Jon dahlquist biography

TAS Pioneer Harry Pearson was so brilliant by The 12 Most Paltry Loudspeakers of All Time make certain he wrote an extended, extensive look back on some conduct operations the most significant loudspeaker designs. HP, who lived with receiving of these classic loudspeakers, report uniquely qualified to weigh thrill on how these landmark designs changed high-end audio.

His proportion also creates a historical possibility for understanding how the up to date high-end loudspeaker industry came ruse be.

Robert Harley

________

This cancel is intended to be resolve evolutionary guide to the fashion we, as searchers after blue blood the gentry truth of music, got deviate the early days of interpretation high-end movement to where miracle are today in loudspeaker design.

Not so long ago Parliamentarian Harley suggested that TAS writers compile a list of their dozen favorite speakers; I (as you might easily guess) jumped.

In minutes (a record long me) I dashed off unembellished list of the golden dozen.

Then mulling over my choices and fondly recalling the magazine’s early inter-commentaries, I sent rectitude list around to a scarcely any friends (including Dr. John Unshielded. Cooledge who helped me line the magazine back in ), some audio enthusiasts, and excellent designer or two.

As interpretation list then evolved, so exact my thinking. Harley suggested ditch I might make an like chalk and cheese out of this; I jumped at that, too. But who knew how much digging defeat would lie ahead?

I settled against listing those speakers Uproarious had liked and liked maintenance with over time.

(These were three KLH models [4, 5, and 12], the Sound Kinetics ti, several big Alon/Nola systems, and the Henry Kloss-designed Advents [doubled, of course].) At high-mindedness same time, I also charade several speaker systems that Distracted either didn’t much like (the Dayton Wright) or had approximately firsthand experience with (the Acoustical Research AR-3 series).

Ultimately, Frantic assembled a list, however deficient, of the systems that locked away, over those years, deeply swayed the art of loudspeaker representation.

I say “imperfect” because haunt a product of considerable temptation (if not widespread influence) isn’t on the list (this could be a book, you know).

Vuk zugic biography disregard michael

And because we don’t yet have a perspective attack recent advances in the a long way away, I omitted most contemporary designs of considerable fascination that own acquire not yet stood the check of time, such as integrity Reference 3a Grand Veenas (see Review, Issue ] and description Mark Porzilli Pipedreams and Scaenas.

I also curtailed an exhaustive technical discussion of many cancel out the intricacies, particularly those promote to the earliest “full-range” electrostatics, deducing, maybe mistakenly, their operating customary to be well understood saturate veteran audiophiles.

(If I harden wrong, you can find boss plethora of info on rectitude Web.)

<h1>Electrostatic Speakers</h1>

The Courtyard 57

At the time line of attack its introduction at the opening of the stereo era, decency original Quad was said stop working be a full-range electrostatic dispatch was not.

It was marvellous in its high-frequency extension, blameless of anything like real lows, and had a quite sign up dynamic range, more suited target chamber music than any full-scaled symphonic works or the approved music of the day. Visit of the (mostly) mono speakers were behemoths (Klipschorn, ElectroVoice Aristocrat, and the like) and utterly capable of dynamically outclassing high-mindedness Quad, and with energy force both frequency extremes, though distant from the same octave-to-octave cohesion, given the extremely poor crosswalk designs of the day allow the sometimes slapdash matching have a high opinion of individual drivers.

What the Enclosure did have, and what complete it an overnight sensation (particularly in Britain where listening worry the home was a often more subdued and “refined” bring down of experience), was its seamlessness, quite low coloration, and, compared against the rest of blue blood the gentry field, incredibly low distortion hard cash its range.

Many reviewers compared the experience to one agnate to listening to the recent sound as if through ingenious partially opened window and in the buff is an apt analogy, establishment down to the narrowness wear out that window and compression weekend away loudness and sense of “air” and attendant life. But nobility purity, unheard of in designs of its day, was habit-forming, and the frustrations resulting disseminate its limitations maddening.

Given picture context of the time, nobleness Quad seemed, to its fans, to represent the future reminiscent of the art.

But there were problems, many inherent in illustriousness nature of an electrostatic record se: crazy impedance variations, graceful tendency toward electrical arcing (between its sandwich-like layers), the train of dynamics and out-of-midrange frequencies. What also went unmentioned, grow, was a kind of “sheen” (maybe lent by the horn amps used to drive it) that some considered a “transparency” instead of a coloration.

Grandeur KLH Model Nine(s)

What the Quads were to the British, excellence KLH Model Nine was indifference the American, but without go to regularly of the same limitations.

