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Thread: Who would you hang ...

  1. #1
    RIP 2021 SEAWOLF97's Avatar
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    Who would you hang ...

    .
    with for a day (from the audio world - either production/design/theory/tech) ... to experience/learn what you could from that person ? why ?

    I was going to say "pick one" , but that's not really possible ..so limit to 5 or so.

    Was thinking about my own answer to this question and came up with

    George Martin , the Beatles producer ..he really shaped it. So much to learn from him.
    George Harrison , in addition to guitar , he was an amateur race driver. some beers and a fun day.
    Thomlinson Holman ...THX , I read his manual on my AptHolman preamp and he has an interesting and informative style that was enjoyable. So much to learn there.
    Edgar Villchur ...incredibly smart audio inventor. One of the pioneers.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Villchur

    Am sure that many other names will pop up as this gets thought out further ...

    Who would you ?
    Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

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    Administrator Mr. Widget's Avatar
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    James Martini: aka James B. Lansing
    Paul Klipsch
    Rudy Bozak
    Dr. Amar Bose

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    Senior Member DavidF's Avatar
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    Thomas Edison. My Grandfather worked at Menlo Park for a time and had some interesting stories about the experience and about the man (he didn't work with Edison but he was still around).

    Paul Klipsch. varied interests, a true contrarian with a sense of humor.

    Tom Dowd. As with George Martin, he as access to so much inside knowledge of some of the seminal music of my generation. Also, he has access to some cool audio toys.

    E. H. Scott of the 20's and 30's (not the later-to-com H. H. Scott). His company was tagged the "Stradivarius of Radio" and he was another eccentric with a desire for perfection. He produced equipment without peer in the 30's.
    David F
    San Jose

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    Quote Originally Posted by DavidF View Post
    Thomas Edison. My Grandfather worked at Menlo Park for a time and had some interesting stories about the experience and about the man (he didn't work with Edison but he was still around). .
    IF I thought that comprehension was remotely possible, my answer would have been
    Nikola Tesla.

    PBS ran a show that featured the AC\DC (no, not the group) standards wars between NT & TE. Fascinating story. Edison played a bit dirty in that one.

    BUT
    , then Tesla mutilated his manhood so not to be distracted from his work by women.

    Wow, talk about dedication ....
    Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

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    Senior Member martin2395's Avatar
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    My first choice would be Nikola Tesla, for sure.

    The other 4(in no particular order) would 've been:

    - Bob Carver
    - Dan D'Agostino
    - Greg Timbers
    - Nelson Pass

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    Quote Originally Posted by martin2395 View Post
    My first choice would be Nikola Tesla, for sure.

    The other 4(in no particular order) would 've been:

    - Bob Carver
    - Dan D'Agostino
    - Greg Timbers
    - Nelson Pass
    I have a friend who DID hang out with Bob Carver for a day.

    He bought a pair of Carver Amazing speakers that had an issue. somehow he found Bob's email address and asked abt them. Carver lives just up the coast about 150 miles and replied "bring them on up, we'll fix them" ... He did, they did. Spent the day in his garage and even had lunch.
    Bob even autographed them when they were repaired.
    Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

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    Harry Olson, who put theory into practice.

    Don Keele, who is our last living legend.

    Don Davis, who put in practice the works of Wallace Sabine.

    Vincent Salmon, who gave us the hyperbolic equation.

    A. Neville Thiele and Richard Small for publishing loud speaker design parameters which were once the domain of acoustical engineers and physicists.

    The genius Paul Klipsch has already been mentioned.

    Wente, Thuras, Bostwick, Blattner...

    The list is endless!

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    Quote Originally Posted by SEAWOLF97 View Post
    I have a friend who DID hang out with Bob Carver for a day.

