No one does it like we do it!
While talking to Peter Qvortrup, the mastermind behind and man without whom there would be no Audio Note UK, it strikes me how open he is about his role models. He keeps telling about Peter Snell, the legendary loudspeaker designer from the 1970s and 1980s, on whose designs AN UK’s speakers are based on; how he’s been studying; Class A topology, fancy OTPs, extravagant windings etc., and most importantly: Peter’s respect for Kondo’s legacy of seriously looking into the material foundation of the amps and other products.
But how surprising Peter’s openness is after all? If you did what Audio Note UK has done, namely start with what you consider the most solid basic designs, whether loudspeaker, amp, or turntable, what would you do? Naturally, you set out to improve them! Except that ”improve” is a too mild a word in this context: to perfect the designs in a number of areas as much as they can. Main lines given and known in advance, going to extremes with every detail is not surprising, it’s logical! That’s the logic of the AN UK’s design philosophy and business model.
Audio Note UK is certainly not the only company out there to stress the utmost importance of every detail of their designs (in fact, it has become a fairly common jargon in the field nowadays). What distinguishes the AN UK from others is their unparalleled extremism, how madly meticulous they’re about what goes into the amps and speakers and turntables.
It’s one thing to hear or read about it and another to be able to actually visit the factory and tour the premises, and see people working there each on his or her workstation and specific area of expertise, all those cabinets and shelves and storage rooms, one after another, loaded with rare and precious components and parts, tubes, resistors, caps, transformers, PC boards and so and so forth. One need not believe that entering into every detail to this degree counts, or agree upon the true sonic effect of every component change, but there’s no way of denying the seriousness of the Audio Note UK’s approach. More than 20 years in audio journalism and I simply fail to see who else would go to this length and in such a strong-minded manner in order to achieve what they believe in. I sense that this is something different.
A Bit of Epistemics
”But how do you know? How do you know!”
Audio Note UK’s obsession with details no doubt partly springs from Peter’s personal perfectionism. I get the feeling that when it comes to audio, there’s something in him that gets fascinated by the tiniest facts inside the boxes, tubes, and what have you, which is kind of compelling because otherwise, he doesn’t give the impression of being a fiddly engineer. Is he trying to compensate his generosity and unsubtleness manifested, e.g., by the creative jumble and chaos of his workbench? His grandiloquence? Good food, good wines, good music, good conversations. Never met an engineer exuding similar broad-mindedness toward life and its many divergencies.
I don’t know, but there’s a methodological or epistemic issue behind the obsession too. That is the desire to have full control over all endogenous (to the designs) variables in the equation. When all components to the very smallest ones are sourced from one’s own pockets, the manufacturer can guarantee its full command over what goes into the amps, loudspeakers etc., and only then, Peter is convinced, it’s possible to assess the true sonic effect of changing a single variable in the designs; and that’s precisely what people at the Audio Note UK do: listen to the sonic fingerprint of inserting a new resistor, cap, etc., in the circuitry:
”Listening to every new component such as resistors, is essential in our scheme of things, that is really what sets us apart from all other audio manufacturers, as you know.”
Supervenience
”New scientific truths do not succeed by convincing its opponents, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”
That’s Peter quoting Max Planck.
X supervenes on Y if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible. In other words, X supervenes on Y only if X cannot vary unless Y varies. It’s clear that ”sound quality” supervenes on certain physical properties in this way. Supervenience limits our possibilities to draw evaluative conclusions about sound quality: we must make sure that if two components sound different, they also differ with respect to some natural property in a necessary and relevant way.
Varieties of Goodness
”All other things being equal, silver is better!”
To claim that something is good (better, best) is not a walkover because good is not an ordinary adjective. There’s no pure unadulterated goodness that would assume the same meaning irrespectively of which noun it precedes (or comes after). It’s somewhat similar to big/small: a big fly is not big, and a small elephant is not small. Something can be good (better/best) only in such and such a way.
What is it for silver to be good? Surely goodness of some metal is not goodness of a knife or car, for example. The goodness of a metal depends, presumably, on the purpose the metal is used for (tin-silver is better for soldering than tin-lead because ... ). But that’s not what Peter means with his conclusion; he rather means that silver is good/better in that it produces a better sound. But isn’t that taking us out of the frying pan into the fire? What is a good sound? A little bit of reflection is enough to show that there must be numerous ways in which a sound can be good (or none, which is an interesting possibility). Perhaps a good sound is a sound that is good to listen to?
But what does that mean? Should we call together a group of experts to decide which sound is good and which not, just as we let the art community to decide which paintings or sculptures are good enough to be dragged to the galleries or museums?
