• Absolute Sound
• accuracy in speaker reproduction
• Andrew Marshall
• Audio Critic
• audio critic magazine
• Audio Ideas Guide
• Dr. Claude Fortier
• Dr. Floyd E. Toole
• flatline fidelity
• high performance loudspeakers
• high performance speakers
• high-end audio
• history
• John Ötvös
• NRC anechoic chamber
• NRC Canada
• Paul Barton
• Peter Aczel
• PSB Speakers
• S.O.T.A. Electronic
• Stereophile
• Waveform
• waveform loudspeaker
• waveform speakers

 the story of: The Waveform Loudspeaker 

NB: Waveform owners

If you bought new through my former company website, [1995-2001] or used, from a former owner or re-seller, it is time to take a serious look at the surrounds on your woofers and for some, their midranges.  The driver surround foam does not fare better than app. 20 yrs. in this ultraviolet light climate crisis.

I have no spares, so please appreciate that I am now outta this business approaching 20 years. If the speakers have not been overdriven, they can be refoamed.  *They do not need reconing.*  A good craftsperson or audio techie type can do this.  You’ll have to do the legwork on your own through Madisound in WI or Simply Speakers in FL.  I have made surrounds for the Mach 13 mids with Dollarama file folders, consisting of a thin plastic flexible material. Bonne chance.

https://www.simplyspeakers.com/

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/welcome.php

https://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-dc300-8-12-classic-woofer–295-320

Preface:

Waveform was a labour of infinite passion for me during the 16 years I worked in the whacky, often loopy field of high-end audio.  In those early ‘daze’, my unbounded energy and enthusiasm easily carried the day.  The adage of two steps forward, one step back was apropos. Audio is a perceptual field of endeavour; whether it’s on the hardware side [speakers, amplifiers, etc.] or software side [DVD’s + CD’s]. The constant need to be on, the necessity for perceived continual technical or performance upgrades in product, literature, magazine reviews and new products, nearly consumed me, causing a personal dislocation from mySelf, my children and my then spouse. This was all so long ago, absolutely nothing is served by finger pointed or having regrets. This workaholism played a major role in the dissolution of my 35 yr. marriage. I take full responsibility for my actions then.  It took me many years later, to fully realize that we are known as human beings, not human doings.  I was Waveform, but only in my mind’s eye.  Yes, the years exacted a toll, as any person who has worked 90hrs/wk can attest to. Work’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  As my elder bro Michael is fond of sayin’: “Too soon old; too late smart!”

The following is my personal account of those joyful, yet intense years. Mea Culpa!

2017~Introduction:

It is my expressed intention here, to document the history of Waveform as I remember it, with many never before seen images inserted to demonstrate how we did it.  It was always a team effort! A successful team is about delegating responsibility. I knew all this intuitively, which is why I never affixed my personal name to the speaker company, although that was common practice.  While I mention a few names, it is my intention to refrain from partaking of individual defamation with the personalities from other companies, the magazine print media or the online community, as nothing is served by blaming. There was actually a Broadway musical about ‘pointing the finger at my neighbour, ‘there’s always 3 more pointing back at me.’ And the raised skyward thumb . . . well now, aren’t you telling the big guy where to go?  Does he have a surprise in store for you! hahaha

The sale of accuracy within the audiophile community, (defined as the ‘highest’ fidelity) was a virtual improbability.  Dare I say impossibility? There I did! My personal definition of the audiophile is someone far more enamoured by the equipment than the recorded music.

Suffice it to say, the industry was about making money for all those who partook of this quite nutty ‘community’, known as high-end audio. hahaha   Today, nearly 20 years later, it is this monetization that defines the cash cow of high-end audio, not performance improvements. But, don’t tell that to an aud, ’cause he’ll think you should be committed. 🙂 

1950’s ~ Early Beginnings:

I grew up in Oshawa, ON~Terrible. What I recall from my childhood, was an off-green RCA AM radio, [likely tube] atop a white Frigidaire refrigerator.  It was almost always tuned to CBC in the days before FM came into being. I heard classical music, with Saturday afternoon at the opera as standard listening fare, choral + chamber music as Sunday’s listening, after compulsory church attendance.  When father wasn’t home, we children would tune it to a local pop music station, secretly of course.

1964 ~ A First Stereo:

My part-time after high school and wknd job was assistant caretaker for the Oshawa, [McLaughlin] Public Library. After two years, I managed to save enough coin of the realm [$499] to buy my own Electrohome walnut cabinet stereo with a Garrard record changer + an AM/FM built-in tuner from Cherney’s Furniture Store.  The sum was a king’s ransom for a 16-yr old in 1964. I began to collect LP’s and a few 45 RPM’s. That unit today is in all probability, languishing near the bottom of some landfill, being devoured my microbiota.

