Welcome to a new publication and what I hope is a new era in audio craftsmanship. Speaker Builder is an extension of my original dream, conceived in the late sixties, that a significant growth in audio construction by amateurs would flourish and grow in the United States if a publication were offered to encourage it. By craftsmanship I do not mean mere do-it-yourself. The do-it-yourself movement appears to me to be "look at me I can really do it-and cheaper too." The prime impetus for do-it-yourself is saving money.
The sort of craftsmanship I am most interested in is one based in the love of doing the work and a knowledge of the inner workings and realities of the means of reproducing sound. This interest goes far deeper than many of the efforts of the commercial enterprises which manufacture the equipment people buy.
With that dream in mind I founded The Audio Amateur magazine in 1970, with a lot of help from friends. Ten years later, the magazine is a modest success and has, I believe, influenced and aided a growing movement among music lovers to find ways to make better equipment for reproducing music.
In 1970 the larger U. S. hi-fi magazines had turned away almost entirely from any technical articles of any kind and those they did publish were child's play.
The situation has altered radically in ten years.
Audio has become a much more technical magazine and occasionally publishes fine construction projects.
The electronics magazines stay with relatively simple projects for the most part-at least in audio matters-and follow whatever the fad of the moment may be, whether CB radio, computers and whatever will come next.
I am pleased that so many of you want to set out with us on this new journey into the special world of loudspeaker construction. I have high hopes that by giving special attention to the matter of speaker construction and design, we can find new answers to one of audio's most complex problems: how to get the sound back into the air again after storing it in an electronic form.
We will naturally be spending a lot of time on cabinets. Their design is the prime matter, but constructing them well and finishing them beautifully are also details to which we'll give much space.
Driver manufacturers are, happily, becoming more and more aware of the number of individuals who want to build their own speaker systems. They are sharing unprecedented amounts of information on the performance of their drivers and how to use and enclose them well. We will try to relay some of that in formation but also to provide articles showing the speaker builder how to make some types of speaker drivers for himself. Three sorts are prime candidates: the electrostatic, the air motion transformer developed by Oskar Heil (manufactured by ESS), and the Magneplanar-type «peaker.
Not only do we want to explore new ground, but we will re-print some of the really valuable material which was published when the high fidelity movement was in its infancy. Some of the basic information about speaker behavior appeared over fifty years ago. We hope to begin that survey of the past by reprinting some excellent articles to give us all some perspective on what has been done and when.
Speaker Builder is primarily committed to helping you enjoy constructing the very best speaker system you can build for yourself. We will try to bring you ac curate, authoritative information. But at the same time keep in mind that much of what is at issue about speakers is not a matter of scientific certainty. In these gray areas opinion prevails and people of high reputation disagree about quite important matters. As Speaker Builder's editor, I will attempt to bring together the best representatives of differing points of view without bias toward any one of them. In my opinion periodicals should provide a forum for differing views and insights. I encourage every subscriber to read carefully, do his own homework as objectively as he can and to report what he finds in our "Letters" columns. We have no gilded thrones around the editorial sanctum of this publication -and the editor wouldn't have time to sit on one if we did have them. So you need not expect pronouncements from on high. We are a forum for ideas and the more testing, and communication we do about those ideas in these pages the better.
I hope every Speaker Builder reader will consider that he or she is a potential author. We need good ac counts of the sort of work you do with speakers. Write to me with a brief outline of what you think you wish to write about and I will reply promptly.
Our articles will report your journey and not merely your results. We need to hear about failures, what did not work, as well as the final triumphs. We like personal writing and are not fearful that the use of the personal pronoun will detract from the ideas you wish to communicate.
We hope you will send us items for Tools, Tips & Techniques for which we will pay modest honoraria-and always enough to pay for your year's subscription to this magazine. We need to know about your shortcuts, useful tools, and solutions to tough problems you have discovered in your work on speakers.
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Problems are welcome too: Bafflements and Breakthroughs will contain your puzzlements and the answers others may have found for those problems.
