, but our market share was dropping because the
market was expanding. It was sort of like a pyramid, with
very low-end stuff building out at the base, but it was
building upward, too. Medium and high-end stuff was where
the profit could be achieved; a lot of low-end people were
flashes in the pan and went out of business after a while.
But at the end of five years, Teledyne decided they wanted
to exploit that lower end more than we were doing, and they
didn't renew Abe's contract. They brought in a president who
was very personable but who was totally unfamiliar with the
quality speaker market.

Lander: Did they offer to renew your contract?

Allison: Yes, but not on the same terms. They were going to
take away some of my salary and my responsibility for
manufacturing. I decided to leave.

Lander: Had you and Abe discussed forming your own company,
Allison Acoustics?

Allison: No. He was going to retire. I took time off, but I
didn't just put my feet up; I decided to find out what was
going on with loudspeakers and room interaction. I'd had a
hint of it while doing some papers at AR. There was an
unexplained phenomenon-nobody could tell me why it happened:
a suckout in the middle bass range in almost every
loudspeaker, almost every room transmission curve that we
measured. That got my curiosity aroused. I wanted to find
out what was causing it.

Lander: The same speakers measured flat in an anechoic
environment, did they not?

Allison: Yes. It was the goal at the time, but when you put
them in real rooms, they were not flat at the low end.

Lander: How did you begin your investigation?

Allison: I bought Bröel & Kjaer test equipment, which cost
the earth, and I set about measuring loudspeakers under
varying conditions and doing research to see if there had
been any literature about this. It turns out there had been.
I came across Waterhouse and Cook's original papers. They
were scientists at the National Bureau of Standards, and
they had done a lot of experiments in a huge reverberant
chamber. They varied the distance of a small test
loudspeaker to walls in that chamber and recorded the
reverberant energy. They didn't extend their work to the use
of loudspeakers in homes, but they did quantify the effect
of reflections from room boundaries and developed some very
elegant formulas for predicting that effect.

Lander: Were other people concerned with room reflections at
that time?

Allison: Not that I know of. Everybody knew about standing
waves, which tended to muddy the water and make these other
effects very difficult to see. I did a great deal of
empirical testing of my own and racked my brain, trying to
figure out how to avoid this problem-and it was indeed a
problem. Reflections from room surfaces can increase or
decrease the power output of a woofer. Reflected energy
increases the instantaneous density of the air in front of
the woofer at very low frequencies. This provides an
improved impedance match, and the efficiency of the woofer
is thereby increased, along with the woofer's power output.
At some higher frequency that depends on the distance or
distances from the room surface or surfaces, the reflected
energy goes out of phase with the woofer cone motion. That
decreases the instantaneous density, and the woofer
efficiency decreases. That's what causes the dip.

Now if the woofer is fairly close to one room surface and
distant from others, in most home listening systems, power
output in the range between 100 and 300Hz will drop about
1dB below what it would be without the nearby reflecting
surface. At very low frequencies, there would be a 3dB
increase in power output. That means, given maximum increase
and maximum decrease, there's a total variation of 4dB. With
the woofer equidistant from two intersecting surfaces, the
dip is 3dB; factor in the maximum rise, in this case 6dB,
and you have a 9dB variation. If it's equidistant from three
surfaces that intersect at right angles, the dip would be a
devastating 11dB and the maximum rise 9dB-a 20dB change over
the bottom octaves. If the woofer is not on the line of
symmetry, which is to say the same distance from all three
surfaces, the dip is less severe but can still be
significant. In home listening situations, I've found this
reflected impedance typically causes variations from 5 to
12dB. If a tuner or receiver exhibited variations like this,
it would be rejected out of hand.

Lander: You hold a patent relating to this boundary-effects
phenomenon. What does it cover?

