I just realized how long this newsletter is. Are you sure you're up to reading it all? Maybe not all in one sitting ok?
In the Audio Business, things tend to be really slow during the summer and then pick up again in the Fall. Makes sense I guess, who wants to be sitting around inside listening to music during the warm summer months? That’s a Northerner’s point of view at least. That’s exactly how it panned out for us this year at Volti Audio – gangbuster sales early in the year kept me very busy in the shop all the way through the summer slowdown, and it looks like I’ll be catching up on my work in the next couple of months. So what I’m saying is, there is no better time to get your order in for your very own set of Volti Audio speakers than right now.
If you’ve been thinking about buying a set of Volti speakers, I’ve got some good deals for you – keep reading.
As most of you are aware, my wife Laurie and I moved from Maine to Tennessee a few years ago and we’ve been building a rather large (to us anyway) workshop/home here in Baxter. Most of the locals still don’t really know what to make of it. Maybe it’s the generous roof overhangs that throw them off – a Northern feature that works just as well down here in the South, although you almost never see it around here. Here’s a recent photo of our new place. We finally got the exterior siding finished and it’s all painted. The landscaping has a ‘ways’ to go yet, but at least the Tennessee Mud is under control now.
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Lone Star Audio Fest 2019
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This year Laurie joined me for the trip to the Lone Star Audio Fest, a show that is really more like a small group of audio enthusiasts and DIY audio equipment builders who gather each year in Dallas, TX to show off their wares and have fun.
Is it an Audio Show? Sort of, but when there’s only about 200 attendees over the weekend, I’m not sure you can really call it a ‘Show’. Even though it’s not worth it from a business marketing perspective, I am drawn to it based on the people that I’ve met and the relaxed atmosphere. And once a year at least, I get to have REAL BBQ!
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Like last year, once again I wasn’t prepared to bring finished speakers to the show, having sold everything I had at AXPONA a few weeks earlier. I actually delivered three sets of speakers during my trip to AXPONA this year! Cool huh? So I decided to bring ‘raw’ Vittoras again. Not the stacked set that I brought last year, just regular old naked Vittoras.
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Raven Audio supplied us with some great gear again, including a nice collection of music on a computer, and we had a great time, and made a great sound all weekend. Thanks to Dave Thomson, one of the good guys in our industry.
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Here’s a couple of links of interest
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The 2019 Capital Audiofest is coming up very soon - November 1 - 3.
Will you be there? It was a great show last year, with more rooms than I’ve ever seen at this show, and it seems everyone was making a really good sound. I heard some really good stuff there last year. If you haven’t been to an audio show, or haven’t been in a while, check out the vibe and good times at this year’s CAF. Be sure to stop by the Volti Audio room – I’ll have beautifully finished Vittora speakers there this year – with BorderPatrol Audio electronics, Triode Wire Labs cabling, a P.I. Audio Group UberBUSS, and an Innuos music server as the source.
The Vittoras that I’ll be bringing to CAF are for sale. I might even be able to deliver them to your home for you. Here’s a link to the webpage with all the information on this unique set of speakers. They are being sold for a full $10,000 off the normal factory-direct price, so be sure to check these out.
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If you’d rather have a new pair of our flagship speakers,
you’ll be interested to know that for the remainder of 2019,
I am offering a 10% discount on new Vittora speakers!
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I miss RMAF and I hope someday to get back there. This year, once again, the show organizers did not make it attractive enough for me to spend my limited marketing dollars with them. The cost of the room more than doubled, and the sizes of the rooms were smaller. But Vinnie Rossi texted me from the show and said I really should consider being there in 2020. We’ll see.
The Three Amigos will be at the second annual
Florida Audio Expo in Tampa February 7 – 9, 2020
A Little Warmth In The Winter
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I think the pair of Rivals I just finished are the prettiest ones to date. They are fully optioned, which makes them among the best sounding as well. This top of the line pair of Rivals are being sold at a bit of a discount too!
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Bosse Cedar veneer is one of my favorites. Can you imagine there was a tree that had this beautiful wood inside? Amazing. That deep reddish tone is not a stain – that’s the natural color of the wood with a clear satin lacquer applied. I love using light colored and nicely textured grill cloth as a contrast to the darkness of the veneer. I hear people call this ‘vintage’ cloth, which is ok with me. Frankly I just think it’s classy and it shows the real quality of the materials used throughout the construction of the Rival.
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These are going with me on my trip to CAF this year. I’m dropping them off at Steve Guttenburg’s home so he can review them. Steve has been busy this year reviewing several different pairs of horn speakers and reporting on them on his blog and on YouTube.
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Please visit this new webpage I just made that provides all the details for this pair of Rival speakers, including detailed pricing/options, links to Steve’s YouTube channel and Cnet webpages, and tons more photographs
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Delivery and setup? Once again, perhaps I can deliver these to you after CAF this year? Saves a ton of money on shipping, and you get ME setting them up for you in your home. Email or call ahead of time and we’ll work it out. Steve’s place is in NYC, and I’m in Tennessee, so we can cover quite an area of the country for delivery. I don’t mind veering off course a bit either.
