A letter never published Fried
]Auricle Publishing ©2008
Fried Letter to Stereophile
by Richard Hardesty
I believe that speakers should preserve the integrity
of the signal waveform and the Audio Perfectionist
Journal has presented a great deal of information
about the importance of time domain performance in
loudspeakers. I’m not the only one who appreciates
time- and phase-accurate speakers but I have been
virtually the only advocate to speak out in print in
recent years. There’s a reason for that.
Few of today’s high-end loudspeakers are time- and
phase-accurate designs. The audio magazines need
to appeal to a broad spectrum of advertisers including
many who make speaker systems which are time
incoherent. The magazines, and the reviewers who
write for them, have ignored or downplayed the issue
of time- and phase-accuracy in order to maximize
advertising revenue. As you can see from this letter I
am not alone in recognizing this situation.
Legendary speaker designer Irving M. “Bud” Fried
wrote a letter about this subject to John Atkinson,
editor of Stereophile magazine, in response to a comment
that John made in one of his product reviews.
Stereophile chose not to publish Fried’s letter but I
received a copy. Following is an edited version for
your information.
July 20, 2002
Dear Mr. Atkinson,
This communication is offered for the sake of objectivity
and “truth” (a commodity not in high regard
these last few weeks, at least in the world of commerce).
In your August 2002 issue, page 63, you wrote “the
use of a high order crossover means that the MBL
111B is not time coherent (not that that really matters).”
I think it really does matter and I’ll provide
some evidence.
Within the last two years, in what I believe was the
December 2000 issue of the English magazine “HI
FI NEWS,” an article appeared, written, I believe, by
Keith Howard, which detailed the following:
Using a B&W Nautilus Loudspeaker, which has sharp
filters and thus is not time coherent, a tape was specially
prepared of several kinds of music. This tape
was digitally time corrected, so that the resulting
output from the B&W speakers, was a time coherent
signal.
An expert listening panel compared the output of the
speaker from the digitally time corrected tape to the
output of the speaker from the uncorrected tapes. The
www.audioperfectionist.com
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Watch Dog #12
Irving M. “Bud” Fried
Writes to John Atkinson
Watch Dog #12
Irving M. “Bud” Fried
Writes to John Atkinson
Watch Dog #12
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entire listening panel voted unanimously for the superior realism
and accuracy of the time corrected output! The article concluded
that this should put to rest for all time the misconception
that time accuracy is not important for high quality reproduction,
contrary to the belief that your quotation expresses!
Michael Gerzon, in lab work for B&W some ten years before,
arrived at the same conclusion. You may remember that he is
the creator of “Ambisonics”—mentioned in various writings of
yours truly.
Yet the new super speakers that turn up in the marketplace
are overwhelmingly non-time coherent! Perhaps this really is
due entirely to “commercial considerations,” as I was once told
by my dear friend Raymond Cooke, founder and Managing
Director of the esteemed KEF brand, when I questioned him on
why KEF speakers were not time coherent.
I interpreted Mr. Cooke’s comment to mean that “it’s too expensive
to make KEF speakers time coherent.” And so, with his
help, I proceeded to make my own brands time coherent!
I have demonstrated the same condition of “time coherence”
for many years—and written extensively about it. Perhaps it
is time for your readers to hear that time coherence has its
proponents—even though it is not much in evidence in today’s
“super speakers.” In fact, the more time coherent loudspeaker
condition is always preferred by those who value ”live” sound
quality over “commercial considerations.”
I am always available at the stated address—if readers want
the other side of the coin.
Sincerely,
Irving M. (Bud) Fried
300 E. Lancaster Ave.
Wynnewood, PA 19096
www.audioperfectionist.com
APJ
