A Conversation With Roger

A very intelligent man who happens to be my distributor in 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, a time where high-end audio speaker companies like Wilson, Infinity, Avalon etc. did not yet exist. I am happy to say that I was there when high-end audio was born.

At the 1975 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago, Jim Bongiorno was dressed in yellow head to foot playing 45 RPM M&K jazz records in a system with his Ampzilla and Magnepan speakers. Here I saw many competent companies that never got to see the light of day due to no reviews or being unfairly panned by review magazines. This was also the year we opened Audio Art in Richmond, VA representing Beveridge, Acoustat, KLH, Polk, SAE, Magnepan, and simple turntable set ups that could be had for less than $500. Digital audio was a long way off and Nakamichi was king of the cassette. We did not carry the "component of the month", and we sold Audio Magazine because it was about the last bastion of truth. On the other hand, we were amused by The Absolute Sound (TAS), The Audio Critic, and several other publications.

In 1978 Stereo Review had the Beveridge Model 2 on the cover with the caption, "World’s most expensive speaker, is it worth it?” Realistically at the time the $5,200 price was a bargain, and Bev lost money on each pair. My distributor and I wondered why other speakers sold better than Bev’s and what determined "high-end sound". At the time Beveridge competed with Infinity, Apogee, Magnepan, Fulton, and others that are largely forgotten today though Beveridge speakers still have a strong following. One thing Bev and I asked ourselves is why people pay tens of thousands of dollars for speakers, amplifiers, and preamps that do not perform well. Sadly, the answer was the review magazines had a lot to do with it.

I supported Stereophile since with J. Gordon Holt there was a willingness to call a spade a spade. I had the opportunity to toast Holt at Rocky Mountain Audio Festival (RMAF) and gave my appreciation for his publishing a 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 am 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 made a rather uncomplimentary toast to Holt, noting that they never agreed on anything. I have no doubt that was the truth.

So now in the industry we have supposed audio “authorities” who do not measure anything and seem to promote the most expensive and often the most unreliable equipment as if the best sound is based on price, complexity, tonnage, and sketchy designs from uneducated designers. These “authorities” 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, and 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 several 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, and looks for potential problems. Most important I feel is a set of measurements and an explanation of what they measure explained in real-life terms. Granted you cannot 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 amplifiers and preamplifiers in the field is made possible because I understand where noise comes from and how to measure it.

Here is another story I do not mind telling since the company is long gone. Shortly after I released the 2-tube RM-4 head amp Counterpoint released their 4-tube unit. A customer sent one to me complaining about the noise level. I put in 4 of my best tubes and the noise was still 6 dB higher than my RM-4 and 9 dB higher than Counterpoint’s specification. I called Michael Elliott to ask how he had arrived at the noise spec. 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 is why I put 4 tubes in there, to make it better than yours.” I replied, "It is not better, how did you confirm it?" He said, "I do not know how to measure noise, but I knew you did so I took your number and reduced it 3 dB." I asked if he wanted to do something about that, he said, "No."

Audio has long been a hobbyist field, and many hobbyists 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, but is flawed by intolerable noise which is barely mentioned. If someone is selling a noisy preamp for $100 it would not be so bad but at $5,000 something needs to be said. In the end the audio junkpile will tell the tale. In the meantime, Audiogon prices are a good gauge of what people think of high dollar, highly touted, and disappointing unreliable equipment.