A very intelligent man who happens to be my distributor in all of Northern Europe called today because he wanted to "talk to someone with some sense". After thanking him for the compliment we discussed his impressions of a listening session he had with the Beveridge ESL speakers. We both agreed that they were way ahead of their time being available as early as 1975 where there was no high end audio and companies like Wilson, Infinity, Avalon etc had not raise the bar to what we are now accustomed to today, in fact they didn't exist. I am happy to say that I was there when high-end audio was born.
I recall the 1975 CES in Chicago seeing Jim Bongiorno dressed in yellow head to foot playing 45 RPM M&K jazz records through his Ampzilla and Magnepans. I saw many competent companies who never got to see the light of day due to no reviews or being (unfairly if felt) panned by magazines.
That was the year we opened Audio Art in Richmond VA representing Beveridge, Acoustat, KLH, Polk (they were just out of college as was I) SAE, Magnepan and simple turntables and arms that could be had for less than $500 (TT, arm and cart). Digital audio was a long way away, Nakamichi was king of the cassette (and they deserved every bit of the good reputation they had). We didn't carry the "component of the month", we sold Audio Magazine (Gene Pitts Ed) because it was about the last bastion of truth. We were amused by TAS, The Audio Critic, and several others that came and went including one published by two of our customers.
In 1978 Stereo Review had the Bev Model 2 on the cover with the caption "worlds most expensive speaker, is it worth it?" It was a bargain at $5200 and Bev lost money on every pair. What came out of the conversation is what happened, why did other speakers get more sales, what has determined "high end sound". Competing with Bev at the time were the Infinity Reference System, Apogee, Magneplanar Tympani, Fulton and others that are largely forgotten today though Beveridge speakers still have a strong following.
One thing he and I (we are few but not alone) agree on is why do people pay tens of thousands of dollars for speakers, amplifiers, preamps that done perform well. Sadly the magazines have had a lot to do with it.
I have supported Stereophile over the years because, beginning with J Gordon Holt there was a willingness to call a spade a spade. I had the opportunity to give a toast to Holt at RMAF and gave my appreciation for publishing his list of "100 of the worst audio components ever made" The Karlson speaker that my dad had built was among them. I also got to tell a little story about a visit I made to Harry Pearson in the early 80's and his comment upon my departure from Sea Cliff. Leaning over his Corvette he said "Audio is a drug, and I'm the audio pusher". After telling the story I looked around to see if Harry was in the crowd and much to my surprise, he was the next speaker. Not commenting on my story, he, in my hearing, made a rather uncomplimentary toast to the man being honored, noting that they never agreed on anything. I have no doubt that was the truth.
We have a supposed authority who does not measure anything, seems to promote the most expensive and often the most unreliable equipment as if the absolutely best sound is based on price, complexity, tonnage and sketchy designs from uneducated designers. They and others long ago decided to disqualify engineers as being sonically inept and then promoted designers that were (in their ears) capable of good sound but bad engineering (unreliable, noisy, troublesome, equipment). Clearly, the monkeys are busy at the typewriters but none has yet written Shakespeare. Those of you who have bought their recommendations know the truth after owning them, though not before.
Now we have a number of online magazines that seem to be doing no better. If anyone knows one that makes sense and is reliable let me know. I would love to see one that really gets into the equipment with a competent engineer on staff who even opens stuff up, shakes it around a bit, looks for potential problems. Most important I feel is a set of measurements and an explanation of what they measure made in real-life terms. Granted you can't measure the "sound" of an amplifier but you can measure its noise and give some standards. My success in making some of the lowest noise amps and preamps in the field is made possible because I understand where noise comes from and how to measure it.
Here's another funny story that I don't mind telling because the company (Counterpoint) is long gone, though they left a long trail of bad equipment in my opinion. Shortly after I released the RM-4 headamp Counterpoint released their 4 tube unit, mine having only 2 of the same tube 6DJ8/6922. A few years after that one came across my bench from a customer who was complaining about the noise level. I put in 4 of my best tubes measured the noise and it was some 6 dB higher than my RM-4 and about 9 dB higher than it's own specification. I scratched my head, looked around for other problems and called Michael Elliott to ask him if his published spec was correct and how he had arrived at it. He replied. "I took the spec of your RM-4 and made mine 3 dB better because it should be 3 dB better as it has four tubes vs. your two. That's why I put 4 tubes in there to make it better than yours. I replied "But its not, how did you confirm it?" He said "I didn't know how to measure the noise but I knew you did so I just took your number and added three dB". I asked him if he wanted to do something about that, he said "no".
Audio has long been a hobbyist field and many hobbyist end up producing something they cooked up over the years. Read Jim White's (Aesthetix) interview on his web site. What bothers me is when a very expensive product gets all dressed up, gets great reviews written by people who mostly judge the gown and not the sound and is flawed by intolerable noise which is barely mentioned something is wrong. If someone is selling a noisy preamp for a $100 it wouldn't be so bad but at $5000 something needs to be said.
In the end the audio junk-pile will tell the tale, for the meantime Audiogon prices are a good gauge of what people think of high dollar, highly touted, disappointing unreliable equipment.
