We did have access to a range of RtRs, from Sony to Revox & Crown SX700 /800 series and whatever the high end cassette at time, but one of the requests was to play selected vinyl that the girls might bring.
I’m not sure if you remember CAV in the basement of Yates St, but one of our customers at the time was Paul Horn, and he smuggled us some pre-mastering mix down studio tapes from a Joni Mitchell session (Court and Spark, I think) - he knew a guy😊 Two track, 15ips Dolby A on an all Crown International system SC800 series / DC300 / ES224. Pretty damned impressive music, and Paul was a helluva nice guy. He lived in the Vantreight Park area at the time - not too far from your current abode.
I’m not sure if you remember CAV in the basement of Yates St, but one of our customers at the time was Paul Horn, and he smuggled us some pre-mastering mix down studio tapes from a Joni Mitchell session (Court and Spark, I think) - he knew a guy😊 Two track, 15ips Dolby A on an all Crown International system SC800 series / DC300 / ES224. Pretty damned impressive music, and Paul was a helluva nice guy. He lived in the Vantreight Park area at the time - not too far from your current abode.
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AR (Acoustic Research) KLH, and Advent epitomized east coast sound while Altec and JBL were considered west coast sound.
ADS from a practical standpoint was a buyout and transplant of Braun's (German) audio products division which was acquired by ADS's founder sometime in the early 1980s.(Not sure of exact date) I did a very brief stint at ADS in the late 1980s as a contractor. Bose was a much better place to work and I learned the ropes of good engineering practice there.
East Coast Sound is a bit of a misnomer, we are really talking about the sound Edgar Vilchur and Henry Kloss created here in Massachusetts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, of the later start ups I would say Advent and Boston Acoustics clearly and closely fit the mold, arguably ADS as well with a more Teutonic influence and European aesthetics.
Apogee Acoustics, EPI, Cambridge Soundworks (Henry Kloss' last company) and DBX also started here.
Lots of audio history here, Bose fits into a different category and I would not really regard it as part of the school of east coast sound.
Other than somewhat less than a decade overseas I have spent most of my life within 50 miles of Boston, and indeed the past 20 within 2 miles of the city line. (LOL) My interest in hifi goes back to 1961 when my dad took to one of the 3 original Radio Shack stores which was located in Kenmore Square in Boston to purchase his first stereo. (I purchased all the rest for him later.)
ADS from a practical standpoint was a buyout and transplant of Braun's (German) audio products division which was acquired by ADS's founder sometime in the early 1980s.(Not sure of exact date) I did a very brief stint at ADS in the late 1980s as a contractor. Bose was a much better place to work and I learned the ropes of good engineering practice there.
East Coast Sound is a bit of a misnomer, we are really talking about the sound Edgar Vilchur and Henry Kloss created here in Massachusetts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, of the later start ups I would say Advent and Boston Acoustics clearly and closely fit the mold, arguably ADS as well with a more Teutonic influence and European aesthetics.
Apogee Acoustics, EPI, Cambridge Soundworks (Henry Kloss' last company) and DBX also started here.
Lots of audio history here, Bose fits into a different category and I would not really regard it as part of the school of east coast sound.
Other than somewhat less than a decade overseas I have spent most of my life within 50 miles of Boston, and indeed the past 20 within 2 miles of the city line. (LOL) My interest in hifi goes back to 1961 when my dad took to one of the 3 original Radio Shack stores which was located in Kenmore Square in Boston to purchase his first stereo. (I purchased all the rest for him later.)
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As for the east coast sound, I think it probably started before my introduction to the addiction with the Edgar Villchur /Henry Kloss & Joseph Hoffman / Winslow Burhoe era - Acoustic Research / KLH/ Advent, EPI then the numerous offshoots.
Stuck in an edit loop for a few minutes, I see that Kevin more thoroughly covered the subject. Must have been quite an educational experience working with those two firms.
Stuck in an edit loop for a few minutes, I see that Kevin more thoroughly covered the subject. Must have been quite an educational experience working with those two firms.
Mirage was a Canadian brand so would not have been considered east coast sound although it might well have adhered to the same general design principles.
In case anyone was wondering I am a firm adherent of... wait for it.... a Japanese interpretation of west coast sound.. I have what are essentially Altec 515-8G in diy Onken cabinets, TAD-4001 on clones of the Yuichi A-290 horns for mids, and FaitalPro HF-10AK on STH100 horns. Even worse crossovers, delay, room management are all digital and I have class D on subs, and bass drivers with anemic 6.5W SE amps on mids and highs.
I walked away from east coast sound about 30 years ago with the first pair of Magnepans. East coast sound made good stereo sound possible in average sized American middle class living rooms of the time. (Altec and JBL gear was imposingly larger and many people around here had dedicated rooms for that kind of gear in the 1960s.)
