Strange Days or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love MP3's

At this year's CES, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion, the title of which was "High End Demo's in an IPOD World".  The premise revolved around the industry opinion that there are now millions of consumers that think compressed music is "the music" and high fidelity is dying because of it.  Assuming that anyone cares to hear the difference it ultimately leads to the question, "Where do you go to hear a truly high quality, full-resolution recording?"  

We all know there are not nearly as many audio retail outlets around and that audio is really no longer as prevalent a hobby as in the past.  But wtf?  Are we as an industry blaming the disappearance of hi-fi retail shops on the IPOD instead of a lack of consumer interest in traditional gear?  Does anyone out there think that just maybe, audio manufacturers have avoided change for the last 20 years and we are now paying the price?

Personally, I love MP3's (and other compressed formats).  Music is so easy to acquire and it is so inexpensive.  A buck for a DRM-free track on Amazon?  Fine with me, I can afford to take a flyer on something I have never heard before.

I mean, what's the risk?  That these same consumers will never experience the joy of sitting in the sweet spot grooving on minute details of the recording  and passing judgement on the image which might be pulling slightly to the left?

Guess what folks!  Even during stereo's heyday, 90% or better of all music listeners didn't know or care about the "sweet spot".  Hopefully they listened for the content, because it made them happy or sad, or provided nothing more than a pleasant diversion from the rest of their day.  Hopefully they still do.

This is what I love about personal media players and the ability to listen on demand to whatever you find interesting.  Consumers that embrace IPOD-type products are listening to more music than ever before, in quantity and variety.

We audio manufacturers have gotten so full of ourselves that we forgot why we got into the business in the first place... tunes.  We made the gear more complicated and expensive.  Plus we told the market that movies are cooler.  While the virtual world was moving on, making products simpler and more fun, the message we sent was "you have to do it our way".  We lost touch with our customers, and we won't get them back unless we change.

Let give you an example.  Recently I got back into playing music after a hiatus of over 30 years.  Once I was sure I was going to stick with it, I decided to set up a home recording rig.  The technology available for recording is amazing, but in most cases it is not simple.  My goal was to make music, not become an engineer.  I went through at least 5 iterations of gear and software, finding each too time consuming, and cumbersome to learn and use.  Then I found Garage Band, an Apple notebook and an inexpensive audio interface from Tascam.  Within an hour I was laying down tracks with nearly all my focus on the content, not the technology.  If this is not a lesson for our industry, I do not know what is.

I have learned something else as well.  There is no way to take music away from people, no matter how hard we might try.  And we have tried.  Along with gear, music got expensive.  The record industry spent millions trying to stop P2P sharing, blaming downloading for the downturn in music sales.  It could have nothing to do with the fact that before being available on-line, there was no way to hear new music without shelling out $15 -$18 per disc.  I still believe that an everyday, sub-$10 price for CD's would have kept that format alive for many years to come, and I also believe that greater access to broadband would force the music industry to find alternate means of selling recordings no matter what.

But it is too late and none of this really no longer matters.  The industry did not pay attention to its customers and they have taken the music back.  We can now listen to whatever we want and we can buy it so affordably, there is no reason not to.  We can afford to experiment again.  I truly believe that music appreciation is growing because of these formats.  Artists are connecting directly with their fans; it's amazing.

Check the growing sales of turntables, vinyl records, stereo receivers and bookshelf speakers.  Music is almost as important as oxygen.  It will always find a way to flourish.

And I know one other thing:  If there is music, there will be audio companies that provide the playback gear, although you may not recognize their names unless we wake up.

The Importance of Xd

It wasn't long after getting into audio that I realized speakers are the weakest link in the audio playback chain.  At the same time it was clear they also are the key to creating the magic... occasionally.  Listening to the right recording, in the right room and in the right mood shows us that replicating the live performance is possible but only when the stars are aligned a certain way and all the mojo is working.

It makes no sense to me that enthusiasts will fuss over a tenth of a percentage point in amplifier THD, all the while listening through loudspeakers that at their very best produce 10 times more distortion.  These contradictions were the reason I got into the loudspeaker business.  There just had to be a better way.

Every decision made in passive (and most active) speaker designs involves compromise.  Acoustic designers have to prioritize and balance electrical and mechanical distortion, frequency and time domain response, not to mention guessing what the listening room will be like.  This is one reason why they all sound different, and why any speaker will sound different based where it is placed.  Drivers and crossovers are imprecise, clumsy devices and choosing the right combinations rely as much on intuition as science.  While our industry has made some improvements over the years, there is very little we can do to advance the craft as it is.