1972 ~ Stereo extensions:

I built a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome in 1972. The 24′ OD dome had a loft for overnight visitors.  That’s where I located the two extension speakers for a quasi-surround sound.  This was the beginning of experiencing an envelopment of sound, encompassing my being.

Around 1977, I started more seriously playing with high-end, purchasing Salora speakers from Finland, then Celestion from the UK and finally, a 120Wpc Luxman receiver and a Lux vacuum turntable, both from Japan. That piece sucked more dust into the grooves, than it ever bonded disc to platter! hahaha  The sound filled the great room of the Moira house, as I became transfixed with suspended disbelief. 🙂

1983 ~ Speaker Builder Magazine:

In 1981, before I moved our family for 2 years to the South Island of NZ, I built two sets of solid red oak speakers.  A pair for me and one for a dear friend, Bill Lindenburg of Decibel Audio in Belleville. They were tapered, truncated + trapezoidal in shape.  There was zero science involved.  I was the gopher and Bill had . . . ideas! hahaha  In those innocent times, the hobby created in me an ecstasy that has faded and ‘groan’ dim now. The operative watchword was: “modified”.  Bill made these craft paper turntable liners that went under the records.  Supposedly, they created a better grounding and bonding for the LP.  True innocence for sure. I listen now solely for relaxation and fulfillment, rather than constantly analyzing the sound and trying to determine how a loudspeaker(s) could be configured to produce “better sound”, more faithful. I sold my 750 – LP collection in 1988 for a buck a piece to a local aud.

This was also the beginning of the wire craze and yes, Bill went to a wire factory in Trenton, ON to have his own 99.999 . . . % pure copper fabricated in huge rolls with the Decibel Audio logo emblazoned.  It gave him something else to sell. Truth be told, when the wire craze unfolded, many ‘companies’ in the audio world used the same facility, same copper wire, but differing jacket design, to also cash in on the ignorant consumer. I use that adjective in the most gentle unassuming manner. Bill would advise me to take out the midrange drivers and coat the magnet with thick, heavy, black putty, that would dampen any perceived negative vibration.  The passive crossover was an off the shelf Philips unit, that sported zero alignment to the drivers he selected. Yes, that was what it was all about in those early daze, the perception. “Modified” remember! hahaha It was as if the original designers & engineers didn’t have enough on the ball, missing key elements of manufacture.  Yeah mon, as “they” say in Jamaica.  Sadly, it still is! Of course, no measurements were ever taken, nor were any structured listening tests created to assign benefits through rigour and comparison! hahaha

We used an Audax 14 ̎  driver for the bass, but, ported the main cabinet, contrary to what I learned during my first venture to Chicago and the summer CES [ Consumer Electronics Show] of 1983.  The sound was woolly, but low, with little power handling.  I owned “the” pair of 60 W/ch MacIntosh tube amps that came from Massey Hall in TO, the big smoke, which likely powered the hall’s horn speakers. I liked it because I had made it.  Does that idiom sound familiar to any aud reading this? hahaha   When I came home, I undid the back of the speaker and reduced the volume with full oil quarts bottles, paint cans, jugs of winter window washer fluid, etc.  Sure did tighten the bass; but, gone was the feeling of the pipe organ.  Low frequencies are felt more than they are heard. Incidentally, I also met The Audio Critic dude, Peter Aczel, who was displaying some small speakers whose natural sound really intrigued me.  It was in that year, i.e., 1983 that I sent off some images I had taken of these monoliths to Speaker Builder magazine, a hobbyist platform for builders.  They not only published an article, but put the cabinets on the cover.

1984 ~ Ottawa, Canada & the NRC:

In 1984, I had learned through Bill, a Paradigm dealer, that in Ottawa, existed a facility with a program for speaker development.  The NRC was a make work project from the depression of the dirty 1930’s.  The National Research Council was then and remains today, as far as I am aware, a state-of-the-art facility for scientific research and development, with gleaned knowledge, freely shared with manufacturers.  That seems so socialistic to me.  Kudos! hahaha Come on folks, you don’t still believe that the vast majority of new development in snazzy tech devices is engineered off campus in the underground of some backroom corporation? Think again. Try the publicly funded universities lads and ladies.

Since 1985, Waveform has subscribed to the world’s most demanding protocol for speaker development, at Canada’s NRC the nation’s premier research and development resource hosted by our national government.

“The NRC performs, supports and promotes scientific and industrial research for the economic and social benefit of all Canadians. The NRC underlines its commitment to acoustic excellence through a number of programmes, such as anechoic chamber tests. The result is a speaker that represents the highest form of acoustic development and technology available.”  . . . ad blurb that spoke to the wrong segment of the buying public.  My learning curve was still on the upswing.

I set up an appointment to parlay with Dr. Floyd E. Toole, the resident acoustics head for loudspeakers and a good guy to boot, sometime during the summer of 1984.  Here’s this young pup, full of piss & vinegar showing the big cheese a few drivers, talking about low bass response and active electronic crossovers.   Floyd said: “Boy, do you need an engineer!”  He suggested two men: Paul Barton of PSB fame and Dr, Claude Fortier of S.O.T.A. Paul was in consumer audio; Claude was in pro.

