Brilliant Corners

"Paul Klipsch was a genius," Roy Delgado told me recently, with the sound of genuine amazement in his voice. "Me, I'm just a tinkerer." I've spoken to Delgado, Klipsch's chief audio engineer, a handful of times over the past few years and find him affable, plainspoken, and almost absurdly humble. His LinkedIn page describes him simply as "engineer at Klipsch." His bio on the Klipsch Museum website lists his interests as "a closer relationship with God [and] the pursuit of the ever-elusive largemouth bass." To be sure, Delgado holds several patents, has an intimidating grasp of loudspeaker design, and is anything but a tinkerer. But it was still weird to see him—dressed in the T-shirt, light jeans, and work boots of an Arkansas fishing enthusiast—at the Nine Orchard Hotel during last year's New York Fashion Week.

We were there for the launch of a loudspeaker, a collaboration between the Little Rock–based Klipsch Group and Ojas, the nom de solder of artist and designer Devon Turnbull.

"Give me the seduction, give me the pleasure," Ron Sutherland was nearly shouting into the phone. "I want to turn off the analytical mind and just enjoy myself!"

Sutherland speaks in the chipper Midwestern cadences of a comic character actor from the 1940s, sort of like a grown-up Eddie Bracken from The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and I'd never heard him sound so excited. He was talking about his new phono stage, the Dos Locos, the first product he's designed collaboratively, having enlisted a group of audiophile friends who listened to and critiqued each iteration. "These friends are excellent listeners," Sutherland related, "whereas I'm a gearhead, and don't have the patience or discernment for that kind of listening. Sometimes I'd change something and they'd say, 'You made it worse!'" It sounded like he preferred the group dynamic. "There was something very intimate about this back-and-forth process," he told me. "And compared to working alone, it was a lot more fun!"

Pull down the shades, find a comfortable seat, and come with me on an imaginary journey to the year 1956. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket wins reelection, the United Methodist Church begins to ordain women, and a can of Campbell's tomato soup costs 10 cents. Elvis Presley's two-week residency at Las Vegas's New Frontier Hotel and Casino is received so poorly by the middle-aged guests that Newsweek likens it to "a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party." And a Seattle couple gives birth to Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, who will become known professionally as Kenny G.

The hobby that will become "high-end audio" is still called plain old "audio." The top marginal tax rate is 91%, the US boasts more income equality than present-day socialist Sweden, and most of the country's top earners are not panic-room wealthy but merely rich. The prices of hi-fi gear reflect this: Two of the finest power amplifiers you can buy—the McIntosh MC-60 and the Marantz Model 2 (both monophonic, of course)—retail for $198. That's about $2266 in today's dollars, and while certainly not cheap, these products are accessible to a far larger group of hi-fi enthusiasts than "the best" of today (including from McIntosh itself).