While NHT was working on analog technologies such as our Focused Image Geometry (a method for minimizing the effect of the room on sonic playback), on the other side of the planet one of early pioneers of DSP and a co-founder of Fairlight was working on digital solutions for improving loudspeaker performance.  We met each other some years later and Xd was born.

The belief that we held in common with our new partners at DEQX is that the speaker really must be corrected first, then room correction was feasible, at least in the low frequency range.  When you can control both frequency and time domain response, and provide steep digital filters through software, most of the compromises we've lived with for years disappear.  Driver design then has one real purpose; to minimize mechanical distortion.

Don't misunderstand.  It still takes a good acoustics engineer to achieve quality results.  The interesting thing about software-based correction is that it gives designers a whole new pallet of tools and possible directions.  It means we can build smaller, affordable systems that will outperform traditional products by huge margins and they can be placed almost anywhere in a room.  In addition, the amazing resolution is so revealing you can actually hear a difference using better quality components.  And while a sub-$1000 dollar DSP corrected system will  blow any existing passive system away, there will be room for higher end systems.  This leaves lots of room for multiple speaker brands and lots of potential choices for us listeners.

So Xd goes on the "shelf" for a while.  Our first effort proved what we wanted it to, but the hardware is outdated, and there are better, faster, cheaper chip sets out there that we need to work with.  Back to the design caves we go, hopefully others in the loudspeaker field will join the effort and advance the technology quickly.

 

Disco Daze

NHT is not particularly fast at product development but when we finally get it ready to produce, we typically have a product that really performs well for its intended purpose. 

With every new product, the important details are labored over every step of the way.  By the time it is finished, we have taken it home, listened in every conceivable scenario, corrected problems, argued about voicing, and listened some more.  When done, that new product has become a part of our brand psyche, and part of the family.

This is why I hate discontinuing products.  It feels to me like abandoning a favorite pet by the roadside. But if you have taken the time to read this blog you know that NHT is once again a small, independent company.  This has forced us to look at what we offer and reduce the models to a select line of our best and most successful speaker systems.  

The changing - and contracting shape of the traditional audio business is diminishing the supplier base; another reason to take a long hard look at what the consumer market considers relevant. For years NHT bought drivers from a number of suppliers located primarily in Japan and Europe.  While more expensive, we supported these companies because of their investment in innovation and parts consistency, two key elements for building great-sounding speakers.  There are lots of driver suppliers springing up in Asia, and many are quite competent, but they do little R&D and most lack consistent suppliers for their components.  This actually has less impact on our new product development as we can design around problems, but makes supporting older models increasingly challenging.

Lastly, the newest reason for discontinuing speaker models: technology.  Electronics makers have been dealing with this for years, but not us speaker guys.  Our fundamental technology has not changed since 1940... at least not until recently.  In NHT's case, it's called Xd.  Xd represents the advanced use of DSP in the correction of loudspeaker performance.  Even though we began shipping Xd two years ago, the underlying technology is still considered radical and new.  It is dependent on microprocessors and is expensive to implement even in its most basic form.

Our original model is still one of the most amazing sounding loudspeakers I have ever heard, and we firmly believe the technology represents the future, which is why we decided to put it on hold until a new design is complete.

This is a longer story - stay tuned for part 2.

Happy Birthday and why are you still here?

NHT turned 21 on December 18, 2007.  Oddly enough, it was also the same month that I and another employee "lifer" bought our company back.  It has been bought and sold now 5 times since 1990.  Each buyer got caught up in the brand's reputation for great sounding products. Each had their own vision of how they could make us a big commercial success.  Each of them failed.

No company can withstand that many different strategies.  NHT should be dead and gone, but here we are... the cockroach of speaker brands lives on. There are lots of people that think they know the reason.  Some say it's the passion of those working here, some say we are the most stubborn folks on the planet.  Personally, I think it is because NHT is a craft.  We love music here in a big way and designing each new speaker is like making a new instrument.  We let our hearts and hands guide the development. This is not a recipe for big business and we "get" there is no chance of us ruling the audio earth.  That's ok though.  When it's all over for us humans, the cockroaches will be checking their tunes out on their NHT's.