DOWN TO ZERO

Several years ago while in Hong Kong, I was chatting with an old friend, Max Roberts. Max, retired now, was a distributor of audio products in Australia for just about 40 years. Max knew what he was talking about. He had been in the business since the beginning of stereo and worked with some of the best companies in the world. "High fidelity is not subjective.", he told me. "A piano recording should sound like a live piano; you should be able to hear the wood overtones in a violin. Hi-fi is absolutely objective."

Max's comment resonated deeply with me, I realized he had just defined the driving force behind NHT. We have designed lots of speakers over the years, some better than others and everyone seems to have a different favorite. Never-the-less, I can say with certainty they all offer high fidelity sound.

Until recently the speaker we were most proud of? Not the 3.3, not Xd, but the $250/pair, little Super Zero. In our opinion, if you have a enough money, making a really good speaker is relatively easy. Mass producing a true, high fidelity speaker with a very low cost of materials is pretty difficult, that's why there aren't very many. It was our most popular speaker of all time, particularly with budget-constrained music lovers. The "Zero" concept has evolved into something different today. The Absolute Zero is a wonderful product, but it has changed; now sporting a larger woofer, different tweeter, dressy-lacquered cabinet and unfortunately a higher price.

Just two months ago we quietly introduced the Super Zero 2.0. Is it exactly the same as the original? It looks very much like it but it's not the same... its actually better. While it may seem trivial, it is impossible to clone a loudspeaker. You just can't do it and honestly we did not try. What we attempted with the 2.0 version was to take the original's sonic signature, mix in some of what we learned from making professional recording monitors (M-00) and widened off-axis response. And what you get is; 1) midrange and highs comparable to really expensive speakers, 2) incredible sonic detail (you can mix a record on these) and 3) you don't have to sit in the sweet spot to enjoy them.

The best part? Our everyday price is now $99 each, 25% less than in 1994. Can you get a bigger sound stage and better dynamics from our's or other's larger speakers? Of course you can. But on our little Super Zero 2.0's, you can hear reverb tails left accidentally in recordings, you can hear the bow of a bass violin excite its wood body and hear fingers sliding across new guitar strings as if you were there.

And this is our point. High fidelity should not come with a price penalty. At NHT it doesn't. This is what we are most proud of. We hope you enjoy them.

Pay Attention, May 18th is Coming

May 18^th is an awesomely, auspicious day for NHT… one worth celebrating. It was May 18, 2009 when we re-emerged from our self-imposed nap to a new web-based business model. The new model seems to be working like we thought it might and so it appears that NHT has hurdled the financial meltdown and found a way to continue making good sounds for not much money.

We did not plan it, but the day also marks a significant event for all in the music world… the invention of the dynamic loudspeaker. It wasn’t the first attempt at a speaker, which occurred years before, but this device had a moving coil, magnet and paper diaphragm. And it was the first such device used for public address. And it all happened right in my hometown, Napa, California.

The founders and inventors were Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham. They called their invention the “Great Voice” (Magnavox in latin). On May 18^th in 1915, Pridham climbed to the roof of the pair’s lab in a residential neighborhood, while Jensen manned the microphones in the lab itself and began to speak. Can you imagine? In the quiet rural setting of Napa at the turn of the century, all of a sudden a voice carries across the valley? Reports from locals at the time said it could be heard over a mile away. You have to wonder how many people thought God was speaking to them. Then one of them decided that they should put the microphones near a Victrola. Music played through a PA for the first time; the first hifi, sort of. Wow.

Not unlike entrepreneurs in our age, Peter and Edwin did not set out to make the loudspeaker. They, like many others in the world, were trying to make it big in the burgeoning wireless radio field used primarily for ship to shore, rail and major city to city applications. They had an Angel investor in San Francisco, who financed their work and suggested they go to Napa as it was rural and their IP would remain hidden from the world.

Their radio research failed. The dynamic speaker, a technological by-product, was developed almost as a lark at first until they saw the commercial possibilities for public speaking, politics, and public announcements. And broadcast music was quite nice of course, but who knew?

They solved the problem of making a moving coil on the steps of the old Goodman Library building not too many days before their first test. I sat on those same steps not long ago, thinking about that day, and what their revelation felt like. This was disruptive innovation. Neither Microsoft nor Apple have anything on these guys.

Think of all the uses we have for speakers in almost all facets of our lives and how many other products and technologies that would be meaningless if you had nothing to play them through. Personally, I’m really glad they found the path. Otherwise I might be picking grapes instead of making speakers.

