FYI: Nelson Pass Interview posted at Stereophile

[mullardel34]

Stereophile magazine has posted a vintage Nelson Pass interview from November 1991 (the interview is 'vintage', not Nelson...). The URL is:

http://stereophile.com/interviews/1191pass/

It's simply amazing to see just how doggedly consistent Mr. Pass has been in his pursuit of simple and elegant circuit topologies; apparently, thermodynamics don't apply to the "mind of Nelson", for there are certainly no signs of entropy encroaching...

 

[wrenchone]

Also, at Burning Amp last year he was stressing the same points about gradual evolution of products to keep a company viable from a business standpoint. He's still in business...

 

[Stefanoo]

I liked the interview a lot!
I think Nelson is pioneer of audio design.
I admire him for his wide knowledge.
I didn't know he started out with speaker design.

I would have asked him what he thinks now of the audio design.
Lots of progress on topology has already been made if he still enjoys as much as when he first designed his 800A when everything was new a discover...new devices less competitors.....and so on....


great interview though!

 

[Babowana]

Papa,

. . . wow . . . amazing . . . sees nothing else except self . . .
don't you think so?

 

[xaudiox]

thanks for the info.. enjoyed reading the whole interview..

 

[Nelson Pass]

That interview was done in 1990, and was printed two months
before I walked out the door at Threshold, so there's a lot more
to the story.

 

[GRollins]

Amongst other things, you modified your position as to how practical single-ended amplifiers were. In the interview, you sounded like it would never happen. Then came Pass Labs and the Aleph series.

Grey

 

[MikeBettinger]

Lots of progress on topology has already been made.

great interview though!

Define "progress".

Most of the current "progress" flies in the face of the article's title; definitely not discussing technology for technology's sake. Imagine 5v/us.

Sorry I couldn't help myself.

Thanks for the heads-up on the interview (I like the step back in time), innaresting watching consistency evolve.

Mike.

 

[GRollins]

Nelson's methods may change, but his philosophy seems consistent over time. Given that he describes himself as a topologist--nothing more, nothing less--that gives him a great deal of freedom; especially since his words and deeds match. Others make great claims, but if you have a chance to see their schematics, it's often a pretty ordinary circuit that's been gussied up with a marketing term or two to impress the unwary. There's a mismatch between the words and the deeds.
(The cynic in me says that's the real reason some companies don't release their schematics...they don't want people to realize how utterly, mind-numbingly ordinary their circuits are. Gawd forbid the masses realize that the emperor has no clothes.)

Grey

 

[jacco vermeulen]

Usually the pretty name is a giveaway.

(wasn't HDAM a barrel of fun)

 

[Blues]

Amongst other things, you modified your position as to how practical single-ended amplifiers were. In the interview, you sounded like it would never happen. Then came Pass Labs and the Aleph series.

Grey

In the interview, NP was actually pre-conditioning our brains for the coming of the Aleph....

"So there is every reason in the world why nobody's building single-ended output stages. ...The overriding consideration here—and this relates to people's perception of absolute phase; audiophiles who believe in the importance of absolute phase are, I believe, essentially correct—is that air is single-ended and is not symmetric with regard to plus and minus. True, the nonlinearities and the asymmetry are quite small in the level that we normally like to think of, but in fact, when you're in the high end you're dealing with subtleties. This is a subtle thing, but it's real. "