| March
2011
Where
to start, when trying to provide a brief trip down memory lane about
the road one has travelled, the more or less helpful detours made, the
people met en route, the anecdotes from the journey…?
The
story we want to tell especially targets those who have known and
accompanied Auditorium 23 from the start – the DIYers, music
lovers, and aficionados, those who want to make their own large and
small discoveries off the beaten media track. They came to us because
we were – whacky like them – enamored by a way to reproduce
music that at the time was seen by many as a form of
“sectarianism” and ostracized by the media at large. We
preferred historical horn loudspeaker systems from the 1940s instead of
trendy “tall boys”, flee-powered tube amps instead of
transistor-based wattage-monsters, bulky vinyl spinners instead of
handy CDPs providing “lossless” music playback. Freaky! The
internet did not exist back then and insertions were expensive and only
reached a limited number of readers. When we distributed the magazines
“LES RÉALISATIONS de L'AUDIOPHILE“ and later
“SOUND PRACTICES“ in Germany, less than 50 subscriptions were sold.
At
the time, loudspeakers that could be driven by our L'Audiophile amps
and later on by the Shindos were not available as current production
items. In order to be able to provide adequate speakers for our
electronics line-up, we had to arduously hunt for historical components
and build customized cabinets for each individual client. And those
custom-built speakers were often large and did not always fit snugly
into ones living quarters.
Voice of the Theatre and Triangle TQWT
at the Auditorium in 1989 |
Unlike
the DIY community, as a manufacturer we were also obliged to provide
warranties on our products. But how could we guarantee components that
were only available in the vintage market? Hence, we were always on the
lookout for a current manufacturer who was building speaker drivers
with the desired materials and according to old production principles.
A French journalist friend then introduced B. Salabert to us who
pursued such goals with his recently founded company PHY-HP. The PHY-HP
drivers finally enabled us to serially build loudspeakers without
compromising on our idea of sound. In addition, they allowed us to
utilize smaller cabinets, which led us down a new exciting path of
discovery. The rest of the story is widely known and the loudspeakers
developed in the subsequent years (in addition to speaker kits that we
offered) can be found on this website and are described en detail under
the links below.
In
the public’s eye, the image of Auditorium 23 morphed astoundingly
fast. Before we were horn nuts, now we were wideband morons. Opinions
on our PHY-HP-based speakers ranged from “thanks, but no
thanks” to “you will have to kill me before I give them
back”. Our “Interior View” tells a bit about the lessons of wrong timing.
During
all these years, we did the one thing and the other. Responding to the
frequently asked question what I would concern myself with in my free
time, I vaguely answered: “With the sound of the 1930s”.
The
preference for vintage audio was never forgotten, it merely flourished
in hiding. Circumstances were too difficult to try to make this narrow
and specialized field of music reproduction accessible to a wider
audience. However, it did not prevent us from acquiring as many vintage
products as possible in order to learn from them. As a result our
“Hommage”-line was born.
Today the ball is passed back to us
Those
who have concerned themselves a bit with the restoration of vintage
cars will certainly remember the times when it was almost impossible to
find original spare parts. Today, newly fabricated spare parts are
available in almost all instances to perfectly restore the timelessly
beautiful classic cars.
In the world of audio, luckily the same
holds true. We learn from that, that a certain way of enjoying music
has gathered a larger fan-base over time than we could have hoped for
in the past. Originals from the 1920s and 1930s from e.g. Western
Electric, Klangfilm or Westrex are sought-after collectors’ items
world-wide, are expensive and thus cannot be afforded by most
aficionados of such systems. The demonstration by Silbatone,
of such a WE-system (L9) at the HighEnd 2010 in Munich has probably
resulted in not only visitors, but also one or the other exhibitor,
questioning their believe in the alleged progress made, where music is
often shredded into tone-scraps, ignoring the music’s inner
cohesion.
Miracles do happen
The
globalized world is tightly knit and offers opportunities we did not
even dare dreaming about in the past. Such a long period of time
probably had to pass for the appreciation of the reproduction systems,
which we cherish so much, to develop. In addition, it seems to have
required the foundation of a company in China, whose owner shares this
passion. To manufacture quality replicas of historical originals at
tolerable prices is presumably only possible in China these days.
We
are excited to have been granted the distribution rights for the
products of Line-Magnetic Audio in Germany and its neighboring
countries. And we are all the more excited that this leads us back to
our roots.
We attended the first demonstration of a WE 15A/555
system in Paris in a small auditorium near the Place Pigalle in summer
1985, which was organized by our later distribution partners from
L'Audiophile. To listen to Barbara’s “Göttingen”
via WE 25B (from the collection of J.C.Verdier) and also to Nemesis
provided lasting memories. Good friends do know how long we have wished
for a re-launch of such components. That these drivers and horns now
come from China reveals that the idea of sustainability of a product
has also become an increasingly important consideration in China. To
get so close to the original, with such artisanal perfection, resulting
in a timeless sound – we could only dream about this in the past.
Today these things have become real and Line-Magnetic Audio truly
deserves our gratitude for that.
The fact that the owner of
LM-Audio is an ardent collector of historical audio components, rules
out that his replicas do not hold up to closer inspection. The opposite
is true – the materials chosen are faithful to the original and
the attention to detail is stunning. The first replicas of WE 22 A
horns and WE 555 drivers along with prototypes of WE 755 arrived in
Frankfurt in summer 2010, while another, larger delivery arrived in
December. The feedback of the new owners is enthusiastic. For them and
for us, a door to a new world of sound has been opened, where music is
reproduced with fascinating subtlety and captivating authenticity, and
where one is perplexed when considering when these components were
first developed. Incredible how modern these seemingly historical
loudspeakers sound.
Line-Magnetic WE 22 A
Finders keepers
A
loudspeaker idea that had been in the works for years led us to search
for a possible alternative to the WE 555 together with our partner in
the US, Jonathan Halpern of Toneimports. From Racon to Vitavox,
RCA-variants and certain Jensen types – many drivers proved to be
interesting in the testing phase, but ultimately remained problematic
when it came to sourcing and the modifications required to realize our
project. The casual sentence “then let’s check out the
Chinese drivers” resulted in the developments described above.
The distribution rights for us and in the US were speedily agreed upon.
Of
course, we listened to the replicas in comparison to the historical
originals and believe that the perceived differences are more a
reflection of different “burn-in” times than level of
craftsmanship.
The journey remains exciting – stay tuned!
(A product page for the individual components of Line-Magnetic Audio is in preparation)
Arrival of the first delivery in summer 2010
| 
Horn and stand come in a wooden box, first-class packaged
and secured
| 
Line-Magnetic WE 555 driver
| 
Line-Magnetic WE 755
| 
Line-Magnetic WE 597
| 
Arrival of the second delivery
in December 2010
|  |
The shipping boxes are being provided with the addresses
of the recipients
|