    He bought a pair of Carver Amazing speakers that had an issue. somehow he found Bob's email address and asked abt them. Carver lives just up the coast about 150 miles and replied "bring them on up, we'll fix them" ... He did, they did. Spent the day in his garage and even had lunch.
    Bob even autographed them when they were repaired.
    Bob Carver? Great engineer, lousy driver. He made an illegal left turn in front of me a few years ago as he was pulling into the Sunfire parking lot, and nearly caused me to T-bone his car. I honked, he got out of his car, waved and smiled. I smiled back, gave him the bird, and proceeded on my way. LoL!

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    Senior Member DavidF's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SEAWOLF97 View Post
    IF I thought that comprehension was remotely possible, my answer would have been
    Nikola Tesla.

    PBS ran a show that featured the AC\DC (no, not the group) standards wars between NT & TE. Fascinating story. Edison played a bit dirty in that one.

    BUT
    , then Tesla mutilated his manhood so not to be distracted from his work by women.

    Wow, talk about dedication ....
    Tesla was all about science with a brilliant mind. Yes, way over my head. Edison was much more of a practical thinker, more with what I could relate to. But, yeah, likely still way over my head. From what I have of his personality you could as likely want to choke him at some point as not, at any given moment. Still he had a group of clever and creative people working around him for many years and there was something in the works at all times.
    David F
    San Jose

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    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    In audio?

    Harry Nyquist. The Tesla and the Edison of audio, and data handling, and a whole lot more, he really contributed on that level. A theoetical genius who was so practical that he didn't bother to prove many of his developments. All he cared about was that they could be used to create almost everything that mattered in audio and signal transmission and reproduction. Decades later others would come up with the proofs, and prove it all they did. Nothing has been refuted, to my knowledge. The torrent of hardware that flooded from Bell Labs and Western Electric was the direct application of his ideas.

    Alexander Graham Bell. Come on.

    Jim Lansing, certainly.

    Nelson Pass. I use his stuff every day, and chances are it sounds at least as good as your stuff.

    Alan Kimmel. The other amplifier design engineer I most respect. I have had a phone conversation with him and limitted correspondence, but we have never met in person. He is an incredibly nice man.

    Jerry Moro. I want to know how the hell he came up with the low distortion transducer designs for JBL. Given ​what Mr. Lansing did for the design and manufacture of speakers, I consider Moro the bearer of his legacy.

    Greg Timbers. I don't have to explain here, just jump on the bandwagon.

    And, the guys at Stax in Japan, and the JVC crew who came up with the K2 system for XRCD. And any Japanese mastering engineer who has ever used it.

    Jim Anderson. He records Patricia Barber, and others.

    Todd Garfinkle, musician and MA records in the flesh. I met him this year, but a day would be great, especially a recording remote day. Why? Listen to his recordings...

    I am not entirely saddened by not being able to hang with Tesla because I did get to spend a half day with R Buckminster Fuller. How could I complain?

    But I would so much more wish to hang with the musicians I consider the most accomplished.

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    RIP 2021 SEAWOLF97's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ducatista47 View Post

    I am not entirely saddened by not being able to hang with Tesla because I did get to spend a half day with R Buckminster Fuller. How could I complain?
    Whoaa ...thanx for the memory jog. I went to one of Bucky's lectures at UCSB on my father's recommendation (1967 or 8) . Dad said that this will be the most brilliant guy you'll ever meet. I was just a HS senior. His presentation was comprehensible to me ( I was smart back then) , and seemed like the same stuff that I was reading in the Popular Science mag predictions.

    Lasers ? Holography ? Holograms ? Even the famous high speed milk droplet.

    Don't know how I ever forgot that night, except that it just preceded a tumultuous personal period. Wonder what else I've forgotten


    Ray Dolby too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dolby

    I DID NOT realize that he invented the VTR and was born right here in PDX. Don't recall the mention of his passing, just last year....
    Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

  12. #12
    Senior Member 1audiohack's Avatar
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    Starting with famous dead guys:

    Richard C Heyser, a JPL senior staff scientist and audio guy who in 1967 created a super hetrodyned audio measurement devise that allowed for complex acoustical measurements in the presence of noise. This system was made portable by Gerald Stanley of Crown Audio and Don Keele at Techron. Richard was a guy who really got it.