Allison: The design of cabinets that get the woofer very
close to one or more adjacent room surfaces. That changes
the frequency range of the dip, because the closer the
woofer is to a surface or to the point where surfaces
intersect, the higher in frequency the dip occurs. In the
case of a three-way system, it's possible to position the
woofer so the dip is above its operating range, and to place
the midrange driver far enough away from an intersection for
the dip to occur below its range. In effect, that eliminates
the problem. This approach really isn't feasible with
two-way systems, because the woofer has to handle
frequencies high enough to put the destructive reflections
within its range. But you can build a cabinet that has the
woofer very close to one surface-the best place is on
top-and then position that cabinet so distances to the other
nearby room surfaces are staggered. Doing that creates mild
dips that are spaced along the frequency axis. They aren't
able to add in the nonlinear manner that they would if the
distances between the woofer and all adjacent room surfaces
were equal.

Lander: You then applied all this to speakers meant for very
specific room placement. The first, the floorstanding
Allison Model One, which had a pair of 10" woofers in each
cabinet, and the Model Two, a smaller version that used 8"
woofers, were both designed to be backed up to walls away
from corners. The floorstanding Model Three needs corner
placement to compensate for the dip. Model Four was a
bookshelf unit, and there were other models as well. You
also designed the midranges and tweeters that your speakers
used.

Allison: Developing midrange and tweeter systems that were
high enough in quality to complement the woofer we
anticipated making was much more difficult. I worked out a
configuration that I thought would produce extremely wide
dispersion, which I deemed essential. I always wanted
maximum dispersion of energy at all frequencies, and
preferably the same amount of energy at all frequencies, and
I set about to get it. That resulted in what was then a
unique design for a tweeter-and-midrange configuration: what
is essentially half a pulsating sphere. When you make it
flexible-from paper-and clamp the outer edge to the mounting
plate, then drive it at the midway point, the surface of
this driver is going to be forced to change its radius of
curvature so that there's a relatively large component of
motion at right angles to the voice-coil as well as in line
with the voice-coil motion.

Lander: And this gave you the dispersion you were after. Do
you still favor paper cones?

Allison: Yes, I do. Not for a woofer, where the material
doesn't matter very much as long as it works like a piston.
At the other end of the spectrum, I don't want it to work
like a piston, because even a small tweeter, if it's big
enough to produce any reasonable amount of energy, is going
to become directional at very high frequencies. So I have to
use a very flexible material, and paper has a nice ratio of
stiffness to sound-energy absorption when it flexes. With
the right configuration and density and stiffness, paper can
behave in a unique way. It's aided in my design by the
material used to clamp the outer edge to the mounting
plate-a very thin layer of foam, which is pretty effective
in absorbing any energy that wants to reflect back from the
edge and cause nonuniform response.

Lander: You began corresponding with the speaker expert Dick
Small when he was working on his PhD thesis in Australia,
and maintained that relationship. In fact, you played the
first pair of production Model Ones for him. Tell us that
story.

Allison: He and his colleague Neville Thiele were making a
speaking tour of the United States and had dinner with Nancy
and me and our children. So after dinner we sat them down
and played some music for them on Model Ones. Their response
was very polite but unenthusiastic. It turned out that they
were used to hearing speakers, characteristic of the
Commonwealth, that had very precise, pinpoint imaging. The
imaging of Model Ones was satisfactory to almost everyone
who heard them, but not to people as enthusiastic as they
were about the concept.

I had emphasized dispersion in order to re-create as best I
could the performance-hall ambiance. I don't want to put up
with a sweet spot, and I'd rather have less dramatically
precise imaging than a close simulation of what you hear in
a concert hall in terms of envelopment. For that, you need
reverberant energy broadcast at very wide angles from the
loudspeakers, so the bulk of the energy has a chance to do
multiple reflections before it reaches your ear. I think
pinpoint imaging has to do with synthetically generated
music, not acoustic music-except perhaps for a solo
instrument or a solo voice, where you might want fairly
sharp localization. For envelopment, you need widespread
energy generation.

Lander: That could explain why your Allison Acoustics
speakers met with what you admit was a mixed response.
You've also speculated that their appearance, which I've
always liked, put some people off.

