I called Seattle Directory Assistance and got his number immediately. A high, clear,…
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The breakthrough came by way of Bernie Grundman, the well-known mastering engineer who runs the BGM mastering studio in Los Angeles. I learned from Joe Harley that Grundman had briefly worked under Roy at a Phoenix recording studio in the mid-1960s. When I reached Grundman, he had some interesting things to say about Roy, and one stopped me cold. He said that Roy had moved to the Seattle area many years ago because his children lived there. "I'm pretty sure he's still in Seattle...if he's still alive."
"So," Roy continues, "it was my idea—why attenuate the microphones and then amplify the signal again? Why don't we just take the signal out of the microphones and run it through variable attenuators, and we wouldn't need any amplifiers? So that was the original console. Nothing to it. I probably had eight attenuators. That was before they had sliders, even. Couldn't find any decent sliders. Didn't even want one. We did all our mixing by turning knobs. We went from the attenuators right into the tape machine—no other equipment."
Forty-five years later, Bernie Grundman reflected that "Roy…
Sidebar: A Selected Roy DuNann Discography
Originally released on Contemporary, reissued on JVC XRCD
Barney Kessel/Ray Brown/Shelly Manne, The Poll Winners, JVCXR-0019-2 (1957)
Art Pepper, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, VICJ-60087 (1957/1997)
Art Pepper + Eleven, Modern Jazz Classics, VICJ-60245 (1959/1998)
Andr;ae Previn/Red Mitchell/Shelly Manne, West Side Story, JVCXR-0209-2 (1956/2000)
André; Previn/Leroy Vinnegar/Shelly Manne, My Fair Lady, VICJ-60216 (1956/1998)
Sonny Rollins, The Contemporary Leaders, VICJ-60244 (1958/1998)
Sonny Rollins, Way…
"You've set the audio industry back 20 years!"
That was a fellow engineer's response upon seeing vacuum tubes in William Z. Johnson's amplifier at a hi-fi show in 1970. Back then, the vacuum tube had been totally abandoned in favor of the transistor. In fact, the only newly made audio components based on vacuum-tube technology you could buy were guitar amplifiers. Glowing bottles were embarrassing reminders to the engineering community of just how "primitive" electronics technology had been just a short time ago.
Imagine that engineer's surprise if he could have known that,…
Harley: You once said that hi-fi is one of the few industries where products are measured one way and used in another way.
Johnson: I have said that on more than one occasion. Every measurement that we're aware of falls into the realm of what we call repetitive, or static, measurement. In the real world, the simplest musical signal has component signals 1/10000 the size of some of the other signals present, and at many, many frequencies at once. It simply defies the abilities of static circuitry measurement.
Harley: Have you found areas of technical performance that correlate…
Both: Why is that? [laughter]
Johnson: Well, I guess there are two reasons: One is the availability of some premium-quality vacuum tubes that have both the performance and reasonable life expectancy; the other is that, frankly, whether we like it or not, the tube is simply a better device for audio.
I don't really believe that solid-state will ever be as good as vacuum tubes can be. I think that, with the same attention to design sophistication, vacuum tubes would always win. Unfortunately, the complexity can get out of hand.
But your question was about being perceived as…
Johnson: Actually, that isn't quite true. The final decisions are made with an analog source because, at this state of the art, analog is still better—just like the vacuum tube is still better.
I should also add that decisions about sound quality are not made by any one man—me, for example. They are made by a team of people. We are very fortunate in that our salespeople and our customer-service manager are all audiophiles and reasonably critical listeners. All those on our engineering team fall into that category as well. So we have about six to eight people who will make a final…
As one of the founders of Threshold Corporation, its present chairman, and its longtime technical head, Nelson Pass has had a hand in the design and implementation of the products to come out of that company since its inception. His SA-1 power amplifier and FET 10 preamplifier have been long-term favorites of Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt and I reviewed the Threshold SA-12/e power amplifier a year ago (Vol.13 No.12). I cornered him on a visit to Santa Fe...
Thomas J. Norton: You began your audio career at ESS...
Nelson Pass: I was at ESS from 1972 through 1973. Actually I…
Pass: Within the context of the chassis, the original power supply, the heatsinks and so on, what we do is we replace the sonic circuitry. In the case of the older product, which was non-Stasis, and even the earlier Stasis models—the 1, 2, and 3—we replace the output stages completely with a later design. And we replace the front-end circuitry associated with the amplifier. If the power-supply capacitors have exceeded ten years of use we replace them, and the rectifier diodes, and those things which have a tendency to wear over time, so as to keep the device reliable for another 10 years or…
Pass: The delay is more associated with internal testing and documentation than supply lead time in and of itself. One of the reasons for that is that, in almost all cases, considerably before the design has been frozen and gets documented, you know what the longest-lead-time parts are going to be, and you've settled on them: heatsinks, power-supply capacitors, transformers, semiconductors. You can pick up five to ten weeks. The time for us between the finish of a design and its actual release is about four months.
Norton: Tell us a little bit about your new Forté amplifiers, the 4 and 5…