    Edwin Howard Armstrong, The real creator of audio and RF amplification. Friend of Paul Klipch and a paul bearer of Nicola Tesla. Another guy who really got it.

    Harry Nyquist, Human super mind who created a single graph that at once shows the real part, the imaginary part, the magnitude, the phase, the frequency and the identification of minimum and non minimum phase of an acoustical or electrical measurement, in about 1925 if I remember correctly.

    Dr Eugene Patronis, Professor emeritus in the school of Physics at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. I don't think there is anything electrical or acoustical that he doesn't understand.

    Doug Jones, Professor emeritus Columbia College because he really understands small room acoustics, and a whole bunch of other interesting stuff. Oh and the fact that I really like him.

    Don Davis, Who while at Altec created RTA with his own money commissioning HP to build it for him when the genius's at Altec decided it would be of no benefit. And a whole lot more. The last time I talked to Don, we just talked about road racing.

    Tom Danley, because he is a true pioneer in our time, and is a lot of fun to be around.

    Jerry Morro, because he know the answers to all my transducer questions and is a nice guy.

    Greg Timbers, because he knows all the answers to my integration questions, and is a nice guy too.

    You said five or so, so,,

    Barry.
    If we knew what the hell we were doing, we wouldn't call it research would we.

  13. #13
    Senior Member Ducatista47's Avatar
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    My appologies to Jerry Morro for apparently leaving an "r" out of his name. I only saw it in print once, some years ago. And I am no longer a great speller. My further regrets for listing double the suggested number of luminariies.

    As for Mr. Fuller, I feel the need to mention that he was almost certainly one of he greatest and widest ranging thinkers of his century. The portrait painted of him by the press didn't even touch him, and up close and personal it was obvious that he was in a league of his own. One of his greatest strengths was to effortlessly answer important questions that no one else even thought of asking. He was also a master of integrating pretty much everything, and to great practical effect. There is a reason why synergy is a word most closely associared with him.

    The night before, in a massed assembly of an entire college, he stopped talking and looked up at no place in particular for perhaps half a minute, completely motionless. Most of the audience, who gave him their complete silence by the way, began to think he had forgotten what to say next. His resumption was otherwise normal, and the next day, upon closer observation of how he moved through time, I realized that he had needed to do some very big thinking about something which had just occured to him and couldn't wait for later. I have to wonder how many of those present ever realized what a once in a lifetime moment they had witnessed. Not exactly a Jersey Shore cast member puzzling over nail polish colors.

    At the risk of complete paralizing reader boredom, I should explain that while Fuller's writing was precise but dense by ordinary standards, his in person explainations were lucid and immediately comprehensible. As an example, when asked questions he would explain that he felt obligated to give the best, most complete answer he was capable of. In our tiny group in a tiny auditorium the next day (in the engineering building), when asked a simple question about a particular geometric solid's property, he gave a precise and simple answer. That was from a know it all math professor with a big ego trying to trip him up. When asked an intelligent guestion about geometric relationships he gave a two hour answer in which he blackboarded his entire, nearly, developed ideas involving geometric relationships and their bearing on the question. In other words, he shared with all eight or ten of us the entire development and implications of his work with mathematics relating to geometry. If only it had been filmed. The way he presented it from the ground up, any reasonably intelligent second year high school math student would have understood everything.

    And what ideas. Remembering him as the inventor of the geodesic dome and a few tinkered odds and ends in like reporting the Titanic disaster as iceberg one ship zero. Given the societal and ecological implications of his work, such shorrt shrift is throwing away a gigantic, incredible gift.

    I guess I used to be smart back in those days too. Damned old age.
    Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
    Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears


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    Senior Member Doctor_Electron's Avatar
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    Drew Daniels

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    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor_Electron View Post
    Drew Daniels
    Yes! Would have loved to work on the Saturn V launch simulation project at Epcot Disney Land in Fl. Even had a place to stay.

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