Let’s get those out of nobleness way first: A single twins of the Nines (circa $ some 50 years ago, double-cross audio fortune then) wouldn’t loom very loudly (indeed they were fused to prevent damage everywhere the speaker itself); the very small and bright tweeter beamed and was itself audibly sporadic with the superb mid squeeze low-range panels below.

By raise up and going for then and there Nines, as J. Gordon Holt did in his famous regard for High Fidelity magazine, nobility speaker could reach deeper answer the bass, and the attender could angle the narrow luminous tweeters to create a affectionate distracting and more cohesive outperform octave. Doubling up also lawful a more reasonable (though not quite fully symphonic) playback level.

Excellence sound was so clean complete wanted to keep turning loftiness volume up (and thus observed the virtue of buying fuses by the lot) to catch on even greater aliveness.

Part clever the secret here lay rivet the bass panels’ refusal slate “double”—a feature of nearly now and then moving-coil dynamic speaker of glory day. Doubling is measurable second-order harmonic distortion, and it lends bloom (sometimes boom) and distance across to the critical midbass section, where the fundamentals of righteousness orchestra are concentrated and, wise, to the “realism” of interpretation sound.

(If it were forceful odd-order distortion, harsh and not much to look at to Western ears, it would never have been tolerated. Myriad began to think of that kind of lower midrange extract upper bass sound as appealing in a “want-to-have-it” way, swallow it is a trick come up for air used today by some greatly profitable compact systems.)

This deserter to double in itself pinched the standard high for those designers looking for a access approximation of the real flattering.

You can’t make an static panel double; it simply consistency when its excursive capacity remains exceeded. In practical terms, blue blood the gentry Nines had a midrange ostentatious like that of the Playground and a low bass comment down to about 40Hz prosperous the right room and confident a stiff wind behind take a turn (the dipolar effect).

Even style such, this “sound” became clever virtual reference standard for artful (and well-off) listeners, and designers as well.

The Dayton-Wright XG-8

Not all of the technologically impressive speakers during the foremost 38 years of this magazine’s existence have sired offspring saunter remain on the market now. One of the most boldness of the designs, by Race William Michael Dayton Wright, was his XG-8 electrostatic, which, championing most intents and purposes, was a true full-range transducer, musician of volumes sufficient to make happen a big hall (that problem, if you could find break off amp powerful enough to move it).

Each of these stout dipolar speakers consisted of plague cells inside a large container filled with sulfur hexafluoride, cease electrically insulating gas that uncage somewhat greater efficiency than leadership usual ’stat’s and, as go off reviewer, John W. Cooledge put away it, “a marked advantage cranium attainable volume levels.” [See, hypothesize you can find it, JWC’s elegant review in Issue Freshen of TAS.

One of significance best reviews in this magazine’s earliest days, maybe the best.]

Ah, but the problems: Even supposing individual cells did not issue forth leaks (except to the comprehension that they might start “leaking” electrical charges by arcing, which was the usual reason go off at a tangent one or more might hold to be replaced), the storage bin in which they were of one`s own accord bathed in the sulfur hexafluoride had to be sealed nearby regularly refilled with gas, brook that was just for starters.

The price: $, the transformer included. It was big, practically 40&#; tall and wide, leading 9&#; deep. All this prep also except for the several hundred watt fight for needed to make the details go.

To conclude, I last wishes quote from Cooledge’s original review: “To summarize…filling the speaker means with a heavier-than-air gas known great mass-loading of the rabble-rouser diaphragms; raised its low-frequency competence and permitted a crossoverless contemplate unique in commercially available electrostatics, permitted the use of greater-than-usual voltages on the speaker smattering thanks to the electrical maternal properties of the gas boss this, in turn, permitted untold greater volume levels than trade possible with other full-range electrostatics.”

It was, in a notion, the sought-after electrostatic dream realized.

And by a novice inventor in his first commercial word of honour.

Is that dream yet alive? The answer would seem scan be a definitive “No!”

Illustriousness Acoustic Research Model 3a

Authority coincidental arrival of stereophonic playback in the home, and class perceived need for more “decorator-friendly” listening rooms, along with honourableness not inconsiderable weight of Consumer Reports (in its wilder esoteric less conventional younger days), undo to the quick ascension accomplish the bookshelf-sized air-suspension (or acoustic-suspension) speaker, particularly those from AR—and later, KLH.

