finn@pur-ee.UUCP (06/13/83)
I have a general inquiry about KLH audio equipment, in particular,
the KLH Solo (walkman type cassette player) which is selling for $69 in a
mail order magazine. I don't know anything about the company but the Solo
sounds almost too good to pass up, having bi-directional play, and coming
with the FM cassette insert among other things. I would appreciate hearing
anything about the KLH company and/or their equipment. Please respond
through mail and if i get enough input, i will summarize to the
net (as always...).
Thanks beforehand.
I can be reached at...
{harpo, decvax, ucbvax}!pur-ee!finn
Dave Hesselberth (not my account)
Purdue Universitylarry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney) (06/20/83)
I have a KLH Reciever/Turntable that is 15 years old and runs like a charm. I read an article once about the company, it did a profile on the head who is this electronics hacker type who is always coming out with new and innovative ideas. It gave me a very good impression. -- Larry Kolodney (USENET) decvax!genrad!grkermit!larry allegra!linus!genrad!grkermit!larry harpo!eagle!mit-vax!grkermit!larry (ARPA) rms.g.lkk@mit-ai
jeff@tesla.UUCP (06/30/83)
KLH = the initials of Henry L. Kloss, hardly a hacker, more an entrepreneur. Kloss knows how to design good stuff--i.e., simply. Thus, he built the AR-1, etc., founded AR, and sold it to a conglomerate. THen, he founded KLH, built good basic loudspeakers, and sold the company to a conglomerate. Then, he founded Advent, built even better basic loudspeakers. Unfortunately, before he could sell that company to General Foods or the like, he decided to compete with Sony in projection TV and the company went bankrupt. Now operating with legal protection, and without Kloss, Advent is out of projection TV and, I hope, still making loudspeakers (you know, the ones with the best price/performance ratio on the market). One of the new Advent "saviours" is Peter Sprague, of the Sprague [capacitor] family, who, with money made from a wise investment in National Semiconductor ten or more years ago, has also helped (or tried to help) the Aston Martin motorcarc firm. As AR is not what it used to be, so is KLH. Does anyone know what H.L.K. is doing now?
leichter@yale-com.UUCP (06/30/83)
You are being a bit unfair to HLK. Advent's big claim to fame, in addition to its excellent speakers, of course, was its cassette deck; Advent INVENTED the quality cassette deck market. Before the Advent, cassettes were for dictation. Similarly, they didn't "attack Sony in the big-screen video market"; they got there first, inventing a product that no one thought there was any market for. Sure enough, there WAS a large market - and, as in the case of the cassette recorder, everyone else jumped in and grabbed as soon as Advent established this fact. Unfortunately, Advent was never large enough to hold onto the markets it created after "the big boys" came in. (If you look at the audio industry, you'll see that a couple of very large companies control most of the production. The exceptions are: Very high-end stuff, and (for some reason) speakers. Advent never went for the "golden-ear" market; they wanted to make good-quality MASS stuff. Everywhere but in the speaker business, they got clobbered. Such is economics...) -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale
leichter@yale-com.UUCP (06/30/83)
Forgot to mention in my other article: It's not Advent that's always pioneering it's Henry Kloss. KLH invented the high-quality compact music system back around 1970 or so; these are long gone, but were marvelous little systems made at a time when "compact" meant "GE low-quality record player", and large components were the only way to get quality. Later, they made the "KLH table radio" - a high quality, very small, cheap mono receiver. As for AR, if I remember right, they introduced the first acoustic suspension speakers, at a time when "quality speaker" meant huge and expensive. That you can describe HLK's stuff today, in retrospect, as "simple" is a monument to the degree to which his ideas have since become accepted practice. -- Jerry
seifert@ihuxl.UUCP (06/30/83)
The rumor I heard was that Kloss started Advent with its line of popular speakers was to raise enough money to go into projection tv. Anyone else heard this? Opinion: I can't stand Advent speakers. They have a boomy bass and generally sound like garbage. Opinion: The (n-1) generation of AR speakers is great. After MUCH auditioning, I bought a pair of AR-11s which sound fantastic, especially considering size and price. I also liked the Klipsch Cornwall, but didn't like the idea of needing a forklift and truck to move them. The only speaker I've heard which sounds (to me) truly and significantly better than the 11s are the Snell type 'A'. Maybe the AR 9s, but I haven't listened to them much. The Snells are much more 'open' than the ARs, and the bass goes lower.. Of course these are much larger and more expensive. The current generation of ARs have regressed considerably. Dave Seifert ihnp4!ihuxl!seifert
newman@utcsrgv.UUCP (Ken Newman) (06/30/83)
As far as I know, Kloss is still at it with those projection tv's, on his own. He has something called a Kloss II or some such thing that is supposed to be the state-of-the-art for sharpness and particularly brightness, a traditional problem with proj. tv's. I think the new Japanese invention of "high definition" tv though provides an even better picture. Kloss is still quite a guy.