Allison: They looked unusual. People didn't expect speakers
to look like that, and unconventional things can create
suspicion.

Lander: Nevertheless, your volume did become substantial-and
that was a time when new speaker companies kept popping up
like weeds. At one point, though, sales began to drop off.

Allison: Sales picked up gradually, but we weren't growing
as fast as I thought we should have to become really viable
in the long run. Our overseas sales, mostly in France and
Italy, accounted for a little more than half our total. Then
we had a recession, and it really hurt Europe badly. That's
when our slide downhill started.

Lander: It's easy to be nostalgic about the past, but music
seems to have meant much more to people back in your AR
years and in the early years of Allison Acoustics.

Allison: Actually, it was a glorious time.

End of article. I think that this kind of illustrates what I
mean by the "good old days." Allison and Villchur were not
the only players, of course, but they and those other old
timers stand in contrast to many of those working the
industry today.

Your idols, and mine, and been supplanted by the enormous electronics commodity business.

Unfortunately, you are correct. However, the high-end
business would be a safe niche for a lot of us if the
tweakos had not turned it into an antintellectual joke.
Certainly, many of those old timers I trust are not happy
with the business as it stands at this time.

Sure you're thrilled to add another pair
of surround channels every other year,

Actually, by now I have all I can use. In any case, one has
to be pretty opaque to not see the advantages of additional
channels out in the listening room to simulate a large-area
space and a center channel to solidify and stabilize the
soundstage better.

and I'm thrilled at the prospect
of overkill high-rez media, but if they don't make money, it's on to the
next techno-wonder: expensive but crappy tv screens, convergence
products, and anything else that will sell (Dualdiscs?).

Actually, today's TV screens are pretty damned good.

And you think use and listening articles with measurements are a problem.

The problem is complex. However, the antintellectual and
basically anti-scientific-audio stance of many who post here
and many who write for the smaller audio journals is taking
what is left of serious high-end audio and wrecking it.

Howard Ferstler

Sander deWaal wrote:

"Schizoid Man" said to Howard da Blowheart:

Everyone knows where you, Arny and Tom stand. You don't have to ram your
philosophy down everyone's throats.

Hey, who are we to deny an old man his only pleasure?
That, and letting others fight his battles for him.
I mean, at least Arny has the balls to actually venture out of his
house and fight the E.H.E.E., impersonated by John Atkinson, while all
Howard does is standing aside yapping "Hit him, Arny! Below the belt
is a good spot!".

Pathetic.

We each have our approach. Between 1991 and 1999 I published
four books on audio (two of them were recording reviews,
admittedly) and also helped to edit (and wrote a lot of
articles for) the new edition of The Encyclopedia of
Recorded Sound only last year. I have also published over
150 magazine articles. For me that is enough. I have no
desire to go to NYC and confront people who would insult me
enough for me to put them in the hospital. I can see from
just dealing with you people right here that you are
basically hobby-wrecking lunkheads.

Arny will not have to hit John "below the belt" to show him
up for what he is. Yes, the tweakos will be cheering for
their boy, but the bottom line is that John will lose
integrity points with all of those audio engineers he wants
so badly to take him seriously. That will be more than
enough of a reward for me.

Howard Ferstler

Lionel wrote:

Perhaps Howard is pathetic but he is an institutional...

But, thankfully, not yet institutionalized.

Howard Ferstler

Sander deWaal a écrit :
"Schizoid Man" said to Howard da Blowheart:


Everyone knows where you, Arny and Tom stand. You don't have to ram your
philosophy down everyone's throats.



Hey, who are we to deny an old man his only pleasure?
That, and letting others fight his battles for him.
I mean, at least Arny has the balls to actually venture out of his
house and fight the E.H.E.E., impersonated by John Atkinson, while all
Howard does is standing aside yapping "Hit him, Arny! Below the belt
is a good spot!".

Pathetic.

You will note that Sackman, Middius & co... have already
taken the same kind of discourse, long time before Howard.

