TAS: Can you recall when you shifted from hi-fi to the high end?

Lew Johnson: I’m of the opinion that conventional stereo was high end at the very beginning. At that point in time, it was pretty much all component gear. There was no solidstate, no overseas manufacturing—just a handful of U.S. companies. Hi-fi and stereo were high-end products.

TAS: Well, then, how about from being a listener to a designer of electronics?

Lew Johnson: I won’t go through the embarrassing details, but from college on I was always trying to make my stereo sound better. I was your classic “tweak� audiophile. Mostly I was fooling around with speakers—adding a supertweeter or putting drivers into a larger cabinet—but with very little theoretical guidance. I got into more serious engineering when I met Bill Conrad in the late 70s.

TAS: What relative strengths do you and Bill Conrad bring to the partnership?

Lew Johnson: The answer requires a degree of self-analysis that I’m not sure I’m ready for. In broad terms, I’d say that Bill has an incredible facility for sorting out details and an equally uncommon memory for all manner of information. I may have a more intuitive approach to both circuits and marketing.

TAS: Why the lower case for the company name?

Lew Johnson: Because it went with our original aesthetic concept of understated elegance—and because we felt we had ample reason to be humble.

TAS: Do you think there is a definitive “c-j sound,� and have you been able to translate it from tubes to solid-state?

Lew Johnson: I feel there is. We have a very clear idea of what live music sounds like. We spend a lot of time engineering our products in a way that’s consistent with and honors music. We attend a lot of live music, not only because we love it but because it keeps us calibrated. So that ultimate target doesn’t change with the technology we use.

TAS: Amplifier technology is a mature one. How do you keep it fresh when you set out to design a new piece?

Lew Johnson: A lot of what we do is to make refinements to existing circuits and products—perhaps some new parts that weren’t available to us before. Or we’ll hash out what we think are limitations to the circuit. Sometimes its just incremental and other times it’s a quantum leap, like with our zero-feedback circuits in the Premier Seven, and then about ten years ago with our composite triode circuits that debuted with the ART preamplifier. We’re still trying to figure out where we can get a similar leap in quality in the amplifier realm.

TAS: Looking ahead, what kind of innovations do you foresee?

Lew Johnson: I don’t think the crystal ball has ever been cloudier. In my lifetime there has never been this kind of uncertainty about what music reproduction is all about. In terms of amplifier technology, ultimately it doesn’t matter, since once you come out of the digital domain you still need an amplifier. Eventually I suspect you’ll have digital communication from a control center to each amplifier, probably wireless.

TAS: And source players?

Lew Johnson: I think we’re not far from the point where the source will be something similar to a video game plug-in card, with no moving parts. You can now buy a 2-gig USB plugin very cheaply.

TAS: What kind of music do you finetune with?

Lew Johnson: We try to use vocal material, because the human voice is something we’re all familiar with. We also use heavily textured classical material, and music that reveals the temporal accuracy of the system. I tend to avoid material I like too much.

TAS: Why is that?

Lew Johnson: Two reasons: You start to get lost in your enjoyment—not a good idea in design work—and, also, I don’t want to spoil the material.

TAS: What advice would you give to someone new to the high end?

Lew Johnson: Trust your own ears. You need to go out and listen to music. That shows my bias in all this, but to my way of thinking trying to reproduce the experience of live music as best you can is what the high end is all about. So you need to have some familiarity with what that is. And find a dealer and salesman you have some confidence in.

TAS: C-J is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. What inspires you to go to work after thirty years?

Lew Johnson: Force of habit (laughing). But the business aspect isn’t what got us into this in the first place. One of the really good things about this industry is that it’s a place where people love what they’re doing. I love the design aspect of what I’m doing and then making improvements. But most of all I enjoy the interaction with people in the industry. It’s been a great experience, a great ride.

TAS: When did you first discover the difference between hi-fi and high end?

Andrew Jones: I got interested in hi-fi as a young teenager. I don’t know if you know this, but I have an identical twin brother—he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed. So I was born in stereo. We began pulling apart radios; then we started to learn what real hi-fi was—sort of. We began buying good quality components—Thorens turntable, SME pickup arm, Shure V15, the standard route in those days. Then I got to university and met with a student there in a physics course. He had the classic Quad electrostatics, the 57s. That was my defining high-end moment, and it’s stayed with me ever since.

TAS: What did you study at university?

Andrew Jones: Physics with acoustics—I’d already decided my career was going to be speakers.

TAS: Why loudspeakers?

Andrew Jones: I wish I knew. From what I started with and then hearing the Quads, speakers seemed to define to me what a stereo system was. Yes, you’ve got all the other parts that are important, but there was still so much potential or lack of it in the speakers that that’s what captivated me.

TAS: What led you to the development of the concentric driver used in the TAD and Pioneer EX line?