That loudspeaker program was corralled under the umbrella of the Dept. of Physics within the subsection, Acoustics.  Floyd was head of this development program.  It was funded by the federal government and used by budding speaker manufacturers such as PSB [Paul & Sue Barton], Paradigm, the now defunct API group [Energy, Mirage etc.], S.O.T.A. [State Of The Art Electronik Inc. ] Axiom, now Waveform.  At the time, my incorporated company was called Ötvös Industries Inc.  I soon incorporated Waveform Research Inc. with two others, to sell the manufactured loudspeakers that I was about to produce. My intention was to keep manufacturing separate from marketing.

Many a trip I made to the Ottawa, Montreal Rd. facility, hefting prototypes, that sometimes produced good results and at other times, the message became clear; go home young man, choose again.  I brought along rudimentary woodworking tools, to try different combinations along with paper cone doping treatments, insulation tricks etc. Once, when Dave and I got to the outskirts of the city at 1AM after a 2 hr drive, I realized I had forgotten to pack the JBL 15” sub.  Dave was driving his Blazer; I was the one who was responsible for knowing what had to be taken. Back home we drove and upon retrieving the forgotten sub, we returned to the capital at close to 5AM, both of us completely wiped!

Engineering Protocol from day 1:

My history of design, from both standpoints of technical prowess and artistic beauty in woodworking, was to excel at a level as high and evolved as my wherewithal would permit.  It’s been a lifelong karmic thingy that I’ve known as both a blessing and a curse. The development program was simple yet scientific.  How do we determine what the measurable characteristics or parameters are for listener preferences?  The following are the steps as I recall them from 34 years ago:

• Perform listening tests, or audiograms on people, who will be used to give their subjective impressions of what they hear. No deaf mutes allowed nor peeps with hearing anomalies.
• Perform double-blind tests in a control room with products under test, hidden behind a visually opaque screen, but an acoustically transparent one, in order to be as neutral as science allows for this type of testing. Dbl blind means that even the departmental system operator does not know which speaker is under test.
• Rank the speakers as to listener preferences first. We took notes and gave written input.
• Measure the speakers in an anechoic [without echo] chamber, to determine what the most preferable speakers have in common, such as flat axial or first arrival, family of curves similarity, [i.e., in the horizontal sphere ~ 15°, 30°, 60°] listening window [a computer averaging of several curves] low distortion, low bass extension, high frequency response and sound power [how the device radiates into a room]. There were other minor considerations as well.
• ***Build a speaker with all these characteristics, for whatever the price point worked out at for retail. In those early ‘daze’, I did not affix any price point to Waveform.  I didn’t know squat, as the piss & vinegar were apparently, still manifesting! hahaha

What I knew intuitively about where I might place my Waveform brand, was that I had to separate from entry point products. Neither was this effort destined for mid-fi.  Given the craft woodworking karma for excellence over the years from the beginnings of my career, the overall cost of the design placed the marketing efforts within the top echelon of performance, but not price. The real ambition, i.e., intention, was to build the most accurate, best sounding loudspeaker in the world. Quite a stretch for a village craftsman and a Canuck to boot! hahaha We are more modest as a nation rarely stating anything ‘we’ make as best.  We leave that for folks stateside. hahaha  The reason so few Waveform speakers ever become available on the pre-owned market, is due in part to those owners feeling they really were, “a final purchase”.

A Choice of Engineers:

I chose Paul for engineering the speaker and Claude for the development of the dedicated two-way or biamped electronic crossover. Those people who do the development often refer to themselves as both designers and engineers.  That’s quite true if all they do is inhouse development for their own brands, with little team effort.  Sometimes an upstart comes along with ideas that get incorporated too.  Design is the idea that the engineer fashions to function properly. Yeah, to some extent, it’s like trying to discern the difference between art and craft.  Inevitably it’s a pedantic exercise in futility.  As our venerable ET teaches: “. . . Words are only stepping stones to be left behind as soon as possible in order to get to the essence of deeper meaning, while being transformed by them on the journey along the river’s brook …” BTW, that’s Eckhart Tolle.

Materials Choice:

Several people warned me not to make a loudspeaker out of solid wood. None of them were woodworkers.  None of them knew how wood moved tangentially across the grain, rather than longitudinally down its length.   Few woodworkers know that there is little movement across the width of a board where the annular rings are at 90° to the face of the board, known as quarter-sawn.  That is different than rift sawn lumber where the rings are at 45° to the face; i.e., more movement across the grain.  More movement still where the board is flat-sawn.  I chose black cherry since it is very stable dimensionally. I had access to a good bit of it through local mills. I also had a dry kiln.

