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
How can one omit the legendary Siegfried Linkwitz of crossover fame. Besides that, he designed probably the best loudspeaker ever, the Linkwitz Orion++. This amazng dipole speaker is a full-range with active analog crossovers that can be adjusted and multichanneled amplifier, such as the ATI AT6012, which is rated at 60 watts/channel with all 12 channels driven simultaneously. This allows each amp channel to separately drive each tweeter, midrange, and woofer. As any knowledgable audiophile knows, active crossovers with separately powered speaker drivers get the most and best out of speaker designs--particularly in dipole designs.

One of the great and informative audio sites is linkwitzlab.com Besides containing a plethora of auido knowledge, it also has the speakers he offers, from the plans, to partially built models, to completely finished models. This allows those that are very handy to save considerable money for one of the top 2 or 3 speakers in the world. This is probably why one never sees an Orion on sale in the used marketplace. People just never want to part with them.
Looking back over this thread, one is struck by how much this hobby is really dominated by the talent and labor of talented individuals, to some extent more important than companies. Why it is such a good idea to meet so many of them at places like RMAF.
John G. Iverson, without question. The only high-end designer to be kidnapped (and subsequently disappeared for good) by the FBI!! So the story goes.
Major Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio.

Alan Dower Blumlein, who devised a practical way to record and play back stereo in the late 1930's while working for EMI. Blumlein came up with the idea of the 45/45 method of cutting stereo records and his Sum/Differnce matrix is what makes FM stereo work.

Georg Neumann for inventing the first practical condenser microphone.

Fletcher, Munson and Snow at Bell Labs and Harry Olsen at RCA for their improvements and innovations in in film sound, where early Hi-Fi has its roots.

Frank McIntosh for his Unity Coupled Transformer circuits.