The below link tells the whole story of the Waveform speaker company. I once owned Waveform Mach Solos, and wish I still had them. The Mach Solos and Mach 17 speakers are still the only speakers ever designed with FR response +- 1 decibel over the frequency range, better even than Dutch & Dutch 8C.
Since the closing of Waveform in 2000, there has never been a speaker like them in any way, AFAIK. I have not even seen a DIY project attempt. It would make a fascinating project.
The story is a good read, in 3 parts.
Waveform: pt1 of 3 | John Gabriel Otvos
Since the closing of Waveform in 2000, there has never been a speaker like them in any way, AFAIK. I have not even seen a DIY project attempt. It would make a fascinating project.
The story is a good read, in 3 parts.
Waveform: pt1 of 3 | John Gabriel Otvos
The Mach 17 and Mach Solo speakers got excellent reviews in every review that was done. It just didn't translate in to enough sales to keep things going. In 2000 the direct sale of audio gear over the internet was in it's infancy. It's hard to buy a speaker without audition. I did. And I even waived the 30 day refund. John produced the most comprehensive set of speaker measures and graphs of any speaker company. I felt quite confident in my purchase and was not wrong. There just were not enough folks the same at that time.
Sadly, the demand for well-designed loudspeaker systems isn't that big. The mainstream public doesn't want to spend the cash. The people who do, don't use their ears enough. And so we end up with a lot of fantasy designs that might look gorgeous or impressive, but don't deliver that much more than loudspeakers 1/10th of the price.
At the time, the Waveform designs were pretty adequate. I believe that right away. Just as the top of the line designs of any brand that dared to follow it's R&D department. Nowadays insights in room acoustics should lead to other optimal designs. Think of directivity control and modal behavior control. So to me these designs have become obsolete.
BTW thx for the link. It gave a nice insight in the industry, albeit colored.
At the time, the Waveform designs were pretty adequate. I believe that right away. Just as the top of the line designs of any brand that dared to follow it's R&D department. Nowadays insights in room acoustics should lead to other optimal designs. Think of directivity control and modal behavior control. So to me these designs have become obsolete.
BTW thx for the link. It gave a nice insight in the industry, albeit colored.
The Last part is great - " No personal voicing allowed"
I listened to Mach 17 in early 2000 for a few hours. Very neutral, clean, dynamic, uncolored but with nearfield listening it appeared there wasn't much L/R recorded detail to produce imaging. Maybe setup, quality of amps etc, Not sure.
I read that one of his speakers received a bad review by a major mag, rag to be more accurate, and this ruined things....
I listened to Mach 17 in early 2000 for a few hours. Very neutral, clean, dynamic, uncolored but with nearfield listening it appeared there wasn't much L/R recorded detail to produce imaging. Maybe setup, quality of amps etc, Not sure.
I read that one of his speakers received a bad review by a major mag, rag to be more accurate, and this ruined things....
I would like to think that if Waveform had been able to continue, John and Dr. Fortier would have been able to advance the state of their design, much like you suggest.
Even to this day, no other speaker has come along with better FR specs or as clean a CSD graph like the Waveforms.
I doubt that. Check out Genelec's 8351B. Add the W371A if you like. Concentric design, quite well-behaved directivity and FR flat as a ruler. And adoptable to room acoustics more or less like the Dutch&Dutch.
Many have a problem with the subjective ill effects of wave-guiding. I don't think waveform would have used them considering a mach 17 feature was the egg. For aligning with trends and generating sales, I guess He would have implemented waveguides!
Genelec has been highly regarded for a long time. That 8351B/W371A does seem have some similarity to the Mach Solo. Do you have the Genelec combo?
I was at CES a few years back, talking to one of the most respected loudspeaker designers in the world. Suddenly, he politely excused himself, and it looked like he had ice running through his veins.
An older dude sat down and started listening to his various speakers. I looked at the badge, and realized it was one of the hacks from Stereophile.
I have a love/hate relationship with that stupid magazine. John Atkinson is a national treasure, and I love the fact that he's measured so many speakers over the decades. But if you read the reviews that precede them, the person writing the flowery prose often has a complete disconnect with Atkinson's measurements.
Another tricky part about Stereophile, is that the writers have a lot of preconceived biases. For instance, in the 90s, when horn loudspeakers were enjoying a renaissance, Stereophile was routinely trashing them to an extreme. Corey Greenberg in particular, who's a great writer, was in the habit of just kicking the [you know what] out of horns. Years later, as the entire industry started to move away from speakers with an efficiency of 80db, Stereophile warmed up to high efficiency designs.
At that CES that I attended, the Stereophile writer invested a grand total of about eight minutes listening to those speakers. I don't know if they were featured in the magazine.
From the linked article:
"I cannot recall if it was on my suggestion or on that of the magazine’s, that I send a pair to then publisher, Larry Archibald’s home in Albuquerque, NM. After I landed at the small airport, I was picked up by Tom Norton, the tech man at the mag. Larry’s room was huge, very resonant, [as in echoey] hardly the slightly dead, neutral acoustic setting expressly needed for this presentation. He brought the speakers about 12′ into the room, so all listening was accomplished far field against my recommendation. My gut was telling me I was being setup for a fall. I was deaf, dumb and blind to bodily intuition."