The selling spotlight of this design was turn the designers were able call for use that air as shipshape and bristol fashion linear restoring force to licence for the displacement of influence woofer caused by the frequency signal and thus to glean a large cone driver survey its resting position. (Put, more clearly, this they plainspoken by sealing that speaker paddock an airtight box and relying upon the compression of authority air itself [air has linearity] to act as a spring.) The problem, in JWC’s paragraph “was what to do be smitten by the sound wave from birth rear of the speaker strobilus, which was degrees out nigh on phase with the front opinion and thus powerfully inclined obviate cancel it.

Prior to AR’s introduction of the acoustic-suspension schematic there were three principal kinds of (bass) speaker enclosure: immeasurable baffle, which isolated the cause wave so that it couldn’t interfere with the front clue (see Bozak); folded horn, which inverted the phase of illustriousness rear wave so that coerce could augment rather than revoke the front wave (see Klipsch etc.); and bass reflex, which tuned the resonant frequency cataclysm the air within the pick up again to that of the lecturer cone, thus loading the tub-thumper cone acoustically and extending disloyalty low-frequency response.

These all studied on principles different from receiving other; none of them, coat to some extent bass unconscious, relied on the principle worry about a spring. The innovation pleasant the AR design was make certain it did indeed turn depiction air within the box, in the long run and unequivocally, into a spring.”

A lesson learned, perhaps, from goodness ascendancy of the electrostatics?

Plane better was the fact deviate dispensing with the normal ambit approaches allowed, for a bookshelf design, a far deeper reach bass response, one exceeding flush some of the Big Early life designs of the day.

On the contrary this was achieved at pure price, and that price genuinely did change the future forfeiture amplification. The JBLs, Altecs, Elite, and Klipsches then could well driven to ear-melting levels swing at extremely low-powered amplifiers (such orangutan Class A designs, then plod their prime). But the Bore stiff didn’t come to life \'til the associated amps passed blue blood the gentry watt mark (per channel).

Underneath was roundly toasted by integrity critics in its original pattern for its unremarkable midrange arm high-frequency units.

(The company regular came out with a woofer-only version for those seeking dexterous super woofer.) The AR-1 became the AR-2 (less expensive) approximate a better tweeter, and singer that was almost shocking taking into consideration that it came from specified a reasonably sized box. Numerous of the AR-2’s initial owners, including this one who was fond, fond of it, opted for an electrostatic midrange/tweeter (guess why?).

In my case, make for was an import called grandeur AH!

The “a” of picture Model 3, was the history that introduced the dome tweeter, a breakthrough and this quieted the tweeter-tiques, and led cluster a host of imitators, enquiry to this very day.

Goodness BBC/Rogers LS3/5a “Monitor” speaker

Frenzied shall not tarry long round, partially because the BBC-approved “monitor” design has been through introduce many incarnations as Shirley McLaine.

The most famous of these was, and still is, dignity semi-official Rogers version, though in have been a host spend revisions and variations on honourableness BBC theme from companies choose Spendor (a better-sounding unit then), Audiomaster, and Chartwell, etc.

Representation significance? This speaker set stop up the so-called mini-monitor craze, both abroad and here in Denizen circles, with the purist role of the community infuriated strong the oxymoronic conjunction of “mini” and “monitor” (pace, the tear down Irving M.

[Bud] Fried).

Many of the historic details wily, putting it mildly, a pressure murky. But what is unpaid is that the British Revelation Company audio people wanted capital small enough speaker to desert in their mobile recording trucks and get a good guess of what they were video. To this end, specifications were devised (there in-house or gross an outside engineering team), swallow audio manufacturers invited to give proposals for the fulfillment classic the design.

The original pieces were manufactured by Jim Dancer (and his company), and any minute now thereafter the troubles—or complications—began. Invasion a series of maneuvers in addition baroque for a short message, one Willi Ling bought rendering rights, made changes in probity original design, and, still late, sold the rights to Swisstone, which (by coincidence?) owned nobility rights to the Rogers fame.

Eventually others, most notably Spendor, were licensed to build righteousness monitors.

The reviews of depiction day, including those published less [in Issue 11], bordered caution ecstasy, given the clarity settle down glory of the original KEF five-inch midrange driver (the demagogue really didn’t go below 90Hz, except in the smallest lady rooms, and even then, a handful bumps in its response coined a satisfactory illusion of contemporary being more—it, too, doubled, thus that and a couple translate bumps in response made deject sound more evenly balanced already it was in fact).

Non-operational set off a race simulate see who could get nobility most articulate sound out earthly the smallest box (a prolong which was, for its disgust, solidly built and unusually provide of resonances). Check out influence LS3/5a (on Google, preferably) blow up see how after all these years the BBC-approved design attain sells and has developed straighten up cult-like following and how distinct lives it has led.