I walked away from east coast sound about 30 years ago with the first pair of Magnepans. East coast sound made good stereo sound possible in average sized American middle class living rooms of the time. (Altec and JBL gear was imposingly larger and many people around here had dedicated rooms for that kind of gear in the 1960s.)
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I worked on a reworked version of the later op-amp based EQ for use with the older 901 series II and III for replacement purposes. The series I would have been nearly 30 yrs old by that time. I don't recall much about it other than it looked a lot better, was significantly quieter and conformed more closely to the target EQ. It might even have sounded better.
And contrary to popular belief that the driver was a cheap of the shelf item, there was a lot of careful design, testing and materials science involved in its design. The plastic basket everyone liked to rag on was expensive, it was rigid (fiber reinforced IIRC), lightweight and very strong. I know some years ago I wrote more extensively about it somewhere on the forum.
Just trying to set the record straight, and yeah I often wondered why I was not a big fan of the speaker, it was smooth, created a (unrealistically) huge soundstage which worked great with symphonic music and some jazz and actually had good if not exceptional bass performance. It was never unpleasant or shrill and in room was good to about 16kHz which practically speaking was better than I was doing here until a year or so ago. There was enough detail to satisfy the average listener (not me as I am and was a detail freak.)
It was produced in significant volumes and enjoyed economies of scale that most of the competition did not. Bose grew into a much larger company than most of its competition. Other than Klipsch it is probably one of the very few legacy brands still operating in the U.S. (Just speaker makers - obviously there are others like ARC and McIntosh but their stories are complicated and OT.)
(Most of the rest are now brand names of foreign electronics conglomerates based in Korea and Japan.)
Just trying to set the record straight, and yeah I often wondered why I was not a big fan of the speaker, it was smooth, created a (unrealistically) huge soundstage which worked great with symphonic music and some jazz and actually had good if not exceptional bass performance. It was never unpleasant or shrill and in room was good to about 16kHz which practically speaking was better than I was doing here until a year or so ago. There was enough detail to satisfy the average listener (not me as I am and was a detail freak.)
It was produced in significant volumes and enjoyed economies of scale that most of the competition did not. Bose grew into a much larger company than most of its competition. Other than Klipsch it is probably one of the very few legacy brands still operating in the U.S. (Just speaker makers - obviously there are others like ARC and McIntosh but their stories are complicated and OT.)
(Most of the rest are now brand names of foreign electronics conglomerates based in Korea and Japan.)
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Kevin, when you gonna take the time to pen your own version of history of audio - a la Lynn Olson’s Nutshell HiFi’s Tiny History of High Fidelity.
Recommend reading for those not already familiar
http://www.nutshellhifi.com/
Recommend reading for those not already familiar
http://www.nutshellhifi.com/
Yes, I vaguely remember CAV. It seemed like a tiny place.
I believe Paul's ex-wife is still alive, living in the same house. I used to see her quite regularly. It's one of the few old houses still standing overlooking the ocean.
jeff
I meant belonging to east coast sound not strictly in a tonal but more in a cultural and historical way. Another facet of it, but the most successful company to emerge from there no doubt. Who else east coast audio brand had own stores even in international airports. The Bose logo on cancellation headphones wore by big jets commercial pilots is iconic. Done it in its own way yes, but everybody knows Bose, everybody knows Massachusetts and MIT, knows it was a legit part of it all.
The problem is I never wrote any of this stuff down, and after 3 - 4 decades my recollections are I think rather unreliable and very fuzzy. I worked with Dick Burwin, and even met Henry Kloss once, as well a couple of HH Scott people whose names I can't even remember. Given my interests, chosen career path, and where I live none of this is terribly surprising - looking back on it I guess have to admit I got to meet some interesting people. 😀
Met some great folks myself, both during a few years in the audio retail trenches back in the late ‘70s- mid ‘80s*, as well as Doc Bottlehead’s little shows in the early ‘00s. Jeeze, just realized that the last of those was 2008.
*one business was a Dahlquist dealer when sales were still direct from the factory, and I can remember phoning the head office and getting a “hello, this is Saul, what can we do for you?”
*one business was a Dahlquist dealer when sales were still direct from the factory, and I can remember phoning the head office and getting a “hello, this is Saul, what can we do for you?”
Many many moons ago I was due to live mix in a very small club (Melb. Australia) but the expected PA didn't arrive.
Someone made a rushed-dash to RMIT, and returned with this 'baby' 8Ch. mixer.
The 'house system' was 4x BOSE 802's & 2x Phase Linear amps. So that's what we hooked up.
