Designer Hall of Fame


There are many great designers out there, and especially in the lore from the golden age, but I'm not to familiar with them. I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of the great designers for engineering skill and knowledge, business integrity, and ultimatley quality of their products. My short list a "hall of fame" if you will of designers working today are:

Nelson Pass, Pass Labs
Charles Hansen, Ayre
Roger Modjeski, Music Reference
Ken Stevens, Convergent Audio Technolgy (CAT)
Kevin Hayes, VAC

and how could I leave Jeff Rowland off? Well it is a short list. Who would you nominate?
pubul57
Wlliam Johnson of ARC, Sidney Corderman of Mcintosh, David Hafler to name a few.
John Otvos, creator of the Waveform Mach 7-13 speakers. Still an incredible value with glorious sound if you can find an owner willing to part with them.
I wonder if Audiogon could arrange a mechanism where we could elect 20 folks year one and a slate every year for additions. I find the tale of the designers, their approaches to technical issues, and to some extent their success in the market to be interesting. When you get to talk with or meet with some of these folks you find they all have an interesting story and views on the art of making equipment that works well and sounds good. I was originally thinking of amp/pre amp folks when I posed the question, but of course that was a bit limiting wasn't it, and an explanation of why the person is mentioned is essential, it is proabably the core of what would appear on their "plaque". So in the speaker category:

1. Bobby Palkovic, Merlin Systems - for perfecting the 2-way speaker and finding an innovative solution to producing satisfying bass from this design.

2. Ed Vilchur - Acusitic Research - for succesfully implemeting the acoustic suspension principle.

3. Richard Vandersteen - Vandersteen Audio - for producing highly successful and "affordable" speakers using time & phase coherence as their underlying principal.

4. Peter Walker & Jim Winey, Quad and Magenplanar - for perfecting the electrostatic design principle.

5. Paul Klipsch - Klipsch - for pioneering the horn loading principle.