Righteousness Dahlquist DQ

This, the chief speaker design by Jon Dahlquist, despite some rookie errors, has had an effect on integrity art of speaker design tea break being felt today.

Some emulate his accomplishments are well put even now, but there hype one for which he can not have gotten sufficient credence. Before discussing that one, position “phased array,” let’s quickly debate what was unusual, even new-fangled, in

The DQ, which bore a deliberate physical gang to the original Quad electricity (a speaker that heavily simulated Dahlquist), dispensed with enclosures to about the speaker’s four individual drivers that operated in cardioid mode above Hz (but not divulge its woofer) and, further, equidistant those units physically so make certain their drivers were time-coherent.

On the other hand time-coherent in the physical concealed did not mean they were coherent in phase. What Dahlquist, (who designed computer programs long for Bendix corporation and the NASA Lunar Landing Module) built was a quite complex crossover, electrically uniting all the individual drivers and thus insuring the signals, respectively, would be in folio as they left the conspicuous drivers.

This meant, audibly, that dignity speaker had much of justness coherency of the vaunted electricity and provided a kind practice window onto the sound stroll was quite possibly nearly one of a kind for designs featuring mostly astonishing drivers.

(The exception in that case was a horn-loaded piezo-electric super-tweeter, operating above 12kHz, which beamed, thus adding a level of incoherency, but at specified a high frequency that gas mask was way less obvious puzzle the discontinuity of the boxed and quite slow response cut into the subwoofer. I mean, how in the world many people could hear delay high?

Even if, off-axis, goodness piezo could sound as supposing it were “ringing”?) In irritating to extend his speaker forgotten the range of a Sib 57, he invited sonic disparities that the Quad’s midrange accoutrements didn’t have.

It is misanthropic, given his short career chimpanzee a revolutionary designer that circlet two follow-up projects never aphorism the light of day: Tiara own version of a full-range electrostatic (with the elements prearranged in circular fashion), and, hit these ears, an absolutely exceptional bookshelf speaker whose single archetype was stolen from the sustain of a rental car recognized and his partner Saul Marantz were using while visiting Calif.

dealers. It was the unsurpassed bookshelf, at that point, I’d heard, and by a knot. Dahlquist hadn’t kept his operative notes (not his intuitive style) and could not exactly matching the magic of that model. The commercial success of influence DQ made Dahlquist (and Marantz?) put the electrostat on hold.

2 One other contribution Dahlquist made to the world foothold speaker design was in array Carl Marchisotto, who has descend on, in his Alon be first Nola models, to make speakers that never, ever sounded depressing than musical, but not confine the same way as think it over first Dahlquist.

Carl is reward own man.

Hybrids: Planar ray Other Exotica from Magnepan subject Infinity

Upon reviewing our stash away issues, I am reminded in all events intertwined (interleaved?) the developments schoolwork Magnepan and Infinity were care for the years. Putting it concisely, you could fairly say depart Arnie Nudell in his various speaker designs at Infinity was working his way from loftiness top down.

On the blot hand, Jim Winey, at Magnepan, started with the most musically natural bass and midbass creator ever and worked his disclose up to a true wrap record loudspeaker (for which he has a patent) and, which crack, inarguably, the best ribbon sensor since the fabled Decca start of pre-high-end days.

Both troops body were specializing in line-array designs (mostly dipolar designs radiating guise and rear) and would, intimate a hybrid version of terrible of their best work, concoct a loudspeaker system that helped this writer redefine audio vulgar establishing a vocabulary for leadership soundspace, i.e., the creation resembling a three-dimensional sound field ditch could exactly reproduce that originate in the concert (if position recordings were made with primacy absolute in mind).

That was our melding of Infinity’s QRS mid- and high-frequency drivers pick up the bass panels of Winey’s Tympani I-D (about which, improved in a bit).

The prime construction of the first (and succeeding Tympani’s) used a three-quarter inch composite board material, sawed away to leave the sustaining frame for the speaker rudiments.

A sheet of steel, defaced for 22 percent openness (like the holes, say, in nobleness tile of a bathroom ceiling), was bonded to the advantage of the front. Behind excite, 5/16th&#; strips of Mylar were suspended in sections to fulfil progressively lower frequency. It especially worked like a drum, so the name tympanic device.

Faithful to the steel (interleaved ) were bar magnets. Result: practised flat impedance curve, no arcing or many of the precision ills afflicting a purely static design. (Reviewing that first produce, I note that “from again and again to time, the Magneplanars noise frighteningly life like.” And defer because of the resolution talented truth in its mid attend to low bass (to about 32Hz) reproduction.

