Beginning in 1982, with the obscure and long forgotten Rotel RL915 (a hi-fi speaker developed and manufactured for Rotel by my then employer Mordaunt-Short), I’ve conceived, designed and developed numerous hi-fi, commercial install and studio loudspeakers. I’ve worked either in-house or as a consultant with Mordaunt-Short, Canon Audio, Naim Audio, Acoustic Energy, Creek Audio, Epos, Cyrus, Therefore Product Design and a number other organisations where my involvement is covered by non-disclosure agreements.

My most recent consultant loudspeaker design role is with Stratton Acoustics where I lead the young company’s electro-acoustic design and development activities. Stratton Acoustic’s first model, the Elypsis1512, constitutes a unique approach to ultra high-end hi-fi loudspeakers and I’ve described it in a blog post here. Since that blog post, the Elypsis1512 has also received its first press review. You can find that here.

Thanks to its unusual configuration and extraordinary performance, the Elypsis1512 falls for me into a “notable” category of speakers for which I’ve been responsible, but there’s been other notable ones too. Here’s a few of them:

Mordaunt-Short System 442

I began working at Mordaunt-Short under Mike Deadman and Vic Sapsford, however when both parted ways with the company in around 1984, I was left predominantly responsible for product conception, design and development. While there was a pressing need to update and expand Mordaunt-Short’s core product range (products such as the MS10, MS15,  MS25, MS30, MS35, MS45, MS55, MS100 and MS300 would result), a new high-end, statement loudspeaker was also required, and that became System 442. The core design concept of System 442 was to decouple the entire enclosure from the mechanical vibrational energy of the drivers and thereby minimise the acoustic contribution of enclosure panels. This was achieved by creating a rigid metal “spine” that extended up from the floor through the enclosure. The drivers were rigidly attached to the spine, but the enclosure was attached only via highly compliant Sorbothane seals. The result was a unique high performance speaker that sold in good numbers and reviewed extremely well. The ‘442 even now has a small but loyal bunch of audiophile fans who occasionally approach me for information and advice.

Canon Audio S-75

I’ve written about the Canon Audio story in a series a blog posts, starting here, and perhaps my favourite of all the Canon Audio speakers is the S-75. The S-75 predecessor was the S-70: a floor-stand speaker based on Allen Boothroyd’s design and engineering of the original Canon S-50, but with the addition of a coupled-cavity low frequency section. The update from S-70 to S-75 reflected the addition of a newly specified and developed midrange driver and separate tweeter (mounted on a radial grille component forward of the midrange driver diaphragm). The mid driver and tweeter together replaced the somewhat flawed full-range (mid/HF) driver of the S-70. The S-75 was, in both mechanical and electro-acoustic terms, a hugely complex product, but at the same time immensely satisfying to be involved in. It was probably the best sounding and most striking looking of all the Canon Audio hi-fi speakers.

Naim NBL

I joined Naim in a speaker design and project management role shortly after Canon Audio was euthanised by Canon Inc. and was almost immediately tasked with conceiving, designing and developing a speaker that would inhabit the commercial space between Naim’s existing SBL (Separate Box Loudspeaker) and DBL (Decoupled Box Loudspeaker) and simultaneously offer a less complicated installation procedure than either. The NBL (Nested Box Loudspeaker) was the result. The NBL employed existing Naim and Scanspeak drivers (twin bass drivers from the SBL and the midrange driver and tweeter from the DBL) in an electro-acoustic system that was partly inspired some old Roy F Alison ideas concerning the interface between speakers and room acoustics. The NBL also employed the separate box philosophies (‘nested’ rather than simply stacked) already established at Naim and its unusual twin-enclosure, resistive bass loading technique. The NBL reviewed well and was popular among many Naim dealers and customers. Its end came after five years production when the curved solid hardwood cabinet top panel became too expensive.

Acoustic Energy Aego T

The Acoustic Energy Aego T satellite and active subwoofer system was design specifically for 5.1 home theatre applications. It combined very high performance electro-acoustics with a much admired industrial design concept (admired particularly by Linn Products who later launched a remarkably similar looking compact speaker) and implementation. The Aego T falls into the notable category for me not only thanks to its of its performance and appearance but also because won the What Hi-Fi Award in 2006 for best ‘Style Speaker Package’.

Acoustic Energy AE22

The  AE22 nearfield studio monitor was jointly inspired by Acoustic Energy’s desire to return to its pro-audio roots (the AE1 was initially intended as a studio monitor) and a technical paper Philip Newell and Dr. Keith Holland presented to the Institute of Acoustics in 2001 (you can find the paper here). The paper aimed to investigate the technical basis for the success and longevity of the Yamaha NS10 in the nearfield monitor role by comparing its measured performance (frequency response, time domain characteristics and harmonic distortion) with 35 other similarly sized monitors. Newell and Holland found that while in the frequency domain the NS10 is far from flat (although its power response tends to flatten in studio installations), its time domain and distortion performance is exceptional.

So the idea behind the AE22 was to design nearfield monitor that majored on time domain and distortion performance (unusually, the AE22 has an “underhung” bass/mid driver voice-coil) with a tonal balance that, while not as extreme as the NS10, had the same kind of mid-forward character. We also chose to give the AE22 a highly distinctive aesthetic (partly inspired by acoustic guitar scratch plates) to differentiate it from more conventional monitors. It was also available in both active and passive versions. The active version was more popular, but I had, and still have, a soft spot for the passive version.

Next? I can design your speaker

It goes without saying perhaps that, just as much as it is about entertaining recollections, a considerable reason for a page like one this is to draw attention to my speaker design consultancy skills. So if you need a speaker designed, please get in touch using the contact form here.