Our speakers were all designed with the grilles on. It was difficult to explain this to audiophiles who always knew better and removed the grilles.

It’s over 33 years now since the first ones were built; none have come asunder (that I’m aware of) and only careless humidity treatment has caused a few hairline shrinkage cracks in some. Labrador black granite was chosen for the feet. I found a weaver in Prince Edward County, who wove the grille cloth from raw silk with plenty of slubs, [tiny knubby protusions].  Sandra also hand-died the cloth.  The baffles were made from 1-1/2 ̎ German beech plywood covered with a pewter laminate.  Yeah, I used gold plated screws for all the fitments, since steel would’ve rusted and the heads were all important: CDN square drive Robertson, invented in 1912 by ole P.L. himself! I employed Ceylon [now Sri Lankan] ebony, the blackest. Did you know that ebony is covered in wet mud for 7 years minimum as it will crack terribly if not and be worthless for embellishment and carving to cats like me?  I inlaid this with gold plated metal inlay for all 4 corners, both back & front. This cabinetry was to embody all that I knew at that time about materials and workmanship, but always dictated within a system where form followed function.

These speakers I personally deemed to be components of that oft used expression from years ago ~ World Class! From the performance, to how the box looked, to how it was presented in the brochure.  How I would personally perform in the midst of the world’s audio journalists, I had zero knowledge.  It was this latter lack of knowing that got the product name in trouble. Mea Culpa.  Yeah, I stepped in a few puddles both of my own making + the traps others set for this upstart newbie.  How audacious to think a hamlet woodworker could emerge from the forest to create the world’s best performing loudspeaker. hahaha

1985 ~The Waveform Name & Logo:

Every loudspeaker produces a waveform, or broadband frequency response. Microphones are transducers too, in that they convert an audio signal into an electrical response, that when paired with an amplifier, can output a facsimile of sound through a speaker for us to hear, i.e., a waveform.  Waveform was a natural marque, perfect in its simplicity. Waveform® was a registered trademark first taken out with the Canadian government in 1985 by Ötvös Industries. The trademark became the legal property of Waveform Inc. up until 2002, when the 17 yr. time limit expired without re-registration.  I was dumbstruck that no one else had ever trademarked or used the word waveform as a speaker name.

The original three word Waveform logo, [The Waveform Loudspeaker] was designed to make an implicit statement. A new product, a new company direction, demanded a new image. I’ve lost track of the names of the people that helped in the graphic design for that first logo. The grill badges were solid sterling silver with 23.5 karat gold plating.  I also learned plenty about gold plating as there were some who looked down their noses at the gold screws used.  The ones I wanted with the oval Robertson [squaredrive] head, were just steel, so some coating was necessary.  It’s usually cobalt or nickel that’s used to harden soft gold for the microthin layer of plating.  Cobalt tints gold, bluish, whereas nickel renders gold a reddish hue. File that under ‘everything matters’. hahaha

A Biamped Design:

Initially, I chose Claude to design, engineer and manufacture the first dedicated electronic crossover.  Claude had cut his teeth in the pro market, manufacturing large speakers for permanent bulkhead or soffit installations. He became well known for this as he too employed the speaker design protocol as set out by Floyd and the minions who have followed. The first design was biamped using two stereo amps.  One amp employed for the 2-15″ JBL subwoofers, another for the twin mids and twin tweeters. [the topmost unit was a Philips supertweeter] The design encompassed a box within a box to separate the enormous backwave of the sub from acoustical interference with the mids.  Domed high dispersion tweeters are exclusively sealed units.  Twin midrange drivers were chosen to reduce distortion in the most audible bandwidth. Tweeters most often have lowered sensitivity, so all else is matched to that transducer, in order to produce louder sound for a given amplitude or loudness.

Claude told me about an acoustical concept known as: ‘the telephone line of frequencies’. This is the area of bandwidth, where the majority of all music resides, i.e., between 300 Hz — 3 kHz. It’s also the range where human hearing is most acute. Think how when you receive a phone call; you know instinctively who is calling, simply because those tones and harmonics reveal what is most needed.  This area of frequency response is where fully 80% of all music resides.  The lows that hit you in the chest, since if you hear them without any feeling, you’ve not got the volume high enough [or your sub isn’t by not extending low enough]. The crystalline highs that render spacial cues imparting distance & ambiance + the low lows are the icing on the cake’s foundation.

1986 ~ Chicago CES:

A few days before The Waveform Loudspeaker [at that early stage there was only one model] was to make its début at the 1986 Chicago Summer CES [Consumer Electronics Show], there was a falling out between the 3 principles within Waveform Research. Ötvös Industries absorbed the balance sheet for travel, hotel occupancy, demonstration, as well as all costs assumed from printing the 6-page, 4-colour, two metallic brochures.