Perhaps Howard is pathetic but he is an institutional...
while the self-professed RAO's intelligentsia is rather
grotesque in this role.

wrote:

When talking about a stretched diaphram like the ones in the CLSs
flexing and changing size/stretching *are* the same thing. As for how
all this affects the dispersion of the CLS speakers I suggest you
consider what happens to a diaphram that is fixed on it's parimeter
when it moves closer to the stator that is infront of it. Again, you
may want to review your grade school geometry before working on this
simple concept. Have fun figuring things out.

Scott Wheeler

Regarding this "stretched diaphragm," how does this curved
diaphragm maintain its curved shape when stretched? It is
attached at either side and one would think that unless it
was stretched fairly tight and pulled flat that it would
kind of sag in the middle.

Now, if the diaphragm is rather stiff that would allow it to
maintain its shape over that curved radius and no stretching
would be required. However, in that case it would have to be
fairly heavy, which would kind of run counter to the
low-mass requirements. And the stiffness would generate
resonances and also make it difficult for the thing to flex
at all.

Howard Ferstler

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

Enjoy your audio rig.

The one you say I should be anxious about? The speakers based on 1941
and 1929 technology and using miles of wire?

I really would like to review a pair of those things.

The current model is the 988. There's a 989 with mo' bass.

The $400 amp I bought even
cheaper used?

With conventional speakers this amp should be fine. I do,
however, have reservations about its linkup with an
electrostatic load. It might be just fine, however.

You'll find 63s aren't that tough on amps.

The cd player you say can't be bettered?

Yep.

Enjoying it!

Face it, your fantasy of a golden age of audio gentlemen is bunk. Audio
was a business, including branding and marketing and all that goes with
that.

Read this tidbit from a recent Stereophile issue:

A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison

snip

Thanks. I've read it.

End of article. I think that this kind of illustrates what I
mean by the "good old days." Allison and Villchur were not
the only players, of course, but they and those other old
timers stand in contrast to many of those working the
industry today.

There are good guys today, too. There were toads then as well.

Your idols, and mine, and been supplanted by the enormous electronics
commodity business.

Unfortunately, you are correct. However, the high-end
business would be a safe niche for a lot of us if the
tweakos had not turned it into an antintellectual joke.
Certainly, many of those old timers I trust are not happy
with the business as it stands at this time.

You've got the tail wagging the dog.

Sure you're thrilled to add another pair
of surround channels every other year,

Actually, by now I have all I can use. In any case, one has
to be pretty opaque to not see the advantages of additional
channels out in the listening room to simulate a large-area
space and a center channel to solidify and stabilize the
soundstage better.

You don't even like soundstaging.

and I'm thrilled at the prospect
of overkill high-rez media, but if they don't make money, it's on to the
next techno-wonder: expensive but crappy tv screens, convergence
products, and anything else that will sell (Dualdiscs?).

Actually, today's TV screens are pretty damned good.

You mean the mature technology, increasingly hard-to-find CRT. Why do
you suppose people are spending silly money on worse performing new
technology?

And you think use and listening articles with measurements are a problem.

The problem is complex. However, the antintellectual and
basically anti-scientific-audio stance of many who post here
and many who write for the smaller audio journals is taking
what is left of serious high-end audio and wrecking it.

This is why people think you have your panties in a wad over nothing.
There aren't any tweakos here! Many may disagree with you, but the
philosophical questions are familiar. The crux of the problem has to do
with the listening experience itself. Even if every component sounds the
same, listeners bring their brains to the party and that changes the
experience. It would be unscientific to ignore this.

Stephen

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

Pride, at least real pride, usually involves doing something
yourself. I find it hard to believe that somebody would feel
pride in spending big bucks on an overkill audio product.
That simply does not make sense.

I'll bet you could if you really really tried.

You might feel pride in
spending sanely for an audio product that does what it is
supposed to do, though.

What if one of the things it is supposed to do is cost a lot of money?