Speakers have been around for a long time. The first were horns riding the arms of phonographs. In the late 19th Century one London music lover had an exponential horn of over 60ft length mounted atop his listening room and connected to the phonograph in the next room via a tube. The late Percy Wilson advised a Nor folk, England devotee of acoustical gramophones, Douglas Fitzpatrick, in building a horn for an antique reproducer whose mouth opening was six feet square-as shown in the photo below. We'd like more such photographs for future issues. Send them to the editor for the Heirlooms collection. We will return them carefully packed, and insured.
We'd also like photographs of your speaker systems-inside and out if possible. We prefer black and white photographs but are sometimes able to use color prints if they are smooth finish and have adequate contrast. Send them to Craftsman's Comer.
We'll be offering a wide assortment of basic information in issues to come. Data Base will contain such things as crossover coil winding values, R-L-C charts and other information. If you have such information to share please write us about what you have and we'll let you know whether we can use it.
We are looking about for a good columnist on woodworking. There are more tools, for less money these days than ever before. But basic skills are really the result of information plus practical experience. If you think you'd like to write such a series for us, or know someone who would, let us know.
A word about advertising and advertisers is in order.
We have long since recovered from any deep seated fears editors seem heir to about undue influence of advertisers. Some companies strike fear in my vitals but not those who advertise in the magazines I have the pleasure to publish-not as yet anyway. I have no problem refusing such and have done so in times past.
Advertisers in this magazine appear to me to be a wide range of enterprise, and those I know personally are honorable. Many of them are small operations, often a moonlight effort on the part of an enthusiast to launch himself on an independent career.
If you have trouble with an advertiser, please give him or her the benefit of the doubt and a generous amount of patience. Delivery has become very problematical even with the efforts of United Parcel. If you are not kept informed about back-ordered or lost items, let us know and we will try to get an answer for you. If an advertiser proves to be unreliable we will cancel his advertising and advise readers about the problems encountered.
When you write to us about such problems, however, try to avoid taking up a Ralph Nader/vigilante posse role. The facts and dates plus copies of relevant documents will do the trick. We ad vise anyone buying by mail to keep good records of transactions. It doesn't help to tell us you ordered something from some vendor "several weeks ago..." Speaker Builder is a reader supported magazine, which means we do not depend on advertisers for the major support of the publication. But advertisers and advertising are a vital part of the life of any avocation.
The special interests of audiophiles, like most other groups of enthusiasts, are best served by fellow enthusiasts who decide to go into business to supply what they often best understand the devotee needs. Some quite large businesses began in that fashion. Such enterprises stay helpful and producing good products as long as they get, and heed, good feedback.
Speaker Builder is not primarily a marketing tool for advertisers. No advertiser will get a product review in our pages because he is an advertiser, and vice versa.
But at the same time, your hobby interests will be better served if the people who make the supplies you need know you are a speaker builder and that you read this publication. A healthy hobby inspires good vendors. We will cooperate with you as consumers in keeping retailers and manufacturers honest and we will not knowingly slant editorial reports or reviews to keep an advertiser happy. At the same time we will not allow our columns to be used by an unreasonable con sumer who wants a convenient medium for dumping on a vendor.
The last thing this editor wants from readers is false enthusiasm about what appears in SB's pages or false reactions to advertisers just to encourage them to advertise here. But your honest reactions to advertisers can let them know how well their dollars are being spent on their message in SB. Your honest reactions to their products can help them make better ones -just as our reviewer reports can assist in the same effort.
Contrary to popular wisdom about "Madison Avenue" I do not believe advertisers and consumers are natural enemies. I think the hobby we love is likely to profit most from a more cooperative and rational set of assumptions all round. I have come to believe that the good vendors need encouragement quite as much as sloppy, venal ones need firm opposition. We will try to tread such a path and we hope that you will too.
We begin this journey with high hopes. Speaker Builder we trust will become a deeply satisfying reading experience and meeting place for every music lover who wants to discuss this many-sided avocation.
We will give it our best and we hope that you will too.
Also see:
An Ambience Reproduction Speaker System -- by David L. Clark & Bernhard F. Muller; photos by David Carlstrom