If you find yourself in need of tunes, you might want to visit our site (nhthifi.com) on the 18^th, we have a little party planned. Happy birthday to all of us.

The Year of the Gadget

The headline in the business section of the SF Chronicle on the day before opening day of CES in January referred to this year’s show as the “Gadget Show”. “Gadgets?” I thought to myself, “ Hey, we put a lot of work, science and care into our stuff. Gadgets? We don’t make no stinkin’ gadgets.” As I prepared to verbally body-slam this denigration, I thought, maybe I should look up the meaning of the word before pulling the trigger.

“Gadget (noun): A device or control that is very useful for a particular job.”

Hmmm, maybe the reference was not so far off the mark after all. This definition came from the dictionary app in my IPhone, a gadget if there ever was one. On to Wikipedia…

“A gadget is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention.”

Now I always had the impression that “gadget” was kind of a negative term, superficial somehow, you know like the Popeil Pocket Fisherman ^tm. As I read further it seems that the word gadget is synonymous with invention. Some gadgets were good, some comic and some extraordinary. According to Wikipedia, the atomic bomb was referred to by some members of the Manhatten Project as “the gadget”. Whoa!

So in retrospect, I guess the headline was correct. Its what we do in this business invent and produce gadgets. Gadgets have a purpose, whether that’s to make us laugh (as in chattering teeth), or be amazed by little, tiny powered speakers that go to +11. Each has an application for which it was designed. The design can be extraordinary giving it the “legs” to last for years, or it can be a fad with the half-life of a single holiday season.

What always makes a good product in our opinion is an application-based design filling a real world need. So rather than get all serious and tell you we’ll soon have new models that “advance the state of the art”, I think we’ll just cop to the fact that we have some cool gadgets coming down the road.

Happy Holidays and Goodbye 2009

Its been a tough year for many of us, lots of hardships, many lost. But it has also been a year of resetting goals and attitudes. In my opinion, we seemed to have stopped to smell the roses a little more, maybe have become more understanding of the plight of others. I certainly hope that this recession has brought about some permanent change in our life priorities.

Well here is to 2010 and the next chapter. We wish you all the best of Holidays.

Shameless Endorsement #2

Another good friend of ours has a company called Maverick Lifestyle (www.mavericklifestyle.com). Maverick has introduced a new blue tooth headset for cell phones, called Nica. It works well and sounds great. I like this product a lot as it fits my application for such a device, which is hands-free in the car. It has a great magnetic charging device for both home and auto, it almost never loses connection with my phone. What I like most is that its an on-ear design, I can slip the small disc on when the phone rings and otherwise leave it on the dock. Simple and comfortable. Maverick has a promotion on now which gets you 40% off, here is the promo code: NICA2009.

There were mixed feelings here as I passed Nica around, some of our group liked it, some did not. Nothing to do with performance, more with functionality. This is what I love about product development. Some products are broad-based in their appeal and others are only going to appeal to a certain segment. Both can be successful, but the design needs to be intentional, its not luck. I'll write more on this subject in the coming weeks.

Listening Again

I have made a commitment to do this once per week going forward. It seems the blog always gets put on the burner the furthest away and stays there.

We've been an online company now for about 3 months. I'm not sure what it all means yet, but it has been a very pleasant experience to date. We are learning new things almost hourly about communications. And our connection with people who listen to music avidly is like the old days, its not just about the gear, people want to talk about what they are listening to.

Speaking of which, I got to spend a couple of hours in our engineering sound room the other day listening to music played through a new Classic model we are working on. This is what I love most about this job (if you can call it that), watching a new product go from concept to reality. Nudging the voicing along for hours, then days and sometimes months, until you look at each other and nod... its ready.

We actually have several new designs in progress, and some more on the drawing board in lots of new categories. Some will make it to market, some won't. It's how it works for us, it has to not only sound good, it must also meet the application, cost and market requirements. Keep an eye out for spy photos, they will start appearing soon. The best part though? I get to listen to them all.

Finding Our Way Home

Its been several months since I have posted anything new.  Sorry for the silence.  There are so many rumors about NHT on the street, let me set this straight.  NHT is not bankrupt, not closing our doors, etc.  

We did however shut down our traditional sales operations.  The backend of the business including our customer support has continued on.  We needed change desperately in so many areas it was time for a reset.   In retrospect, we chose the right time to do so as the economy slowed.

We are coming back soon, with a new direction for conducting business.  We have several new and exciting products in the works too.  Stay tuned, we'll tell you more in just a few weeks.

Thanks for your patience.  Peace and prosperity to all.