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Next time you’re traveling through Nashville, stop by the Adventure Science Center and check out the new Volti Audio exhibit!
Ok, well to be honest it’s not really a Volti Audio exhibit, but we do have a small display in the new permanent “soundBox” exhibit – one of quite a few displays highlighting career options in the music and sound industry here in Nashville.
Steve Hinkley, the CEO of the ASC, has been a fan of my work for many years, and he was insistent that I should be a part of the exhibit. I’m honored to be a small part of it. Thank you Steve, and congrats on bringing such an important exhibit to Nashville.
soundBox is the “convergence of science and sound” - In this immersive, new exhibit, you'll explore sound and music in 15 active, hands on and social experiences - while celebrating Nashville’s Music City roots. Poke around long enough and you’ll come across this:
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Volti Audio Is Now Selling Innuos Music Servers
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I just added this great lineup of
Innuos
digital music servers to my arsenal of recommended products. The feedback we're getting from customers is amazing - one profoundly stating that the Innuos/BP combination is so good, that he see's no reason to continue listening to analogue and is selling all his analogue gear. This is something I completely understand, because we have come to the point now in the history of digital music playback, where the sound quality is at or beyond that of the very best analogue setups. When you pair an Innuos music server with the right DAC, the sound quality is natural, clean, clear, detailed, smooth, and musical. These music servers easily outperform the very best CD transports and home-computer based systems in sound quality, and the difference is not subtle.
Call me today and let me help you upgrade the source in your system and improve your music listening experience in a profound way.
Greg Roberts - 207-314-1937
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I’ve had the opportunity to use many different products with my speakers over the years. The experience I’ve gained in putting together systems that have great synergy is something that you can benefit from. I only recommend products that I’ve used personally, and I’ve arranged to be able to sell these products to you directly, at prices that match the best you’ll find anywhere.
You've got my cell phone number and I look forward to you calling me sometime so I can help you build a better sounding system.
Check out my 'Electronics and Cabling' webpage to learn more about the products that I represent.
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Did You See The Klipschorn Review . . .
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. . . in Stereophile Magazine? By Art Dudley
Khorns are a difficult speaker to review and an equally difficult speaker to test. They are the most room dependent speaker ever made, and Art’s room (17’ x 12’ x 8’) is not an ideal space for them. Since Klipsch is now enclosing the backs of all new Khorns, they are implying that they can be used out of corners, and of course that’s how Art spent most of his time listening to them, and that’s why there are so many comments throughout his article about lack of bass. That and the fact that for much of the review period he used a zero-feedback, pentode-based tube amplifier, that would naturally be light on bass to begin with.
Khorns DO need to be in corners, and if buyers buy them thinking that they can use them out of the corners at all, they will likely be very disappointed with the lean bass. Mr. Klipsch always made it very clear that 48” was the minimum distance of unobstructed wall on each side of the bass horn to ‘complete’ the bass horn. This fact does not change just because back panels have been installed on the bass horn, which for the record, don’t extend out 48”. What Klipsch is doing by instructing buyers that the Khorn can now be turned out of the corner for better imaging, is providing false hope that the Khorn can now be used in a wider variety of room sizes and shapes without compromise. There will be compromise. Klipsch is now saying that what they’ve been telling you for the last 70 years about ‘corner loading’ isn’t really so anymore. Mr. Klipsch must be rolling in his grave.
If you’ve read any comments on the internet about how poorly the Rival speakers measured when John Atkinson did his tests on one, I urge you to take a look at JA’s measurements on the Khorn, a speaker that has been in continuous production and refinement for over 70 years, by a company that was sold for hundreds of millions of dollars a few years ago. What’s their excuse? Further proof that measurements often tell you nothing about how something sounds.
About his experience with new Khorns, Art had as many good things to say as bad. And in the audiophile business that equals a bad review. I would be very disappointed if one of my products got that review.
They Should Be Better . . .
I say the same thing about new Klipschorn speakers as I do about forty year old ones. There’s a lot more performance to be had and a lot higher quality of sound available from this iconic design. New Khorns still have a midrange horn that is the most colored (honky), glaring, and shouty horn on the market today. There’s no better example of how bad a midrange horn can sound. I know of at least a dozen other horn speaker manufacturers in the world, and none of them make or use a midrange horn as bad as the Khorn. The throat size of the Khorn midrange horn is 11/16” diameter, and this narrow throat continues away from the driver for quite a distance before it finally opens up. The reasons for the K400 design (currently the K401, made of plastic instead of metal, but still the same horn) have to do with what was available to Mr. Klipsch back the 1950’s for drivers, and also due to the limited high frequency extension of his otherwise wonderful folded bass horn. Neither of those limitations exist today, and there’s simply no reason for Klipsch to continue using one of the worst midrange horns ever put into production.