Stephen

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

Sure you're thrilled to add another pair
of surround channels every other year,

Actually, by now I have all I can use. In any case, one has
to be pretty opaque to not see the advantages of additional
channels out in the listening room to simulate a large-area
space and a center channel to solidify and stabilize the
soundstage better.

You don't even like soundstaging.

Actually, I do, but I am more interested in soundstage depth
and stability from more than just the sweet spot than I am
in tight-focussed imaging. However, I do like centered
performers to sound the way they do live. With a centered
performer at a live performance, you get two arrival clues:
one for each ear coming from that centered source. You get
the same thing with a center channel.

However, with a "phantom" center you get four arrival clues:
one for each ear from each speaker. In addition, the clues
from each speaker are delayed in time with their arrivals at
each ear, due to head-spacing effects and the fact that the
sound is not coming from directly ahead. Head shadowing is
also more of a problem with a phantom image than with a
true, center-generated image.

and I'm thrilled at the prospect
of overkill high-rez media, but if they don't make money, it's on to the
next techno-wonder: expensive but crappy tv screens, convergence
products, and anything else that will sell (Dualdiscs?).

Actually, today's TV screens are pretty damned good.

You mean the mature technology, increasingly hard-to-find CRT. Why do
you suppose people are spending silly money on worse performing new
technology?

About the only area where the CRT still has an edge is in
separating black from dark gray, and the handwriting is on
the wall there, too. Beyond that, the other technologies
have the edge. Most definitely have an edge when it comes to
durability, cost, and convenience.

They are not spending silly money on worse-performing
technology at all. Go to a good AV store and look at some of
the HDTV feeds going to plasma sets, for example. Note that
I realize that plasma has its own problems.

And you think use and listening articles with measurements are a problem.

The problem is complex. However, the antintellectual and
basically anti-scientific-audio stance of many who post here
and many who write for the smaller audio journals is taking
what is left of serious high-end audio and wrecking it.

This is why people think you have your panties in a wad over nothing.

I see your point. However, I have this nagging problem with
irrational belief systems. If you think I am bad with audio
buffs, you should see me in action with religious believers.

There aren't any tweakos here!

Are you kidding?

Many may disagree with you, but the
philosophical questions are familiar. The crux of the problem has to do
with the listening experience itself. Even if every component sounds the
same, listeners bring their brains to the party and that changes the
experience.

Assuming that they do sound the same, the only wild-card
factor would be preconceptions about certain products being
somehow superior. I find that silly, and wonder how rational
people can be seriously involved with such claptrap. For me,
the listening experience involves only one thing: how the
stuff sounds.

It would be unscientific to ignore this.

It might interest a psychologist, but it does not interest
me.

Howard Ferstler

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

Pride, at least real pride, usually involves doing something
yourself. I find it hard to believe that somebody would feel
pride in spending big bucks on an overkill audio product.
That simply does not make sense.

I'll bet you could if you really really tried.

Not really.

You might feel pride in
spending sanely for an audio product that does what it is
supposed to do, though.

What if one of the things it is supposed to do is cost a lot of money?

Well, I will leave it up to you to answer that one.

Howard Ferstler

Howard Ferstler a écrit :
Lionel wrote:


Perhaps Howard is pathetic but he is an institutional...


But, thankfully, not yet institutionalized.

I'm confident, you're working hard. ;-)

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

Sure you're thrilled to add another pair
of surround channels every other year,

Actually, by now I have all I can use. In any case, one has
to be pretty opaque to not see the advantages of additional
channels out in the listening room to simulate a large-area
space and a center channel to solidify and stabilize the
soundstage better.

You don't even like soundstaging.

Actually, I do, but I am more interested in soundstage depth
and stability from more than just the sweet spot than I am
in tight-focussed imaging. However, I do like centered
performers to sound the way they do live. With a centered
performer at a live performance, you get two arrival clues:
one for each ear coming from that centered source. You get
the same thing with a center channel.

Stereo playback for stereo recordings. Multi for multi.