newman@utcsrgv.UUCP (Ken Newman) (06/30/83)
P.S. Let's hear it for Advent!
ellis@flairvax.UUCP (07/02/83)
Anyone out there ever experience the misery of owning a KLH turntable? Michael Ellis - Fairchild AI Lab - Palo Alto CA
leichter@yale-com.UUCP (Jerry Leichter) (07/03/83)
I never had a KLH turntable, but I have a KLH tape-deck! This was a product that never caught on; designed to have some of the features of expensive decks but still be cheap. Thus: Three heads, but the head pre-amp doubles as the mike pre-amp, so you can't monitor off the tape. Dolby - this was their big selling point - but of course Dolby never caught on for consumer reel-to-reel (oops, forgot to mention this is a reel-to-reel machine). Since you can't monitor off the tape anyway, they only had to put in one pair of Dolby circuits... Interesting circuit design: The high-level inputs are fed through a voltage divider and into the mike inputs! (So, of course, no mixing...) I bought this thing used back in 1976 or so for something like $75. It's never really worked right, but I've kept it around as a classic - who ever saw a KLH tapedeck? -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale
dab@iedl02.UUCP (07/05/83)
References: yale-com.1693 I don't know about that "first" acoustic suspension speaker stuff. I used to have an early 60's vintage KLH acoustic suspension speaker, and it sounded lovely.
dbg@ihldt.UUCP (07/07/83)
Just to set the record straight, Henry Kloss did NOT found Acoustic Research, Inc. of Cambridge, Mass. He was recruited to work for AR by its founder (and the inventor of the acoustic suspension concept), Ed Villchur. Henry Kloss had some differences of opinion with Villchur and left the company to start KLH. Rumors held that Kloss had more differences of opinion with his KLH partners. He left KLH to form Advent, and to produce what I thought was an excellent and affordable loudspeaker. Kloss is currently in the projection TV business. The last I heard about Villchur he was working on audio devices for the hard of hearing. Incidently, a few licenses were sold for the acoustic suspension concept but not nearly as many as there were companies using the idea. The decision was made not to pursue violations and the patent became useless. The acoustic suspension notion brought about changes to drivers resulting in high compliance. Subsequent investigations by Novak showed that high compliance drivers were better in ported systems as well. A.N. Thiele later wrote THE definitive treatment on loudspeaker design for vented enclosures. Thiele's work can be summed up by a few equations based on Fs, Vas, and Qe. These equations lend themselves quite readily to vis programs for determining enclosure design for a given driver. I now use these programs as a starting point for all my designs (thanks to bas who wrote the initial versions). ihldt!dbg dbg Loudspeakers (now only a hobby and in need of a better workshop) p.s The above deals only with low frequency (piston action) reproduction. The rest of the spectrum and crossing over to it is another dozen stories. (by the way, Roy Allison also started as a mentee of Ed Villchur at AR)