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What factors made Massachusetts an audio superpower during the 70's?

H2s04

H2s04

auralmicitisis
Many famous brands like a/d/s/ (Wilmington), Boston Acoustics (Peabody) Advent (Cambridge), KLH (Cambridge), Altec-lansing (I think?), B&W, Acoustic Research (again, I'm not sure), and others originated in and around Boston, MA, during the 1970's and eventually made their mark in design/acoustic history. My assumption is that once done with school, fresh MIT entrepreneurs banded together to create small companies doing what they loved, and eventually became well-known. Although I wasn't around to experience it, I've heard about there being many audio shops in the heart of Cambridge during the 70's selling products mostly manufactured in the same zip code.

I'd love to know more about the history of audio design in Massachusetts and how these businesses got their start; was MIT just the main reason? What other companies started around here that I didn't mention? etc.

Thanks, Jeff :)
 
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Perhaps one catalyst was the founding of Bose in '64. Dr. Bose was a professor at MIT.
 
MIT and maybe the other schools in the 'hood.
AR and KLH started down in the bowels of Cambridge, too. AR dates to the 1950's, BTW.

HH Scott, inexplicably, was out in Maynard (presaging Digital's HQ'ing there).

EDIT: www.hhscott.com is a good place to look for Scott info.
There was an interesting interview with Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison recently published in Stereophile. I think it might be available online at their website.

audioxpress (re)published a vintage interview with Henry Kloss on the occasion of his death. It, too, might be available on their website.

Finally, I suspect you know of the classic speakers website, which has some information: http://www.classicspeakerpages.net
 
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H2s04 said:
Many famous brands like a/d/s/ (Wilmington), Boston Acoustics (Peabody) Advent (Cambridge), KLH (Cambridge), Altec-lansing (I think?), B&W, Acoustic Research (again, I'm not sure), and others originated in and around Boston, MA, during the 1970's and eventually made their mark in design/acoustic history. My assumption is that once done with school, fresh MIT entrepreneurs banded together to create small companies doing what they loved, and eventually became well-known. Although I wasn't around to experience it, I've heard about there being many audio shops in the heart of Cambridge during the 70's selling products mostly manufactured in the same zip code.

I'd love to know more about the history of audio design in Massachusetts and how these businesses got their start; was MIT just the main reason? What other companies started around here that I didn't mention? etc.

Thanks, Jeff :)
Click to expand...

B&W is a UK brand
http://www.bwspeakers.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/local.aboutBowersWilkins
 
I think that it was sort of a coincidence that it was Boston, but not a coincidence that there were so many companies that sprang up there -- almost all of them are descendents in one way or another of AR. But Ed Vilchur was a teacher at Columbia, if memory serves, when he was thinking through the acoustic suspension idea. One of his students was Henry Kloss, who had a wood working business, and did some cabinet work for him, and then one thing lead to another, and they started AR. Why in Boston, I am not sure.
But AR lead to KLH, Allison, and Epicure/EPI, and KLH lead to Advent, Boston Acoustics, Cambridge Sound Works, and then AR also lead to NHT and EPI lead to Burhoe, Genesis, and Reynolds Advance. Not only that but the AR and KLH electronics divisions Apt Holman (which lead elsewhere to THX etc.) Burwen, and DBX, and of course KLH/Advent's embrace of the Dolby system and the cassette tape created essentially all non stenographic use of cassettes. I have no doubt that I have forgotten many others.
But HH Scott was in business long before this, and at the time Maynard was a long way away from Boston, so its not part of the Boston/Cambridge family tree. And Abner Bose, who was from MIT had such a radically different approach to both sound reproduction and business that he and his company are also a seperate line.
What caused such a proliferation of good and great companies in the area? Its impossible to say for sure, but I'm certain (and many of the principals attest to this) that Vilchur and Kloss's enthusiasm for excellence and openness to others' ideas (as opposed to gimlet eyed business savy and territoriality) allowed good ideas and capable employees to rise to the top. A
nd at least for a while, simply producing a better product and advertising it intelligently to customers created such an enormous market (apparently at one point AR sold something like a third of the speakers sold in the US) that they could afford the other thing that made these companies attractive to work for, which was their very progessive policies -- flex time, daycare on premises and so on -- which attracted good workers and good designers.
While its true that Kloss took Advent into the red trying to make projection TVs, the bean counters didn't do much better once they took over either, taking a company that made the best selling speaker in the US and probably the world, and ending up having to sell out to Jensen International (about as lackluster a company as you could name, and which didn't last long either).
There are a bunch of lessons here, but the obvious one, which is that if you allow people to make a good product, and run a company that attracts good people, you have a good chance of making it, seems to be one that is ignored in favor of the other approach, which is to squeeze employees, and cheapen the product, in order to make make more money right up until everyone wises up, at which point, the managers bail out with their golden parachutes.
Of course Bose is a different story, some of which is about how making an unusual product can earn you justified market share, and how sueing the hell out of anyone who gives you a bad review can protect that market share, and how good looks and WAF trumps sound in the real world market -- you have to admit that Bose is great at marketing, even if you don't think their products are particularly good or good value.
End of rant.
 
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