Designer Hall of Fame

My sense of great design has little to do with manufacturing efficiency, which is a laudable trait, but not the sort of thing I meant by design, but rather original thinking related to circuit design - the sort of thinking that goes into Nelson Pass' First Watt amp experiments - the genius of originality and a new way of thinking that leads to better music recording and reproduction. Yet, there is something to be said for those that can build a product with high QC and consistency that saounds good and is affordable - but if the bulk of that low cost is accomplished predominantly with low wages, that seems like a rather blunt way of building something good that sell for "little". I prefer a clever design that uses just the part it needs and no more, that sounds very good and is not very expensive, something like the $760 Mapletree Audio linestage handmade in Canada.

David Reich's Class'e audio designs were wonderful. I had a DR-2 or DR-7 which were class A bias. Anyone know of he has designed any new?

Friedrich Schaefer of ASR Emitter fame...

Whether or not you think his products are overhyped...
The results speak for themselves to those privledged to have owned and used them.

Agree with the respondents...I've only observed Alan Hill/Plasmatronics enumerated once, sooo I'll second it :-)

-Sam

Mr. Israel Blume of Coincident Technogy. This man designs are the best that the high end offers and at performance and prices that undercut similar products. His high efficiency speakers are all excellent at their various preice points. Then he comes out with amplifiers, such as the Frankenstein and the Dragons which blows the doors off of similarly priced competitors. And then he adds to that with the best Linestage at $5,000, which can embarrass many of those with prices of over $10,000. And his new phono stage is unbeatable at its price point.

Mr. Blume is clearly a man of all seasons in high end audio.

Greg