sound practices reading club /1

There was absolutely no doubt where we were going to start: sound practices issue 1, the main article, The Single 300B Amp written by Joe Roberts himself. Actually, as can be found in the editorial of the issue, the article was also the starting point for the whole magazine. It feels like an overture, a mini-version of things to come, and it surely is for us.

Being the musical piece that previews the opera, it shifts through six distinct sections:

1. the importance of pioneering talking-movie sound systems in the overall development of audio;
2. the position of the 300B amplifier in the 1992 global ultra-fi landscape;
3. the western electric model 91 amplifier and getting it running in home systems;
4. build your own model 91, down to the details;
5. a tasting of different single-ended output transformers;
6. what you can expect from a single-ended/300B amplifier.

teaser quote: ‘Western Electric ranks high among the giants of audio. And the Model 91 is one of WECOs most intriguing and best sounding designs. If you are at all intrigued with single triode amplifiers, as historical artifacts [sic —ps] or as contemporary strategy for good sound, study the Model 91 because it defines the genre.’

a gift from Joe Roberts, SP editor: from the sound practices CD, here is the original article.

my take

This is the ultra-fi movement before it hit the internet—and I must admit, also before my time. A magazine was the way to disseminate information about this movement in a fresh territory: the USA. Spelled out and between the lines in this article is the journey of singe-ended triodes: from high-tech in the 30s; picked up after the war in Japan for economic/cultural reasons; this again was found/decoded/translated by Jean Hiraga at the end of the 70s in the French magazine l’Audiophile, which spread it among freaks in Europe; our article starts the home-coming in the USA (Joe reads French, btw); and I am sure that a couple of years after 1992 that really helped to get the ball rolling on the then fresh internet, which made it a truly global movement.

One of the more direct things I took away from this article is the absolutely classic status of the model 91 amp. Now it is important to realise that this should not, as happens to quite a few Frenchmen apparently, be the first and last amp that you build. But this amp is a natural to appear on the short-list of the-next-amp-to-build (or as a starting point for the next design, once you have picked up the skills). Also note the very low parts count of this natural music machine and the conclusion of the transformer tasting: that yes, you build your amps around the iron.

Now go and read the article, see you next week.