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" If something is worth doing than I do it to the absolute nth degree and reproduction of music is right up there! "
Friday 17 November 2006
By Shabir Bhatti (Exclusive)
AC / Part 3 of 3
A bit about Audio Acoustics
Well, I am a perfectionist and manic extremist. I will work on a problem or a design with obsession and it is irrelevant how long it takes. We are talking years sometimes - that’s how pig headed I am or I wont bother at all. If something is worth doing than I do it to the absolute nth degree and reproduction of music is right up there!
I am proud to meet my product owners - knowing that I created a concept to fruition personally and with pride and passion. Its giving someone joy, well after the novelty factor has worn off. I apply this to most things. Sad I know, but its me.
With a mechanical engineering background I could always work in parallel with electrical and mechanical ideals. Solving and utilizing from both viewpoints’ - overlooked in other designs.
I am a purist first and foremost and have a basic fundamental belief. One that always uncomplicates design, to replace with perfected basics; be it however difficult to achieve and the repeated need to go back to the beginning and re-design, removing the need to make something work! Things should not be made to work! Half the time they don't need to be there. The simplest designs like the wheel etc, are the hardest to produce, yet once established are taken for granted, yet are the most effective and productive. Just Correct.
Possibly a decade from now, people will take a few of my finding as basic loudspeaker construction basics. Just as over 8 years ago, we were advocating the use of sapphire and diamond diaphragm and basic pure piston drive units. Alas, marketing does not always let the credit go to the people who form the basis of most advancements - these tend to be credited to non independent commercial companies.
Audio Acoustics was set up 1982 in West Ealing London from a humble small flat. It was a small retail outlet offering radical cutting edge product, orientated to supplying back then, the finest service and products of true value. In those days the thought of offering someone a 7 watt SET was most astounding to people. Alas, here we are and it only took 30 or so years for people to appreciate a well executed SET amp; again I reiterate the words well executed.
With over 30 years of experience as a High-end dealer in the late 70's and early eights, I was a staunch supporter of the linearity of the single ended silver triode coupled with the dynamic horn and compression driver parameter possibilities. This was followed as a distributor in the search for better performance verses value product. Finally dismayed with so-called high end perceived product with very little but the high end price tags only, the logical step forward was in the need to start manufacturing purist specialist audio for the last 18 years with a combination of high end amplification and loudspeaker typology.
From Sept 1998 to now - culminating in producing a whole new radical approach, to a subject executed the same way for many a decade.
What do you have planned for the future?
Well as you can see, that if what I can demonstrate in black and white affects the chain to this vast effect, then naturally if we can transform a transducer that is at the end of the audio chain and the cable systems are affected to this degree - imagine how much information we have already lost in the ancillary chain! Hence, the introduction of the Nano Pucks to improve on what people already have in their system is a small step in the right direction, but not an answer to producing a resonance distortion free ancillary. To follow there is the NAN ON – a Support Sub-frame system, isolated within an energy transfer unit, priced £2499 per modular stackable shelf.
Then my frightening work transducer system - the Orb Weaver Diamond is to launch at CES2008 or early spring. This is an absolute speaker to show how much we have stood still and just repeatedly reinvented the loudspeaker for the past 100 years. Price is estimated at £219'000. It will be a landmark in all respects and the temporary flagship for 3 years until the reference Diamond Oracle Statement is launched in 2009. All its development work to date is now implemented into the smaller models. Price on the Statement will be around £500k. Before everyone runs for the hills! On a opposing note, next year we launch a baby £6'000 model called " Zahrah" - a superb system for the true audiophile on a budget and built to the standard of any 25k plus loudspeaker at a budget price.
Is my reference the same as yours?
For me its the Queens royal band's just up the road or the sally army brass band in the high street on a Saturday afternoon and not forgetting my daughter as she plays away on her piano, always a delight; at least most of the time! Finally, now and then, i get an opportunity for a evening in the Albert Hall. Listening to a great symphony played well or even a bad one is and should be what we pay a ludicrous amount of money to reproduce, especially out of a pile of numbers on a shinny disc or a great early decca sxl 2000 or 6000 fist generation pressed recording. These were produced with a limited amount of interfering, just a couple of great microphones and a great orchestra lead by a great conductor and no engineer, with his or her perception on how everyone should sound; has to be for me a thing that brings a smile to my face.
Equipment wise its just as easy. There are countless great pieces of Hi-Fi, but for the true music lover we are indeed limited to nigh on less than the fingers on my hand in what I class as a component that has Nil character of its own and just expresses the music without adding, subtracting, exaggerating, coloring or replacing something with its perception on the recording.
In this small group lies the Audio Acoustics product's that when in similar company bring "nothing" and that same smile I mentioned earlier comes to my face, but more so knowing we are recreating musical realism from what was once a piece of dead information stored.
If this sounds like what you are looking for, do have a listen. I promise no disappointment and enlightenment at worst.
Shabir Bhatti
Designer
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Audio Acoustics, Sapphire TI-C SE, Sapphire, Reference, Fundamental, Loudspeaker, Speakers, Shabir Bhatti,
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