However, with a "phantom" center you get four arrival clues:
one for each ear from each speaker. In addition, the clues
from each speaker are delayed in time with their arrivals at
each ear, due to head-spacing effects and the fact that the
sound is not coming from directly ahead. Head shadowing is
also more of a problem with a phantom image than with a
true, center-generated image.

That's nice. Have you heard the three-channel Living Stereos yet?

and I'm thrilled at the prospect
of overkill high-rez media, but if they don't make money, it's on to
the
next techno-wonder: expensive but crappy tv screens, convergence
products, and anything else that will sell (Dualdiscs?).

Actually, today's TV screens are pretty damned good.

You mean the mature technology, increasingly hard-to-find CRT. Why do
you suppose people are spending silly money on worse performing new
technology?

About the only area where the CRT still has an edge is in
separating black from dark gray, and the handwriting is on
the wall there, too. Beyond that, the other technologies
have the edge. Most definitely have an edge when it comes to
durability, cost, and convenience.

They don't last longer and they cost more. Projectors are not convenient
but I'll grant that some love the idea of hanging a screen on the wall.

They are not spending silly money on worse-performing
technology at all. Go to a good AV store and look at some of
the HDTV feeds going to plasma sets, for example. Note that
I realize that plasma has its own problems.

You prefer a screen that changes color when the viewing angle changes?
Audio sweet spot, bad; video sweet spot, good.

And you think use and listening articles with measurements are a
problem.

The problem is complex. However, the antintellectual and
basically anti-scientific-audio stance of many who post here
and many who write for the smaller audio journals is taking
what is left of serious high-end audio and wrecking it.

This is why people think you have your panties in a wad over nothing.

I see your point. However, I have this nagging problem with
irrational belief systems. If you think I am bad with audio
buffs, you should see me in action with religious believers.

There aren't any tweakos here!

Are you kidding?

It's been a consistent pattern that you assume someone's a tweako. But I
make my own amps, they might say. I'm a cheapskate, another might say. I
suppose some just object to being told what they believe.

Many may disagree with you, but the
philosophical questions are familiar. The crux of the problem has to do
with the listening experience itself. Even if every component sounds the
same, listeners bring their brains to the party and that changes the
experience.

Assuming that they do sound the same, the only wild-card
factor would be preconceptions about certain products being
somehow superior. I find that silly, and wonder how rational
people can be seriously involved with such claptrap. For me,
the listening experience involves only one thing: how the
stuff sounds.

No, there's more to it than that. Brian Wilson was literally scared by a
Theremin as a child, hence "Good Vibrations" means something different
to him than to the rest of us.

And you're wrong about your listening. You bring your treasured memories
of audio Titans reassuring you that it all really sounds the same and if
it sounds different, well, that's just how you timed the switching. And
there's the swell of pride that you aren't being fooled like those
tweakos who burned down Valhalla.

It would be unscientific to ignore this.

It might interest a psychologist, but it does not interest
me.

Physical perception and brain function. Not psychology.

Stephen

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

MINe 109 wrote:

In article ,
Howard Ferstler wrote:

Pride, at least real pride, usually involves doing something
yourself. I find it hard to believe that somebody would feel
pride in spending big bucks on an overkill audio product.
That simply does not make sense.

I'll bet you could if you really really tried.

Not really.

Not even hypothetically?

You might feel pride in
spending sanely for an audio product that does what it is
supposed to do, though.

What if one of the things it is supposed to do is cost a lot of money?

Well, I will leave it up to you to answer that one.

Then it would have to cost a lot of money. Are you sure you studied
philosophy?

Stephen

Howard Ferstler wrote:
Read this tidbit from a recent Stereophile issue:
A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison
David Lander, January, 2005 (From Stereophile).

snip

Mr. Ferstler, this is a copyrighted article from Stereophile.
You cannot, repeat, cannot post it in its entirety to
Usenet without permission and you do not have that permission.
Please delete the posting. If you wish to refer to this
article again, please quote the URL for the authorized reprint
at http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/105villchur/

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile