10 Qs For Ron Stimpson, President/CEO Of SVS Sound.

Ron Stimpson, the SVS Sound man and his products, the SVS PC-13 Ultra sub woofer, and the prototype soon to be on sale 7.1 multi chanel power amp.

I was in to the last legs of my KLIAV 2010 show, where I visited the SVS Sound room on level 4. Maxx Audio Visual is local authorised dealer for SVS Sound products. As I was in the room I met Ron Stimpson who was busy calibrating the 7.1 HT set up. I was very impressed with the sonic difference post calibration. I knew I just had to talk to Ron.

Big E: I thought SVS Sound is a sub woofer specialist? I see more than SVS sub woofers in this room.

RS: We started with out with our cylinder sub woofer designs, which from there we branched out in to the regular cube sub woofer designs. Many of our customer who bought our subs, have requested us to start a line of speakers to match their sub woofers. That's why you see more than sub woofers!

Big E: But I also see electronics? Tell me more?

RS: As our powered/active sub woofers had plate amps inside to power them, it was something that progressed naturally. It all started with some of the plate amp modules in our cylinder sub woofers suffering warranty claims at a rate of 5%. Not a lot, but enough to warrant our attention. Our original 500W plate amps were built in Canada and we just could not accept the 5% field failure rate. So we went about looking for a suitable supplier, and that just opened up so many options for us. We eventually found a supplier in Taiwan to build us 800W plate amps which are more reliable, and come with DSP features, for easier integration with customer's home and systems.
Left: The previous 500W plate amp module for the cylinder sub woofers. Right: The latest 800W plate amp, built in Taiwan for better reliability and feature sets.

Big E: That lead to the multi chanel amp that we see here?

RS: Yes, in our quest for a better plate amp, we came across the B&O ICE Power 7.1 module, which is made in Malaysia by the way. We were impressed by the B&O ICE Power module and decided to build a product around it. We had to design an input board, and a thermal controlled fan based cooling system to improve the performance of the B&O ICE Power module.

Big E: I am familiar with the B&O ICE Power modules, many class D amplification products use them, and they are pretty good, sound quality wise. They are also very cool running amp modules, why do you need a cooling system in the amp?

RS: But NOT this module, this is the latest ICE Power module, and we're proudly the first manufacturer to use it. It's a new generation design and is quite different from what you've experienced before. Go on, touch the heat sink.

Big E: It's relatively warm, Hmm...........?

RS: See, that's why it needs a cooling system! The new 7.1 ICE Power module design just runs warm, but still we felt that a thermal controlled fan based cooling system keeps it's operating temperature optimum, for best results.

Big E: But I did not see amplifiers in your product profile on the SVS Sound web site?

RS: Very observant! This is our new soon to be launched product line. You are listening to the demo prototype. We bring this to a few shows to gauge customer's response, which have been very encouraging. When I go back to our factory later, we'll finalise production planning details and you could see this amplifier in market, before the year's end, I think.
The internals of the soon to be on sale 7.1 multi chanel amp. Watch out! It's gonna be a HOT seller.

Big E: What else are you planning to sell us in the future, new products that is?

RS: We are also developing a new in-wall speaker range, which I promise you to deliver good meaty sound. In wall speakers are not new in the market place, but most them sounds like tin cans, in other words, crap! I know there's a market for them, because a home theater install typically involves the family, and many ladies of the house do not like to see speakers all over the living room.

Big E: How are you going to differentiate your in wall speakers from others already out there in the market place?

RS: Good question. Our in wall speakers are chambered design, so it's actually more like a box built in to a wall. Most homes in the US are dry wall(wooden wall panels), so installing flush mount in wall speakers is easy. On the other hand, I understand Malaysian and most Asian homes are brick wall, so installing may prove more challenging. But in fact, our in wall speakers are only about 2 or 3 inches deep, and the design also incorporated a picture frame like surround, which makes it easier just to hang the in wall speakers, just like an art, or painting. And to complete the illusion, we have a series of art works to choose from, to fit the customer's home decor theme. The art work covers are sonically transparent and will not effect the speaker's output by much.

Big E: Most of your products are built in China to offer great performance and outstanding value. Any of your product range is built in US?

RS: You're right! Most of our products are built in our own China factory, which is really a duplicate facility of what we have in Ohio. We have a few key staff posted in the China factory to make sure quality and specifications are kept to our standards. We make products in China is because over the years, the country has built up an impressive support industry to make loud speakers. It just makes more sense to have a factory there, to minimise un necessary logistics, which some of the savings, can be passed on to our customers. At the moment, only our high end range of cylinder sub woofers are built in Ohio. We may consider building more product lines in Ohio sometime in the future.

Big E: How can SVS Sound offer so much sound performance for value conscious buyers?

RS: We try to keep our cost in the actual product as much as possible, materially speaking. Other un necessary cost like logistics and supply chain are kept to the minimum possible. For example, Maxx Audio-Visual is the Malaysian distributor. Only Maxx stands between you, the customer here, and me in the US. Can you tell me how many audio brands do that? Most would have at least three levels of distribution, before the merchandise ends up in the customer's hand. I can tell you that there's also an extra mark up each time a product goes thru more levels of distribution. That's how we keep our product prices affordable, yet offering serious performance for the money.

Big E: Thanks for your time Ron, for allowing us to get to know you, your company and your products better.

After that brief chat, I hang around the room to sample more of that capable SVS Sound AV system capabilities.

IsoTek's CEO/MD Visiting Centre Circle Audio

Centre Circle Audio is inviting all audiophiles interested in IsoTek power conditioning products to join a presentation session with the company's CEO/MD Mr. Keith Martin:

Date: 19th August 2010
Time: 2pm - 6 pm
Place: Centre Circle Audio showroom
RSVP: 03-77282686

*Click on the pic to see the full size version

A Reviewers Choice System!

Mr BR's Magnaplanar 1.6 QR based system. This is a reviewers choice!

Have your ever wondered, what makes a reviewers system? No, I am not talking about Odioslueth or my good self here! I am talking about Malaysia's top reviewer, who has been doing this work for the last 20 years or so, in one of our English local dailies "Audiofile" section.

I bet many of our local readers would've already know who this reviewer is, but he wants to remain coy about his identity, so let's call him Mr BR, shall we? He!He! I've always been a fan of Maggies and Apogee speakers. So when I heard that Mr BR has a pair of Magnaplanar 1.6 QR playing in his well set up room, I just had to hear them. But hifi is not just about one item, it's about a marriage of synergistic combination of various components that make a successful system. Here's a mighty one.
Clearaudio Performance SE turntable with Satisfy Ebony tone arm and mounted with Concerto cartridge. Mr BR swears the Satisfy Ebony sounds much better than the carbon version and the extra cost is justified. I can only agree!

This is a 2 source system, with Clearaudio Performance SE turntable packaged with Concerto cartridge for the analog side, and an Ayon CD-07 represents the latest thinking for the physical media digital front end. Mr BR is dabbling in to Hi-rez downloads too, and I think very soon, this will be a 3 source system!
The latest CD player that represents the latest digital thinking in European design, it's Swiss actually! This baby's got tube outputs. A very fine and smooth, sophisticated sounding player.

The pre amp used here is the latest hi-end craze, longer than thong waiting listed, Odyssey Audio Tempest Extreme feeding signals to a Khartago Extreme SE stereo power amp. The Odyssey Extreme mods includes beefier power supplies and use of upgraded audio grade parts inside. Mr BR used MIT CVT series interconnects and speaker cables are MIT AVT series. Power cords are from various sources. The whole system is powered via a Pure Power APS 1050i PLC with the highly under rated Audio Magic Mini Reference used as post output filter, just as I had suggested in my review of the Pure Power APS 2000 PLC more than a year ago. There's even a Prometheus Energizer Brick just after the Pure Power treatment(this, not my idea! Ha!Ha!) supplying exclusive juice for the turntable. By the way Mr BR is using the high quality built in phono stage of the Odyssey pre amp.
Note under the Ayon CD player, Odyssey pre amp are the use of Elite Acoustic Magnet Shock Isolators is combinations of 3s or 4s. On the bottom shelf is Pure Power APS 1050i.

Odyssey Khartago power amp also rest on Elite Acoustic MSI too. Wood is also used to damp the acrylic amp rack.

Even the Maggies 1.6QR is given the Elite Acoustic MSI treatment!

Mr BR uses A.S.I. Basic level cup resonators for room tune. Another tweak to mention is the use of Elite Acoustic Magnet Shock Isolator thru out the whole system. Every component sits of 3 or 4 pcs of the said Magnet Shock Isolator. By the way, the system is housed in a lightly treated for acoustics, mid size dedicated studio/lounge room of irregular shape. Mr BR is a bass guitar player too, and has jam sessions in the same room sometimes.
Audio Magic Mini Reference PLC with Quantum Physics Noise Disruptor sitting on top. The use of a passive filter post Pure Power is highly recommended, and is well demonstrated here by Mr BR.