Given a really nice drum/guitar/bass balance coming off stage, the 802's were nearly all vocals.
I was surprised how good that GIG sounded 🙂
Someone made a rushed-dash to RMIT, and returned with this 'baby' 8Ch. mixer.
The 'house system' was 4x BOSE 802's & 2x Phase Linear amps. So that's what we hooked up.
Given a really nice drum/guitar/bass balance coming off stage, the 802's were nearly all vocals.
I was surprised how good that GIG sounded 🙂
The PA they were using up in San Luis Obispo in the early 80 for bluegrass shows used a pair of Bose 802s.
They sounded really good, with big Crown amps and a 10 channel mixer. Specially outdoors! They didn't have to be pushed to put out some really good sounding music from 50 feet away at the park.
They sounded really good, with big Crown amps and a 10 channel mixer. Specially outdoors! They didn't have to be pushed to put out some really good sounding music from 50 feet away at the park.
There is now way to set up any room that would make 901's sound even decent. If you had them set up in the perfect room with the worlds best amp and best source they would still suck. At 14 years old in 1985 I was listening to Altec 605's my friends parents had speakers like AR 3's and JBL L300 so to even look at a speaker as poorly designed as the 901's and take it seriously that was something I could not do not even at age 14.
I'm curious to know when you last tried it?
Since you call the 901 'poorly designed' perhaps you could say in exactly which ways you're referring to?
The 901 was designed to be a relatively compact standmount loudspeaker prioritizing an increased ratio of indirect to direct radiation in the listening room -a variation on the omnidirectional theme, but with a direct-radiating forward facing drive unit to provide increased stereo localisation cues. Because it's small, to obtain bass, it uses EQ, like many other compact speakers. The price is reduced LF headroom, but that is the nature of a compact system and not everybody is in the position of being able to afford or use larger speakers. The drive units are fairlyu reasonable examples of the wideband type, with a response & distortion on a par with some other well-known types, albeit with a nominal 1ohm impedance because they were intended for series-wiring. Although they're certainly not the best compact wideband drivers ever made in FR, distortion performance etc., they aren't the worst either. The box design wasn't bad, with some fairly clever venting; build quality was 'adequate', but you can say that about a lot of others too, including some contemporary Tannoys, Wharfedales, Altecs, JBLs etc. The stand isn't a great design from the POV of stability -also like a lot of other period-designs. The EQ module appears to have been well-designed and functional for a contemporary type also. So within the context of what it was, the 901 was a reasonably well designed loudspeaker. Other people might not share its priorities (neither do I for that matter) but that doesn't make it badly designed -just a speaker that was aimed at a different audience.
Since you call the 901 'poorly designed' perhaps you could say in exactly which ways you're referring to?
The 901 was designed to be a relatively compact standmount loudspeaker prioritizing an increased ratio of indirect to direct radiation in the listening room -a variation on the omnidirectional theme, but with a direct-radiating forward facing drive unit to provide increased stereo localisation cues. Because it's small, to obtain bass, it uses EQ, like many other compact speakers. The price is reduced LF headroom, but that is the nature of a compact system and not everybody is in the position of being able to afford or use larger speakers. The drive units are fairlyu reasonable examples of the wideband type, with a response & distortion on a par with some other well-known types, albeit with a nominal 1ohm impedance because they were intended for series-wiring. Although they're certainly not the best compact wideband drivers ever made in FR, distortion performance etc., they aren't the worst either. The box design wasn't bad, with some fairly clever venting; build quality was 'adequate', but you can say that about a lot of others too, including some contemporary Tannoys, Wharfedales, Altecs, JBLs etc. The stand isn't a great design from the POV of stability -also like a lot of other period-designs. The EQ module appears to have been well-designed and functional for a contemporary type also. So within the context of what it was, the 901 was a reasonably well designed loudspeaker. Other people might not share its priorities (neither do I for that matter) but that doesn't make it badly designed -just a speaker that was aimed at a different audience.
I think the most telling event was that no major audio equipment maker made a similar unit even after the patents expired.
I may be wrong, the intellectual property may be copyrighted (Intel, for one, does that), but having got around US patents myself, it is not too difficult. So the lack of effort is evident.
Copyright runs far longer than patent rights, 50+ years is normal.
And I have not checked the sales figures, but my impression is that Bose had less than 5% of the US market, and negligible shares in the European and Australia / Japan / other markets.
I may be wrong, the intellectual property may be copyrighted (Intel, for one, does that), but having got around US patents myself, it is not too difficult. So the lack of effort is evident.
Copyright runs far longer than patent rights, 50+ years is normal.
And I have not checked the sales figures, but my impression is that Bose had less than 5% of the US market, and negligible shares in the European and Australia / Japan / other markets.