I recall sleeping on the couch at The Blackstone Hotel in RM 310, to defray some of the huge costs associated for playing at this level with the big boys. Yeah, I played it far too loud as I couldn’t believe how distortion free it would go, suffering no dropouts at either frequency extreme.  You were correct Alan. Mea Culpa! At the time, Waveform garnered Audio-Video Interiors magazine’s most expensive debut speaker “citation”.  The retail was $9,800 US, but, none ever sold for that.  Illustrious no doubt; far from dubious. hahaha

1992 ~ Dedication:

Gordon Henry had contracted a rare form of childhood leukemia at age 35.  He crossed over to the other side 6 years later, with his good humour fully intact.  On the Sunday prior to his last hospital visit, he & I listened to the soundtrack from Dances With Wolves, on his finished pair of Mach 7’s, a kit I had made especially for him. On the following Monday, Gordy responded to the hospital nurse questioning him about what he was doing there by telling her, he was bringing his body back for the last time.  All future Waveform loudspeakers were dedicated to him.

                                                                Dedication:

Since 1992, Waveform loudspeakers have been dedicated to the memory of Gordon Henry.  Gordon was trained as a carpenter. I met him in 1983 when my family and I returned from our emigration to New Zealand.  We began an instant friendship, sharing woodworking information and helping each other with our building projects.  Gordon wanted to learn cabinet making and I helped him set up a shop and get started.  Gordon helped put the roofs on both the Brighton, ON studio and house.  In 1986, he contracted leukemia.  The first week with this illness, his body was ravaged and he lost nearly 100 lbs.  This was three weeks before the debut of the original Waveform at CES in Chicago.  Gordon fought valiantly for the next six and a half years, but succumbed to the illness in November of 1992.  The battle this brave man endured through those difficult years taught me a lot about discipline and dedication to life.  The struggles I have experienced to gain acceptance for Waveform, pale in comparison to what he lived through.  I recall the music we listened to the day before he left for the hospital for the last time; the soundtrack from “Dances With Wolves”.  Gordon was an honest and diligent worker, as well as a devoted father and husband.  He maintained his good-natured sense of humour ‘til the end.  In the emergency waiting room, a familiar nurse approached him and asked what he was doing there again.  He told her that he was bringing his body to the hospital for the last time.  Gord Henry was 41 years old and my best friend. His wife buried him with a handful of licorice sticks, his favourite vice.

                                                                               John Ötvös                                                                                                                                                 12/17/95 

1989 ~ The First Stereophile Review:

I cannot recall if it was on my suggestion or on that of the magazine’s, that I send a pair to then publisher, Larry Archibald’s home in Albuquerque, NM. After I landed at the small airport, I was picked up by Tom Norton, the tech man at the mag.  Larry’s room was huge, very resonant, [as in echoey] hardly the slightly dead, neutral acoustic setting expressly needed for this presentation. He brought the speakers about 12′ into the room, so all listening was accomplished far field against my recommendation. My gut was telling me I was being setup for a fall. I was deaf, dumb and blind to bodily intuition.

“Without a doubt, one of the first questions I’d ask myself is whether the company asking for my $9800 had proved itself in the high-end wars.” Larry Archibald – Nov 12, 1989
That sentence + describing me as “the father” of the company and the speaker in the preceding sentence, pretty much sums up my feeling of being setup. My review comments were from a feeling of being chopped off at the knees. I freely jumped into the magazine’s puddle they set for me and after my 4 page response; Stereophile adopted a new policy of shorter responses from manufacturers. I still had my piss and vinegar! hahaha This entire monologue, displayed publicly in the magazine between Larry and myself, Stereophile being the most reputable and largest subscription service publication at the time, served me notice: beware of the politics in this insane entity known as high-end audio!  It was all caricature, then as now. All really old news nearly 29 years on.

1990 ~ The Telarc International connection:

Fast forward to early 1990. I phoned the chief recording engineer of Telarc in Cleveland, OH, i.e., Jack Renner, asking if he wanted to hear a great pair of CDN full range speakers for a personal in-house demo.  Jack said: “Yes, indeed, I’m always interested in listening to new speakers.” Down I drove and left the pair there for about two years. It wasn’t until we changed tweeters and I drove down to personally install them that the company finally paid me for the first of 4 systems that Waveform sold to Telarc.  Yes, 4! Two Mach 10’s; one 5-ch Home Theatre system expressly designed for The Renner’s in carved white oak and much later the MC System, a complete Surround System, consisting of 13 individual pieces, including matching stands.

Here is a local newspaper article that I’ve saved in 3 pages. For those who wish to read this, type ctrl+ to enlarge.