The first thing I noticed from the first notes of hitting the play button was, "this system has so.... much bass, for a pair of small Maggies that is!" I actually found it hard to believe, as most have previously mentioned the smaller Maggies to be some what bass shy. In fact the bass that greeted me was the solid, punchy and tight kind, which is quite a pleasant surprise. On certain recordings, the bass very nearly threatened to boom but just stop short of doing so. This is what some may call a system on the edge, not the edgy kind, mind you. Just to draw a parallel sort of experience with a finely tuned high performance car, when a driver starts to lose grip, yet manages just enough grip to keep on propelling front movement on a tight corner. Yeah! you guessed it, it's called "drifting". The bass performance of this system has that threshold of performance, it's exhilarating!

The mids have an open clarity quality, just as expected from a pair of Maggies. The highs are smoothly extended and "airy" if some what not quite cut from the same cloth kind of continuity when crossing over from the mids, as experienced on the bigger Maggies. Having said that, if one comes from listening to dome and cone based dynamic drivers, you'd not noticed it at all. Overall system tonal character is on the warmer side of neutral.

Perhaps due to the room's irregular shape, sound staging may not be as deep as can be(I guess that's just a matter of taste, as some have previous indicated that my system to be far too laid back in this aspect), but depth layering is still well reproduced with solid vocal images anchored between the speakers.

Mr BR has indicated a new turn table up grade on the horizon, and perhaps even a pair of Apogee speakers, just for the fun of it. And like many Maggie 1.6 QR owners, Mr BR looks forward to the arrival of the just launched Maggie 1.7 soon.
The turn table is powered via a Prometheus Energizer Brick, after the power is regenerated by the Pure Power APS.

This is a finely tuned system, which I am sure Mr BR has spent many, many hours, not to mentioned days, perhaps even years to achieve, yet make it all look, and sound so...... effortless. After all, he's been in the reviewing business for a long, long time now. It has been team Hifi-Unlimited's joy that Mr BR is sharing his system with us.

Thank you and Kudos!

10 Qs For Jim Thompson, Director Of Sales, Eggleston Works Speakers.

Jim Thompson, Director of Sales a.k.a. the boss!, Eggleston Works.

At the KLIAV 2010, I met Jim Thompson for the first time. Odioslueth has a thang for the Eggleston Works speakers and as a very satisfied user of The Nine model, he has asked me to pose a few questions for Jim. Let's start!

Big E: Where in the US of A is Eggleston Works located? Tell us a little more about your company please?

JT: We are located in Memphis, Tennessee. We have 10 people working in a 10,000 sq ft factory. We ship out 600-800 pairs of speakers every year. Being a small company, everyone chips in and sort of does everything. Take me for example, despite what my job title says, I am actually involved in every aspect of the company. Other than sales, I also do product design, R&D work, production planning and general administrative work. Sometimes, I also sweep the floor! Ha!Ha!Ha!

Big E: Elvis town? Where Graceland is? And is Justin Timberlake tomorrow's "New King"?

JT: Yes, Elvis town, Graceland and Eggleston Works are all in Memphis Tennessee. I am not so sure about Justin Timberlake being to tomorrow's "New King". He's not exactly from Memphis, but a small place close enough. He says he is from Memphis now days, I wonder why?

Big E: I am sorry, we digressed a bit. Tell us how did you end up working in the high end audio industry, or Egglestone Works specifically?

JT: I joined Eggleston Works as an Accountant in 1996. Then a series of fateful twist later, the owner, Mr Eggleston himself, left the company and by the end of 1997, I ended up with the thankless job of running the company.

Big E: Were there any existing speaker products when you took over?

JT: The Andra and Isabel models were already established models by then, and we had the Rossa in it's final prototype form. I had to learn fast about speaker designs and manufacturing. Thank fully, we had a customer named Bob Ludwig, the famous recording engineer, who uses the Andra at that time, and he was guiding us to build him speakers that he would grade to later. That resulted in the Ivy, which is still our flag ship speaker today. The Ivy was then further re-worked to fit more realistic living spaces in the form of the smaller Savoy model.

Big E: So you had no prior training or experience on speaker design what so ever prior to running Eggleston Works on a day to day basis?

JT: No. That's why I had to learn really fast!

