(Reprinted from issue 59 of UHF Magazine. To purchase the issue, click here. Or click here to subscribe to UHF)
State of the Art
by Gerard Rejskind
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I wonder how many designers, as I write this, are hard at work trying to find a totally new speaker design, a hitherto unknown amplifier configuration, a tone arm that looks and works as no tone arm has looked or worked before. And yet the best gear doesn't always come from such visionary efforts. A lot of my (and possibly your) favorite equipment is of what we could call "classic design."
Yes, I know, that is often a euphemism for "old-fashioned," yet looking at designs of years gone by is often the quickest path to the state of the art. This shouldn't be too surprising, since we know that fine tuning, and sweating the smallest details, is the key to high fidelity. No matter how good the designs of years gone by, there is always a way to improve them a little. Or even a lot.
Loudspeakers are an obvious example. The majority of hi-fi speakers today are of bass reflex design: a slot or hole is cut in the box, so that the resonance can reverse the phase of the backwave and use it to reinforce the front wave. When was the first time I saw a bass reflex speaker? Well, I built one when I was in my teens, after seeing one that possibly dated back to the 1920's. Of course today's designs are much more refined -- my point exactly -- but they work essentially like those of nearly 80 years ago.
When it comes to that, have a look at the driver that's inside the box. It's nearly exactly like the one in that ancient system. Oh, perhaps the materials used for the cone or the magnet have changed, but the configuration of all those elements is exactly the same. As for the woofer I bought (for $10!) when I was a kid, that model is still available today, and only its price has changed.
Or consider amplifiers. The tube amps we reviewed in our last issue are rather obviously of classic inspiration, but you may not realize how ancient the basic designs are. Some of them are what was known as "Williamson" amplifiers, named for D.T.N. Williamson, who designed the first one...in the 1940's. Two of them are of a newer type called Ultralinear...and dating back to the 1950's I believe.
Even transistor designs go back a way, with the first truly successful ones launched in the late 60's. The configurations of those early amplifiers can be found in many a successful amplifier made today.
CD players really are new, of course, though digital audio's antecedents go surprisingly far back (Marconi struggled with digital transmission early in the century, though without success). Turntables are not, however, and most modern ones are of what could be called classic design. Belt drive dates back to before the War, and so do the first spring suspensions. Moving coil pickups existed in the 1930's, though they were not popular until much later. Stereo? Bell Laboratories produced experimental 45/45 stereo discs in the 30's, and Alan Blumlein originated the stereo recording method still used by such companies as Opus 3 right about the same time.
This is not say that the state of the art hasn't advanced in all that time. It has, of course, but much of the progress has been in the refining of those classic designs. For every designer who comes up with something truly new (the CD, the electrostatic speaker, the magnetic field amplifier) a hundred takes a careful look at the designs of the past and decided not to reinvent the wheel.
There may even be classic designs waiting to be rediscovered. An example is the electrodynamic speaker. Instead of a large permanent magnet, these speakers (from the 1920's and 30's) used a powerful electromagnet. It was more powerful, which helped efficiency, and it never lost its magnetism. But that's not all. The electromagnetic coil was also the choke in the amplifier's power supply, helping to regulate its voltage and to remove parasitic signals from the power line. Could that principle be used in those "new" active speakers with the amp right in the speaker enclosure?
Cars have changed a lot over a century, but they still have tires, steering wheels, and internal combustion engines. There are engineers working to replace some of those "classic" elements, and their work may yet revolutionize our lives. In the meantime, their colleagues are doing all they can to make what we have work better. More power to them.
Yes, I know, that is often a euphemism for "old-fashioned," yet looking at designs of years gone by is often the quickest path to the state of the art. This shouldn't be too surprising, since we know that fine tuning, and sweating the smallest details, is the key to high fidelity. No matter how good the designs of years gone by, there is always a way to improve them a little. Or even a lot.
Loudspeakers are an obvious example. The majority of hi-fi speakers today are of bass reflex design: a slot or hole is cut in the box, so that the resonance can reverse the phase of the backwave and use it to reinforce the front wave. When was the first time I saw a bass reflex speaker? Well, I built one when I was in my teens, after seeing one that possibly dated back to the 1920's. Of course today's designs are much more refined -- my point exactly -- but they work essentially like those of nearly 80 years ago.
When it comes to that, have a look at the driver that's inside the box. It's nearly exactly like the one in that ancient system. Oh, perhaps the materials used for the cone or the magnet have changed, but the configuration of all those elements is exactly the same. As for the woofer I bought (for $10!) when I was a kid, that model is still available today, and only its price has changed.
Or consider amplifiers. The tube amps we reviewed in our last issue are rather obviously of classic inspiration, but you may not realize how ancient the basic designs are. Some of them are what was known as "Williamson" amplifiers, named for D.T.N. Williamson, who designed the first one...in the 1940's. Two of them are of a newer type called Ultralinear...and dating back to the 1950's I believe.
Even transistor designs go back a way, with the first truly successful ones launched in the late 60's. The configurations of those early amplifiers can be found in many a successful amplifier made today.
CD players really are new, of course, though digital audio's antecedents go surprisingly far back (Marconi struggled with digital transmission early in the century, though without success). Turntables are not, however, and most modern ones are of what could be called classic design. Belt drive dates back to before the War, and so do the first spring suspensions. Moving coil pickups existed in the 1930's, though they were not popular until much later. Stereo? Bell Laboratories produced experimental 45/45 stereo discs in the 30's, and Alan Blumlein originated the stereo recording method still used by such companies as Opus 3 right about the same time.
This is not say that the state of the art hasn't advanced in all that time. It has, of course, but much of the progress has been in the refining of those classic designs. For every designer who comes up with something truly new (the CD, the electrostatic speaker, the magnetic field amplifier) a hundred takes a careful look at the designs of the past and decided not to reinvent the wheel.
There may even be classic designs waiting to be rediscovered. An example is the electrodynamic speaker. Instead of a large permanent magnet, these speakers (from the 1920's and 30's) used a powerful electromagnet. It was more powerful, which helped efficiency, and it never lost its magnetism. But that's not all. The electromagnetic coil was also the choke in the amplifier's power supply, helping to regulate its voltage and to remove parasitic signals from the power line. Could that principle be used in those "new" active speakers with the amp right in the speaker enclosure?
Cars have changed a lot over a century, but they still have tires, steering wheels, and internal combustion engines. There are engineers working to replace some of those "classic" elements, and their work may yet revolutionize our lives. In the meantime, their colleagues are doing all they can to make what we have work better. More power to them.
PARTIAL TEXT: Putting Vinyl on CD, the Montreal Show, Digital Radio, the Moon Eclipse, the Linn Genki, the Rega Jupiter and Io, the Cambridge D500, the Oskar Kithara
FULL TEXT: MaxiVision 48 film. Testing CD Players, the Linn Ikemi, Listening in the Nearfield, State of the Art