Except maybe because of what I call the “Wonder Bread Theory”. Ok, follow me on this one. If you’re the maker of Wonder Bread, which is an iconic product that we all know and perhaps even love, you cannot simply change it to be something other than Wonder Bread without a major backlash from the public. Remember “New Coke”? I think Klipsch is in a similar position, in that they have an iconic product that is the face of their brand, and there is a “Khorn” sound that they really cannot make wholesale changes to. It’s a theory. There’s got to be some reason/s why Klipsch doesn’t make a better sounding cornerhorn speaker.
But that’s good for Volti Audio! I’ll keep making replacement midrange horns and I’ll keep selling higher quality components that all work together as a system to raise the level of Khorn performance up to modern horn speaker standards.
They Can Be Much Better . . .
Volti Audio offers Klipsch Klipschorn and Klipsch Belle owners a convenient and complete way to raise the level of performance of their speakers. As good as these iconic designs were and still are, they are not nearly as good as they can be. The Volti Audio Klipsch Upgrades are all designed to work together seamlessly to sustain the qualities we love about our speakers, and eliminate the vices so common with these old designs. I categorize these known old-horn-speaker vices into four categories:
- Colorations - 'honky horns'
- Harshness - edginess
- Dis-integration between the components
- Limited Bandwidth
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Modern drivers, higher quality crossover components, larger midrange and tweeter horns, higher quality internal wiring, thoughtful design, careful voicing, and quality construction – together, eliminate these vices and make your Klipsch speakers sing like never before.
It worked for me back in 2008 when I developed/discovered how to make my own Khorns sound much better than I ever thought they could, and now, more than ten years later, I’ve got hundreds of happy customers enjoying the same.
As long as Klipsch keeps making the Khorn, I’ll keep making them better!
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I Drove To Seattle And Back . . .
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. . . and oh what a trip!
5700 miles, 14 different states, 9 days.
So many great sights along the way.
Started out in Baxter, TN (of course), drove through beautiful Western TN and KY, through Missouri (no comment) and ended up at a customer’s home in Kansas City where we ate BBQ and I enjoyed listening to one of the best stereo systems I’ve ever heard – Aluras, BP, TWL, UB, Innuos. Wow.
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Not much to say about Kansas, but Nebraska was interestingly flat, and I dodged a tornado as I drove through a huge rainstorm. Stopped at “Bailey Yard” which is the world's largest railroad classification yard. As I continued West, I climbed up, and up, and up into Wyoming.
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All the way across Southern WY – seems like it would be boring, but it was anything but. Just amazing. Into Northern Utah, down a mountain road into Ogden, hoping to get a glimpse of the Great Salt Lake but it didn’t happen. Up into Southern Idaho, which I shouldn’t say much about.
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NE and Northern Oregon, driving along the Columbia river was amazing. Crossed over a bridge and continued in Southern WA state and then up to Seattle. It rained.
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Northern WA state between Seattle and Spokane is a beautiful mix of mountains, fertile farm valleys of fruit, and straight lonely roads along treeless high farmlands of wheat or barley (I think). Northern Idaho is much prettier than Southern Idaho. Down through the mountains of Western Montana, into plains country again, then dropped down into the NE corner of Wyoming where I stayed the night in the Hemmingway room at the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, WY.
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Went to Devils Tower and then found a Guinness Beer In Hulett
South Dakota - I spent 20 minutes at Mt. Rushmore, but what really grabbed my attention was the Badlands at sunset – like being on another planet.
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A few notes from my trip:
- It goes unreported how much fencing we have in this country. Thousands of miles of wood post and wire fencing. Someone had to install all those posts in the ground and run miles of steel wire between them, and someone has to maintain all that. Amazing.
- I didn’t realize how few trees there were out West. I’m a Maine boy, and Maine is heavily forested. I thought States like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and South Dakota were heavily forested, and they are, in places, but it’s not like New England. The sheer vastness of the high plains is something to see.
- Someone please start a petition and let’s make the convenience store chain “Kum & Go” change their name. It’s embarrassing on so many levels.
- Public bathroom hand dryers have become far too loud. Especially for children who end up with this very loud high-frequency fan right at ear level.
- Someone please tell me what the point is of having a sign on the highway that says “Caution: Overhead Power Lines” right under where the power lines are. Maybe it’s just me.
- Lastly – I really don’t think we need to make deer crossings so wide. I’m driving along and I see a sign that says: “Deer Crossing Next 15 Miles”. I can pay close attention to that for about 1 mile, and then my mind gets onto other things. I think we can all agree that if we limit the crossing to just half a mile or so, that should be plenty of room for the deer to cross, and we can all pay attention in that short zone so we don’t hit any of the poor critters. I’m just sayin.
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Well that's it for this issue of the Volti Audio email newsletter. Thank you for subscribing and until next time, trust your ears and always Have Fun!
Greg
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