Big E: It's a well known fact that Eggleston Works name the products after ladies. But my partner Odiosleuth is really curios, why that tradition is broken in "The Nine" model, which he uses?

JT: It's true that all our speaker models are named after ladies, most of whom we know in person. except for the Savoy, which was taken out of Shakespeare literature. I originally wanted to name "The Nine" after my grandma, but I just felt the speaker just didn't reflected correctly with her. Since the product is the ninth model in our product line up, internally code named "The Nine" amongst our staff, the name just naturally stick ed!

Big E: Out of curiosity, what's your grandma's name?

JT: Dianne! Now you know?

Big E: Ha!Ha! That's good. Speaking of the Dianne, how's the model selling since it's launch at the 2008 CES?

JT: We had high expectations for the Dianne, it was well received by the audio press, but I think we got it in to the market at the wrong time. As you know early 2008 was when the world wide economic crisis started, many of our originally targeted buyers, meaning the music loving working class Americans, lost their jobs. The buyers of the Andra III and models up wards, seemed mostly remained un-affected though. So in terms of revenue, the Andra III is still our best selling model, followed closely by the Dianne today. We would have expected it to be the other way round, but we are not complaining.

Big E: The off center tweeter of the Dianne, any particular technical reason for it to be this way? Other than being located nearer to the mid woofer which en chances point source integration?

JT: Technically, what you have mentioned is worthy of consideration as a design benefit, but the Dianne is a low cost model for us, so there's really no budget for the usual Dynaudio Esotar tweeter that we used in all our other models, I am after all, an Accountant, remember? He!He!

Big E: If it's O.K., can you share with us who is supplying that tweeter for the Dianne?

JT: It's no secret by now, that many will know that all our mid and woofer drivers are supplied by Morel. The Dianne tweeter is also supplied by them. Just to add, the new carbon coned drivers of the Andra III are also Morel sourced, but that's custom built to our specifications and they cost more than four times compared to those used in our previous Andra II. Those are the best drivers I've seen from Morel.

Jim then proceeded to share with us a virtual tour of the Eggleston Works factory on his Mac. From there, we know that every Eggleston product, from the Dianne to the Ivy, are all hand made, and custom finished in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Jim taking us proud Eggleston Works speaker owners on a virtual tour of the Eggleston Works factory in Memphis Tennessee. Hey! Big E, yes you hiding behind the left there, you sure you have a pair of those speakers?

Jim also encourages Egglestone Works speaker owners to polish their prized possession every now and then with dark coloured, high quality canuaba grade wax, mostly used for auto detailing. "This will retain the shine on the cabinet finishing for many, many years!" he said.

However, he also advised owners of the Andra III speaker with the aluminium side panels to tape mask those panels first, before applying the wax, as it's difficult to remove the residual wax from the micro grained aluminium surface later.

I wish to thank Nelson and Sky of Center Circle Audio for including the Hifi-Unlimited team in the sumptous Eggleston Works owners get together event with Jim Thompson.

HiFi-Unlimited's 1st Anniversary!

Yes! We are 1, and counting. It has been an incredible hifi journey for us both, Odiosleuth and my self. It is also heartening to see more dealers warming up to us in support and we hope for the remaining few to hop on to the band wagon soon. We wish to thank all the friendly dealers and industry players who have supported us in kind and in advertisement.

We started out HiFi-Unlimited with the target of achieving 100,000 hits by our first anniversary. I am glad to say thay we have superseded our target by many yards. We organised readership activity in form of the Wadia write in contest, with moderate success. Perhaps Malaysians don't like to write in general? Who knows? We'll try something else very soon. We like to interact and reach out to our readers more in the near future.

We also wish to thank our hifi buddies and friends who gave us ideas, perspective, help without benefits, and shared their hifi systems with us. We just could not thank you enough, even for just being our friends. Hifi life would be boring otherwise.

If you have noticed, we have just done a template make over of the blog site to make it more colourful and less serious looking(ML, thanks for pointing that out!). We believe hifi should be fun and remain an activity to be shared among caring friends and like minded buddies.

Did we forget something? No we did not forget our loyal readers at all. We just decide to leave the most important VIPs for the last. With nearly 180,000 hits and counting, we could not have done it without the support of those reading this now. Your reader ship gives us a purpose of existence, the strength to keep going the journey and a joy to share all that is in music, finely reproduced by our proud hifi systems.

A VERY BIG THANK YOU! For reading HiFi-Unlimited.