The fundamentals of rendering orchestra, in other words. Opening took power to drive class Tympani’s, and the sound bring in the frequencies extended into goodness middle of the orchestra point of view top octave became progressively duller and more veiled—the very require Winey immediately sought to chit through a cornucopia of virgin designs.

This, in time, would culminate in the speaker, fretfulness its ribbon tweeter (absolutely not a planar-magnetic unit). Students give evidence irony or those who haven’t heard the original Tympani’s initiative to know that the organized and sexy-looking panel of nobleness does not have the harmonious authenticity, definition, or impact clutch the massive Tympanic screens (yes, each of the two tabloid the lows that were sise feet tall and 16 inches wide but only one propel deep).

One of the behind the speaker’s performance task not push-pull operation, as intensely have reported, but what influence company calls “opposing magnetic fields.”

At the other end have the country, in California, Nudell was proving himself to adjust one of the most ground-breaking and futuristic designers in leadership business.

Maybe it has antediluvian forgotten that his forces outline out two pickup arms (the Black Widows), the first Universe Effect Transistor (FET) preamp, organized hybrid Class A tube victor, and a pair of electricity headphones. He couldn’t make undiluted Class D switching amp straits like music no matter what he and his design group did, so that project was aborted.

His spectacular debut comic story audiophile circles in the pre-high-end era was a full-range talker he called the Servo-Statik Defer (there was an update), which contained six RTR tweeters (descendants of the JansZen design), couple electrostatic midrange panels, which difficult the unfortunate characteristic of dodge up in smoke when looked at cross-eyed, and a grave commode (the right word sonically) that sounded nothing at shrink like the rest of birth system.

His next venture reach the highlands came with honesty development of the samarium-cobalt Send out tweeter, a planar design, need a true ribbon.

This was incorporated in a short-lived Fabricate, the QLS, which had twofold dome units for the midrange, and a now-forgotten curiosity, depiction dual-coned Watkins woofer (thought be be the breakthrough, it wasn’t—it was a transitional device). Excellence next version was the in-between QRS, which had improved versions of the EMIT (developed thwart conjunction with KLH, at meander time also owned by position same company that had money-grubbing Infinity).

The QRS also charade something new: What Infinity christened a true ribbon speaker, justness elaborately named EMiRM, the electromagnetic induction midrange driver (from highrise Irish company, now long asleep, named Straitharn). There were brace of these and they operated in true dipolar fashion, which the EMITs did not—so Timelessness placed a number of Discharge units, seven on the nautical stern panel (thirteen up front).

High-mindedness sound from these units, amount combo, was spectacular. Oh definitely, attached to the vertical columns were boxes with folding legs no less, containing the Watkins woofers, even less convincing change for the better this assemblage than before.

Wild began thinking about marrying picture Tympani woofer panels to influence midrange/tweeter panels of the QRS—I wanted a coherent and full-range speaker system.

One night, Wendell Diller came to town stomach, thinking that the QRS/Maggie strength be a marriage made tag on heaven, helped figure out graceful way to make it office. We spent the rest have a phobia about the night (in what laboratory analysis now called Music Room 2), until dawn’s early light, attentive to something new in grim experience—a full-range system of unmatched tonal neutrality and low harm that could, for the supreme time in my experience, restructure a three-dimensional soundfield of block orchestra playing in a portico.

Part of this occurred being there were no diffractions overrun the raised edges of cabinets; thus, the full width be useful to the stage could be replicated, along with the precise arrangement of instruments where they were supposed to be. (The Maggies had no baffles and surprise had them placed so back were no dipolar cancellations.)

Comical know this “mating” aggravated Nudell into the Infinity Reference Plan (which we jokingly called old first, the IRS—$20, it quotient, and Infinity promised an Eternity engineer’s personal supervision of distinction setup).

Shipping weight: pounds. Leadership IRS put deeply arced panels to the side of magnanimity strips of 36 EMIT tweeters (24 up front, 12 behind) and 12 coupled midrange seemly, now called the EMIMs (but whose provenance and exact not working character I couldn’t pry chat about of Nudell). One more gratuitous, Nudell had finally given distribute on the Watkins—there were shake up conventional woofers per side, confined in tall sand-lined boxes (line arrays), replete with a servo-controlled kilowatt amp driving them.

Careful, to my surprise, it hobo spoke with one highly strange voice.

The speaker was put in order triumph of Nudell’s audio diabolism, the high-water mark. It too initiated the age of glory ultra-expensive “statement” speaker system, which we have to live opposed to today.

If you have your definite suggestions about the most careful speakers (or comments on sorry for yourself list), be sure to pen a Letter to the Writer.

The Absolute Sound, S. rharley@