Here’s the story never before illuminated. Jack was so taken with the modified sound that Paul, Claude and I had developed, that he invited the entire production staff of about 40 people into this tiny editing suite with standing room only, et avec moi, jayöh a fly on the wall in the back corner.  I am unable to recall what tape they played, but, the room was silent until the final crescendo, when all those gathered broke into simultaneous uproar and celebration.  They immediately turned to me and profusely shook my hands.  Wow, I was ever so humbled to realize that a tiny village craftsman, had ventured into the belly of the beast and received his just due. After spending years in the wilderness, at long last, our team was finally being honoured, even vindicated. hahaha See, I no longer take any of this seriously let alone personally. 🙂

1992 Dealer lockout:

By 1992 I ceased displaying at the CES [Consumer Electronics Show] since they were for dealers and distributors.  If you didn’t advertise in the mags, the journalists were instructed not to give your marquee copy space, especially if you sold direct. There will be those who deny this, but I lived through it to write about this conduct.  The Waveform brand was essentially barred from being sold in stores. I simply was not financed heavily enough to compete, ergo the stacked deck developed later in this saga.

1993 ~ Mach derivation:

Sometimes, ordinary minded folk’s brains go blank.  Mach, of course, refers in acoustic terms to the speed of sound.  Paul and I had changed the passive and active crossovers 7 times, to come up with the then current configuration. In the marketplace, one must satisfy the buying public with the perception that the design had not become stale or static, so a new suffix was added.  That was fine if your brand was one highlighted by say the UK’s Quad electrostatic loudspeaker, which rarely evolved. The nomenclature was changed to Mach 7. Waveform still only had one model.  As we began to enter the mid 1990’s, this became a means of letting potential customers know that changes or modifications had been made. The next major change in this one product family was the Mach 10 in 1993. I believe if memory serves, at this point Waveform switched to a dedicated Bryston crossover made especially for us by the lads in Pebo, ON. [that’s Peterborough for the nerds reading]

Telarc — Dorian — Delos:

It was this model, The Mach 10 with the tweeter and crossover change that Telarc adopted.  The next major shift was the following year, i.e., 1994, when the now defunct CDN-US collaboration called Dorian Recordings also purchased a stereo pair to act as monitors and execute editing tasks. Craig Dory [Yank] was the recording engineer and Brian Levine [Canuck] the marketing manager.  My feeling is that the company, while producing excellent studio recordings, limited themselves by concentrating on the Baroque era of music, a genre even amongst classical fans such as myself, that has few adherents.

The third hat in the trilogy of the most important, i.e., largest stateside independent classical and jazz labels that adopted Waveform speakers for monitoring and editing, was Delos International of Hollywood, CA. Yeah, a lot of driving across the country in those heady days over 25 years ago now.  I did make a foray into NYC with Sony music, recalling that their engineer loved the sound even though it had to be hoisted onto a box to elevate it, because he worked standing up in the nearfield.  However, the British company, B&W already had their hooks into Sony music, formerly CBS Records.  Often within the business world, a better mousetrap can never really defeat the political connection unseen in the wings offstage.

Retailing:

The name of the manufacturing game back in the ’80’s, when I began this particular aspect of career odyssey was: Caveat Emptor or render unto Caesar, that which was Caesar’s.  For me, this is reminiscent of Shylock demanding his pound of flesh. All of this was prior to the Net, which took off circa 1995 for jayöh and others, who were forced out of the retail market. I was offered consignment, where my product became shopworn, thereby exacting a huge price on the cosmetic aspect and drastically lowering the anticipated price.  I sold several to friends and family over the initial years of production.  That helped greatly in defraying the mounting costs of playing at the top level in a sport that was unfamiliar and foreign to me.  During all of these early years, Waveform was dramatically subsidized by the cabinetmaking business from Ötvös Industries until 1995, when I went full-time into Waveform INC.

The first pair sold in the USA was to a then married couple, Evelyn & Neil Sinclair.  The same Sinclair of paint fame I believe.  They ran a store called Absolute Audio in Orange, CA. Neil eventually went on to found Theta Digital and focused his attention on processors as the lowly preamp began to be upstaged. I had taken two pairs with me in 1987. The second pair I left in Sacramento at Keith Yates Audio.  Both pairs were unsold as they said they needed to listen more = use my money to run their business in the meantime. 🙂 I fell for this and no one was to blame except moi!  This has always been a common practice called consignment; taking advantage of a newbie.  I left the West coast with my tail between my legs driving straight back to Eastern ON in about 42 hours; that’s right, nonstop except for food and gas.  Arriving home, I fell asleep for 22 hrs straight.

I can recall a driving visit to Lexington Avenue in NYC to meet with Lyric HiFi’s, Mike Kay. It was in early 1994.  I had already notched Telarc and Dorian on an imaginary belt of “credibility”.  As a hobbyist, modified was a watchword with credibility becoming the newest one in my hifi lexicon. At that time, the Duntech brand from Australia by American expat John Dunlavy was heralded in many places due in no small part to Bert White’s endorsement from Audio magazine.  Little did I know that the Sovereigns had been in and out of Bert’s basement listening room on multiple occasions until they achieved a seal of approval from Bert himself.