Interestingly, for the goodness of a pro-speaker it seems not necessary that the speaker sound’s good in the sense that the sound pleases its listener as long as the speaker does the job it is planned for (mastering and monitoring). Instead, for a goodness of a hi-fi loudspeaker it is essential in what a specific way the speaker sounds, i.e. the goodness of hi-fi speakers is inseparable from its owner and user.
But this kind of subjective evaluation is exactly what Peter aims to get rid of with his Comparison by Contrast method. The point of this methodology is simply to engage in the business of revealing obvious known sonic differences between the recordings.
”Secondly, we can also look at this from the recordings’ perspective. It is clear that the consistency achieved, for example, by DECCA with the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet conducting, or with their Vienna Philharmonic recordings, where they had a permanent set up that was perfected over many years, resulted in a predictable and consistently high quality of sound.
More silver means that one can more quickly or more easily make this conclusion or how does it manifest itself. There are many other great recordings out there with a consistent sonic vision, and that can be clearly and unequivocally demonstrated by the Comparison by Contrast methodology.”
The Listening Sanctuary
”If only I knew where all my string quartet LPs are?”
Peter’s listening room resembles a library of some well read writer or academic person expect that the shelves are filled with LPs, thousands of them, from floor to ceiling. The traditional style massive bookcase is specifically made for the room by a local carpenter. Books are lying all over the coach table and around Peter’s listening seat but otherwise the room is dedicated to listening to records and showing up the audio system. Music.
One cannot choose a practical attitude towards such a number of records. A little bit of maths suffices to show the limits of life, our mortality. So I guess it must be a matter of self-identity. Whether an audiophile or record collector or both, it’s important to have the feeling or awareness of being surrounded by all this wonderful Western music, and especially the LPs from the golden era in the 1950s and 1960s.
The system of the room is more or less the best that the Audio Note UK can offer, including the new three-motor turntable that still needed some features to be bettered.
Peter is known for being a big friend of classic music and jazz, as well as analogue playback, but at first he makes me listen to a CD track of some very heavy techno stuff played back on a very high volume level, just to show, like a proud little boy, what his speakers are capable of, if really pushed to the extreme. To have physically reasonable sized speakers driven by a reasonable number of tube watts does not imply one would have to limit one’s love for music to classic or jazz. No distortion, no clipping.
Rest of the time we spent with classic music (opera, orchestral) & jazz. Peter praised the excellent radiation characteristics of the tweeters, thanks to which the off-axis response remains smooth and energetic. This feature Peter associates with Peter Snell’s ingenuity in building up cross-overs. Because of this property, and perhaps for some other reasons too, Peter, just like me, is not in favour of listening to music by sitting in the hot spot.
His listening seat is almost straight in front of the right channel speaker, and it doesn’t matter because from that distance, the sound is fully usable from that angle too. I myself prefer to sit even further away from the speakers, and listen with one ear rather than two, in order to make the stereo sound become more monophonic, and thus much easier for the brain to chew.
Decline of the Decades
”Progress is not a straight line.”
Peter wrote an essay as useful and important reminder of historicity of things; of how easily we mistake something that looks like development for true development, and how looking back often provides us with a different story. That is why sensitivity toward historical issues should be an essential part of every audiophile’s self-reflection, also because most of the audio techniques date back to mid-20th century and in some cases much longer.
How would you tell the best audio journalists from ordinary ones? Almost without exception, by their very good grasp of the history of audio. (In fact it’s an interesting question whether any genuinely new technology exists, since most modern technology is based on inventions made decades ago, digital included.) Anyway, when you talk to Peter be prepared that historical themes show up from time to time.
Another all-pervading thought in Peter’s essay is the non-linearity of technological progress. I remember an exhibition at the London Design Museum that nicely demoed how for the spread of colour TV, prince Charles and Diana’s wedding might have been a way more influential than any purely technological factor. If you still hold the naive view that any new technology, simply by virtue of being new, would be better than older one, read Peter’s article. Personally the most valuable offering of Peter’s contribution is its insight into the non-parallel nature of the development of different branches of audio and recording technology, how progress and advances in one area often mask the decline in another.
To the Peter’s story I have only this to add: the performance of the peak periods cannot be repeated because the reasons why some technology peaks are not only technological but ‘cultural’ as well, and those underlying cultural factors cannot be repeated.
Technology is not something that is born to satisfy clearly defined necessary human needs – in fact most technology serves human needs that objectively seen are unnecessary – or as a caprice of some individual engineer, but because each era has a pre-technical desire for life that is not for engineers to decide upon.
The reason why certain audio technology peaked when it did was that there were people back then who had ideas, not about technology, but about music and life that eventually led to the development of highly competent technology.