Andrew Jones: That arose from working at KEF. I was part of the team that contributed to developing the Uni-Q. A speaker is a three-dimensional device; it isn’t just how it sounds on-axis, it’s how it radiates everywhere—how it’s interfacing with the room. How you control all that sound is a three-dimensional problem, and as I had started working on concentric drivers, it seemed to me that the concentric was the solution to that problem.

TAS: There’s always been a divide between the high end and the pro/studio world. Is the gap closing?

Andrew Jones: In some ways it is closing. Having worked now with TAD and having had access to the recording and mastering world, I think things are certainly changing. The pros are also starting to do more nearfield monitoring and using more compact speakers, which at the lower end are all self-amplified, often with their own D-to-A converter. It’s not what we’re doing in the hi-fi world, which still hasn’t gone to fully active systems.

TAS: If you ruled the high end would you demand active systems throughout?

Andrew Jones: When we started developing the Model One, we said that if we want to make the absolute best speaker that we can, it’s got to be active. Then I took I step back and said, “Well, I’ll never sell it.�

TAS: Because you’d never satisfy the natural tweaker that lives in most audiophiles?

Andrew Jones: Right. And if I say to an audiophile, I know what’s out there, and I’ve taken what I believe is the best electronics system to integrate with my speaker, so just have a listen and tell me if it isn’t the best you’ve ever heard? The response would be, “Oh, it’s fantastic but you know if you’d only use this amplifier….â€? So from a marketing and business point of view I couldn’t afford to go in that direction.

TAS: Do you think these perceptions change with multichannel?

Andrew Jones: I think they’re beginning to. Because it’s going to simplify the overall system— and what we need in the multichannel world is simplification. It’s horrendously complex.

TAS: What do you think we’ll be listening on in the next ten years?

Andrew Jones: I think solid-state memory—it’s all going to be a form of computer drive. Laptops already have the capability to store the music at every resolution you want. We’re going to able to get bandwidth and bit densities that should be more than good enough. There will be no shortage of memory capability, and you’ve got instant access and can organize your music

TAS: Ultra-high-resolution iPods?

Andrew Jones: Why not? If we don’t begin bringing other people into this high-end business, we’ll all certainly be dead. I see people going to work with their iPods, and the first thing they do when they walk into their houses is plug it into the dock and continue listening to their music. We need to capture those people and raise their expectation of what good sound is and what they’re prepared to pay for it. The good news about iPod is that everyone is listening to music and it’s all two-channel! We need to raise the level.

TAS: What still inspires you about going to work every day?

Andrew Jones: Just doing better—it’s a passion. As an engineer you never feel as if you’ve finished your work. After you’ve signed off on a project you always consider what you would have done if you’d have had more time or more money to spend.

TAS: What got you into audio?

Paul Barton: As a youngster, I had two areas of interest. One was my music—I studied violin from a very early age. My father was a classical tenor and we spent a lot of time with live and recorded music. When I was growing up, mono was just ending and stereo was just beginning. I never got into the mono high-end, but certainly the first decent pair of speakers was a pair my father and I built in the same workshop where he built my first full-size violin.

TAS: He built your violin?

Paul Barton: He studied a lot of books and one of these highlighted the Stradavari “Messiah.� He built an exact replica. It took him a year to make the tools. He made all the molds and the next year he built the violin. He imported woods from Italy; it was quite an adventure.

TAS: What motivated you to build loudspeakers?

Paul Barton: I liked the mechanical side of the hobby as opposed to the electronic side. It appealed to me a lot more. The speaker’s the reproducer of sound, and as time went on I realized it’s also the weakest link. There were two weak links in those days—the phono cartridge and the speaker.

TAS: The two transducers.

Paul Barton: Exactly right. Turning one form of energy into another at both ends of the reproduction chain is the weak link.

TAS: PSB speakers use dynamic-driver cone-based technology exclusively. Did you ever consider going in a more esoteric direction?

Paul Barton: I have designed loudspeakers with ribbon elements. One used a ribbon tweeter that Philips made. On axis it was good out to 60kHz, but everywhere else it didn’t do well. As time wore on it became clear that I want to produce social rather than antisocial loudspeakers.

TAS: Antisocial loudspeakers? Could you define that?

Paul Barton: A planar loudspeaker has a very small sweetspot. With a planar loudspeaker the frequency response changes dramatically off-axis, so not only does the image collapse but so does the way it sounds. You really can’t appreciate a planar speaker unless you’re in the sweet spot. If more than one person wants to enjoy it, he or she has to sit behind the first listener. I call that antisocial.

TAS: PSB is often described as affordable high end. Does that irk you?

Paul Barton: It is a bit frustrating for me. I feel successful when I can produce good value. But it’s frustrating because some people dismiss it because of its price.

TAS: What music do you use to evaluate a project nearing completion?

Paul Barton: I have a set criteria that includes a very well-established group of recordings.

TAS: Examples?