Elliot Goldman was at that time Mike Kay’s right-hand man and they both admitted that my Waveform speaker was superior to the Dunlavy. Elliot to Mike — “What do you mean the Crown Prince?”  Mike to Elliot — “No the Sovereigns too.” But John had already dotted his “i’s” and crossed his “t’s”, having as Larry Archibald admitted, ‘[the brand] had proved itself in the high-end wars’. Waveform had not, i.e, that was to come, as it did.

While Waveform was unable to gain a toehold in NYC at Lyric, I did enjoy my time there as Mike told plenty of jokes. Mike asked me how to know what the best loudspeaker in the world was. I looked at him somewhat dumbfounded as I didn’t wish to preach theory to this very savoir-faire city slicker. To his own query, he replied: “A sold one, John”. Nothing personal, it’s just business. 🙂

To continue the story of my wanderings, I journeyed to Coral Gables, FL to meet with Peter McGrath, a Duntech dealer, also the owner of Sound Components.  All he wanted to know is whether these original Waveforms would play louder than his Sovereigns.  Of course, they would not because our design had 6dB of boost in the crossover, a std procedure with the 15″ JBL #2235H driver.

There is a final story from Mike Kay to me about selling the Arnie Nudell much admired monolithic and enormous Infinity system of 1992 to America’s quacking Donald Duck.  Apparently, Mike is reported to have been told that the Trump people didn’t know what it sounded like, because, even after a year, it had not been turned on yet. Strange bedfellows yes? 

 Audiophiles VS Music Lovers:

Is there anyone reading this who can recall the Shun Mook mpingo dots?  Sad though. Proprietary was a third word from the audiophile lexicon, after modified and credibility.  It meant metaphorically; ‘how and what we do is a closely guarded secret and we will not divulge our high technology.’  Essentially, much of what passed then as now, for a high-err fidelity was nonsense; smoke and mirrors.  BTW, I saw mpingo dots offered on eBay as I pen this tome.

The above ad cost $5000 to produce with an additional cost of $7000 for a full page insertion back in the late 1980’s.  Well, one can see this business was not for the faint hearted.  Bob told me that in the 1960’s, any ads produced for Motor Trend, Car & Driver, etc, the nature of the recommendation within the review for the vehicle, was written directly into the contract with the mags.  I’m not suggesting this skullduggery euphemistically known today as lobbying, was so indulgent in the audio industry, but, you as a reader can make up your own mind. Lobbying is a euphemism for legalized bribery.

There’s a long-standing joke about discerning the true audiophile from the music lovers in a gathering of listeners.                                                                                                              “The audiophile is the first person to start talkin’, after the music starts playin’.” Yeah mon!

Watching VS Listening:

Video began to take off in the late 1980’s, with the invention of Dolby surround and compatible receivers. I recall being at Dr. Floyd Toole’s house one wknd when Paul and I were doing engineering work on my brand.  Floyd had recently hooked in several surround speakers and a new Dolby surround receiver.  He declared to us that: ‘what he had watched in his family room was the best TV he had ever heard!’ And so, the downfall of stereo was presaged and predicted, as more channels began to be added with more sophisticated algorithms. There are so many today, I no longer an ‘early adopter’, refuse to pay attention to keep abreast.  I’m content with what I own. You’re a really bad consumer John!

The lowly preamp was morphing into a computer-based processor, with competing companies clamouring for ascendancy.

1995 ~ developing the Waveform Mach 13:

Lenbrook Industries, the distributor and holding company for Paul’s PSB brand, put the clamps on further engineering work that Paul could perform with me for Waveform, unless I accepted a doubling of the hourly time fee. I needed an affordable new engineer.  Dr. Claude Fortier, already mentioned as involved with Waveform was solicited and agreed to take over completely from Paul Barton. I couldn’t look back.

If I am to be faulted for my style, it’s entirely due to forward looking, the inability to be in the present moment, to make peace with what IS, as ET, our venerable Eckhart Tolle teaches; to make peace with what is here now. All the same, thank you, Paul, as you sir, helped enormously kickstart this snowball down the hill and I remain eternally grateful!

I wanted a completely new design but that would take some time.  We experimented with new tweeters and midranges.  Claude introduced me to the French Audax brand and we settled on a high efficiency 6″ paper cone driver.  We decided not to dope the paper with a PVA compound, usually added to stiffen paper and damp out shallow frequency resonant peaks and dips.

One aspect of design that Floyd taught all of us who would listen was that: “Measurable anomalies that are objectionable to the eye are not necessarily disagreeable to the ear”.  When a response curve becomes ever flatter in axial or first arrival from the development stage to the response curve offered by the anechoic chamber, we would simply look at the curve as a line from the edge of the paper rather than straight down as in normal viewing.  That’s the cumulative effect of +/- 1dB.

The Mach 13 was built as a design exercise to determine the limits of the original cabinet with respect to dispersion and diffraction. It was developed to understand the nature of two superior drive units and the limits to which they could be pushed.