Love that magazine. Peter Aczel and Richard Clark were the two dudes who got me to stop drinking the audiophile Kool Aid.
Aczel switched from Waveform to Bang and Olufsen in around 2006. To this day, the Beolab 90 is the best speaker I've ever heard.
This is the first time I have posted to an aud forum in well over two decades. Many thanks to Steven Harrison for mentioning my 3-part blog. Room acoustics have been summarily handled for decades by multi-form 'processor' algorithms, from many companies in the form of receivers, like those from Yamaha, whose engineers actually went into halls with gear and recorded the room sound. DD & DTS put a nail in the coffin for 2-channel listening, despite many lingering adherents; 'sides, it sells, as does vinyl. Yes, there are mutant recordings that yield zero benefit. hahaha
As far as directivity control goes, the evidence suggests and has been proven time and again via listener preference double blind tests, that wide dispersion, full frequency + low distortion wins the day's race every time. It's a fact that the mags never wanted you to understand, which, is why they are guilty as Noam penned in 1987 of "manufacturing consent"! It's why auds purchase with their eyes and not their ears.
I've no idea what modal behaviour control means from a scientific perspective, or even why it could be crucial. Sorry, Mark, but flat frequency will never be obsolete, despite some would-be kings offering personal voicing for their products. Today, many designs now employ electronic crossovers between the various drivers.
Actually, Steven, there was a brief prototype developed that showed what could be done, yet the cost to produce would've been in the hundreds of thousands of $$. So, as you correctly stated, the sales were not there for that outlay justification. In less than 20 years of production, Waveform recorded one sales return. Today, most companies will sell out the back door, if you know whom to speak with. The times they are a-changing.
Once all the main areas are virtually conquered, the tiny improvement of the transducer pails in comparison to the playback room sound signature, plus how the recording was made. Indeed, many recordings become unlistenable to the discerning ear, which, is in all likelihood, why some auds prefer voicing, but, then those products go on the used equipment shelf soon enough. Good listening and stay safe. ~ John Otvos
As far as directivity control goes, the evidence suggests and has been proven time and again via listener preference double blind tests, that wide dispersion, full frequency + low distortion wins the day's race every time. It's a fact that the mags never wanted you to understand, which, is why they are guilty as Noam penned in 1987 of "manufacturing consent"! It's why auds purchase with their eyes and not their ears.
I've no idea what modal behaviour control means from a scientific perspective, or even why it could be crucial. Sorry, Mark, but flat frequency will never be obsolete, despite some would-be kings offering personal voicing for their products. Today, many designs now employ electronic crossovers between the various drivers.
Actually, Steven, there was a brief prototype developed that showed what could be done, yet the cost to produce would've been in the hundreds of thousands of $$. So, as you correctly stated, the sales were not there for that outlay justification. In less than 20 years of production, Waveform recorded one sales return. Today, most companies will sell out the back door, if you know whom to speak with. The times they are a-changing.
Once all the main areas are virtually conquered, the tiny improvement of the transducer pails in comparison to the playback room sound signature, plus how the recording was made. Indeed, many recordings become unlistenable to the discerning ear, which, is in all likelihood, why some auds prefer voicing, but, then those products go on the used equipment shelf soon enough. Good listening and stay safe. ~ John Otvos
I have seen that reviewer fear in action too, Patrick. While most of my acoustic/electroacoustic career was in the studio design and pro audio world, I was occasionally hired as design help for a few consumer audio loudspeaker manufacturers.
I remember being asked to triple check a system that was to be shipped to a Stereophile reviewer. They waited nervously for months for the review to be released. I was paid for design work not by sales volume, so my fear quotient was much lower. 🙂 The reviewer was Kalman Rubinson (once a loudspeaker designer himself) and the system received a fairly glowing review. I even got to write my one and only "Manufacturer's Response" ever.
In the High End audio world as a manufacturer you really are somewhat at the mercy of reviewers. It is entirely possible to have an excellent product that gets consigned to oblivion by one very visible review.
I never got to hear the Waveform loudspeakers, but given that Claude Fortier was part of the design team I am certain they were something special. I have heard versions of his SOTA studio monitors in multiple studios (and one mastering facility) and they were always first rate.
Glad you responded in the topic, thx for that.
To me, fairly constant wide dispersion is directivity control too. A lot of 'high end' designs don't attend to that enough, is my conviction.
I referred to ways of directivity and front wall reflection control in low frequencies, combined with or traded in for multi-source approach, to address the eigentonen present in listening rooms. Simple stereo or even uncorrected multiway monopole low frequency systems aren't adequate enough, I think. But that cannot or shouldn't be anything new. Martijn Mensink posted an interesting reply btw in the thread about the Dutch&Dutch clone. In ways the Dutch&Dutch history the past years resembles the history of the Waveform about one-and-a-half decade earlier.