Paul Barton: A little James Taylor, some organ pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition on the Dorian label, some Yehudi Menuhin, James Cotton—his voice is full of terrific chesty resonances.

TAS: What are the biggest innovations you’ve seen in your field in the last ten years?

Paul Barton: In drivers, I would have to say tweeters. Today’s tweeters are much better behaved, stable, and consistent from one to the next. In general, the biggest improvements are the materials, the adhesives, and the ability to produce these things consistently. The manufacturing process has matured greatly over the years.

TAS: Advice for assembling a new system?

Paul Barton: Because the speaker is the weak link, a significant amount should be budgeted toward it. If you choose your amplifier first and it doesn’t have enough power to drive the speaker you end up choosing, that’s a mistake that’s hard to fix. But going the other way you’re always safe, because the power requirement of the speaker is a known value.

TAS: What kind of playback sources will you be listening on in ten years?

Paul Barton: I think you’re going to be listening to just hard memory—mechanical devices will be gone. It will all integrate with networking.

TAS: Classic Records is now 13 years old. Are you surprised at the resiliency of the vinyl market?

Michael Hobson: I am actually. In the early 90s I was asked how long I thought this was going to last. My original prediction was, “I don’t know; I think five years.� Of course, that was when there weren’t many turntables and sales were going down. So even though I’m trained as a statistical economist, I guess I did a fairly miserable job. The market changed in a positive way—a way I hadn’t originally anticipated.

TAS: Is it generational nostalgia or is there something else going on?

Michael Hobson: There is definitely a segment that’s about men like us trying to recapture a little bit of their youth—maybe a simpler time, with a format that’s familiar and makes us feel warm and fuzzy.

TAS: How do you explain how advanced formats like DVD-A and SACD have fallen to the wayside, while the LP continues to enjoy such loyalty?

Michael Hobson: There’s the nostalgia standpoint and what I call an analog revival to a stable point—not dying or growing but merely stable over time. And that was happening even before there were advancements on the higher-resolution digital fronts. Also during the digital format wars, analog became a safe place to be. There was more [analog] hardware being developed and further advances on the phonostage level and on the record level itself—certainly from us. You could buy this format, upgrade your playback, and know it wouldn’t just fall by the wayside.

TAS: It seems like LP mastering and playback keeps improving. Is there a lesson to be learned from this?

Michael Hobson: Interestingly, all formats seem to follow the same path. I always say that it’s easier to encode than to decode. It’s only recently that we’ve been truly able to get off the disc everything that was on there. And there’s still a lot of that going on with digital. The lesson to be learned is that with any technology it takes time for us to learn how to process it.

TAS: For the analog klutzes among us, do you still adjust your own VTA?

Michael Hobson: I do actually, but I will admit that I’m not a super-tweaker record-to-record. Analyzing the proper VTA and enjoying the music are separate processes, so I don’t spend a lot of time tweaking when I want to listen.

TAS: What is your earliest memory of high-end audio?

Michael Hobson: I was always a hi-fi buff, but I guess it was really mid-fi. One of those blissfully ignorant things—like running four speakers at once with an A/B switch. I was kind of an early surround-sound proponent, even though it was only two stereo pairs in different parts of the room. After I got out of graduate school and had few nickels to rub together, I got introduced to the high end.

TAS: And the first system you put together?

Michael Hobson: It was a pair of Apogee Duettas run by a PS Audio solid-state amp, a CJ PV-5 preamp, a SOTA Star Sapphire with vacuum hold-down, a Sumiko FT3 tonearm, and a Shinon Red cartridge with boron cantilever.

TAS: What’s the biggest “get� you’ve achieved with vinyl reissues?

Michael Hobson: The first was with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. And when I heard Zarathustra, the LSC-1806 with Reiner conducting the CSO. That was the first thing we ever did, so there was a special thrill in that.

TAS: Is there a dream reissue that you haven’t nabbed yet?

Michael Hobson: The obvious things that come to mind are the Beatles. And there are Dylan titles that we’d want to get to. I’ve developed a degree of patience in terms of finding the right time and the right approach. But it’s always timing that’s important.

TAS: What still inspires you about your work?

Michael Hobson: Interacting with people who say they love what I do, and to please keep doing it. On a more selfish level, it’s sitting down with my children and listening to something that, in my opinion is as good a job as we could do—a phenomenal job in many cases. That gives me a lot of inner satisfaction. Even though it’s a business, with overhead and all that stuff, for me the musical experience makes it worth the effort and inspires me to continue to do this.

TAS: It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at the breed of dog they own. Annie and Mugsey, your Jack Russells, are a breed noted for energy and tenacity. Do you think this says anything about you?

Michael Hobson: Jack Russells are known to be relentless, and that’s absolutely, positively something I’m guilty of. Someone once said to me that what makes you good makes you bad. For me it’s the relentless pursuit to make the best possible records.

This interview was first seen in TAS Issue 169