The Dynaudio 28mm tweeter was replaced with a similar sized Vifa unit.  Both companies hail from Denmark, a great area of world development for fine OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] drivers. For this Mach 13 design, the original 11 year old box was retained as was the 15″ JBL subwoofer.  In this biamped design, the crossover slopes were all changed to 4^th order, which have a roll-off rate of 24 dB/oct Linkwitz-Riley slopes.  Claude and I agreed that to get in and out of our drivers best passband as quickly and smoothly as possible, was the sensible way forward. Claude always asked me my opinions on engineering. A good guy too! While many in high-end concentrated on phase, or time alignment, Waveform gave primacy to frequency response.  Employing these Linkwitz-Riley slopes allowed the passband to remain in phase.

Any loudspeaker is a host of compromises or tradeoffs.  This is sound re-production.  It’s not sound production as in a singing voice or a musician strumming or bowing some instrument.  In audio, the first form of distortion is the microphone or pickup device.  Why?  Because mics ‘hear’ differently from people’s ear/brain combination.  Then there’s the room + speaker combination, which I hope to address later in this historical archive.

I débuted the Mach 13 in Chicago at the 1995 Stereophile Consumer Show. It never went into production, although I did manufacture some upgrade kits with templates for router work as the Audax rebates/checkouts were larger than the original Vifa units.

This model is the one I have eventually ended up with, as my eldest son revamped his LR and those big speakers hit the garage first, then the basement, before I drove them back to NS in my Jetta wgn.

Design Protocol RE~ Performance:

My brief preamble before we look at the parameters that define how the engineering of a speaker will sound are these:

• Flat axial or first arrival
• Flat listening window [a cone shaped] theoretical funnel of sound coming directly at the listener in a 15° horizontal and vertical envelope [We take for granted, meaning we assume, that interested and enthusiastic listeners will be seated, hopefully not standing and especially not lying down on the floor.] hahaha
• Smooth and fundamentally characteristic 15°, 30° and 60° performance curves
• Smooth and gently sloping power response which is a computer average of the horizontal and vertical curves averaged with emphasis or weighting on the horizontal ones, from 0°—60°. If memory serves this was somewhere in the vicinity of 80 independent curves.
• Negligible THD or total harmonic distortion
• Able to handle large amounts of amplifier power without physically damaging voice coils in the drivers

Designing a good loudspeaker that many people would agree produces great sounding music is a series of choices.  The design process employing this, or any protocol, draws on the pure science of the physical parameters of the resistors, capacitors and coils within the crossovers, whether they are passive or active.  This then amounts to the applied science. It also brings into play the anechoic response, easily measurable from the raw drivers in the enclosure.  All this is being refined based on a single concept, namely neutrality = accuracy. This is the original definition of high fidelity.

It was this mathematical ability to juggle those devices that I did not possess.  Even arithmetic comes slowly to me.  It’s how my brain has always functioned, more analytical than arithmetical. Hardly computational. 🙂

My own idea has always been the following. You may disagree with much of what my engineering team used as a design and engineering protocol. At least we might be able to agree, that the only references we have are the recordings.  ***The loudspeaker that reveals the greatest diversity of sounds from each recording, be they DVD, CD or LP, must by definition possess the highest fidelity to the source and ∴ the most accurate***  Speakers that emit similar frequency response sounds from one recording to the next are deemed coloured. Sorry to burst the perceptual bubbles out there, but, while you are allowed to have your own opinion, you are not allowed to have your own facts.

No personal Voicing allowed!:

There were many amateur designers and engineers in the high-end audio field. Looking at physical designs from posted Net images today, that continues.  I mean no disrespect to well-intentioned people seeking to earn audio dollars.  I say amateurs, because they really believe that by voicing their designs, they are creating a transducer that would be more palatable, perhaps, even better.  If we look at audio as an applied science, with reams of paragraphs written, it’s easy to see that when there’s no design protocol used for development, with only personal opinion based on hearing a few recordings, end-use customers will suffer high fidelity.  Voicing: that one word alone speaks volumes to the issue here, hear? Measurements are taken to fit the theory. Sadly, those journalists both in print and on the Net, rarely mention the direct correlation between what’s measured and what’s heard through direct listening.  This has never served recordings or speaker design. High fidelity means an unswerving faithfulness to the source.  You do that by ensuring that the output of the loudspeaker is as neutral as can be made. Not by listening to recordings and changing the frequency response until you “Like” it.

Please go to > Waveform: pt2 of 3

One response to “Waveform: pt1 of 3”

1. talktowolf says:

   13 January 2018 at 11:12 pm

   90 minutes later have finished reading part one.  Outstanding writing John.  Good photos as well.  Will dive into 2 and maybe even 3 on Sunday.  Time to heat the sack.  Thank you for sharing these.   Wolf

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