Newsletter September 2003

NEWSLETTER September 2003

Dear Hi Fi enthusiast

September 1^st marks the end of the first year of the Decibel Hi Fi website, and we have been very pleased with the growth in visits to the site and sales over that time. Our assumption that there is a need for a company specializing in turntables has proven correct. We will continue to service this market niche and will be adding to our product range continuously.

Thank you to all who have purchased products or made enquiries or just subscribed. This is only the second newsletter but we intend to produce them more frequently from now on.

We hope you find something of interest in this issue.

If you do not wish to receive these newsletters please reply with the subject REMOVE and we will remove you from our mailing list.

Display and Demonstration Room

There have been a number of people who have enquired about being able to collect products rather than have them posted because they live in or near Brisbane. We also operate a computer sales and service business in Salisbury (called Altair Computer Services) and are pleased to announce that we now have set aside an area for the display and demonstration of hi fi products. There is also now a separate phone number although due to time constraints enquiries should continue to be by email.

The address is Unit 1, 201 Evans Road, Salisbury, Queensland, 4107. Phone number is (07) 3272 7660, or 617 3272 7660 if calling from overseas. The postal address is still PO Box 536, Sunnybank Qld 4109, and the fax number is (07) 3216 6284.

Normal trading hours are 8:30am to 5pm Monday to Friday. At this stage demonstrations are by appointment only, and can be made after hours, including Saturday and Sunday. However, product purchases may be made at any time the shop is open.

It is our intention to open for longer hours in the future, and to have separate premises for the hi fi business eventually, but this is a first step towards a normal retail operation rather than just internet based.

The Loud Speaker Kit agency

The major product announcement this issue is that we have been appointed the Queensland agent for the whole range of The Loud Speaker Kit products.

The Loud Speaker Kit offers a range of DIY audio speaker kits which are ideal for home theatre, high end PC sound systems and HiFi stereo applications. Their philosophy is simple: they aim to supply the best value loud speakers in Australia. They do this by designing kits that use high quality components, rock solid cabinets and are properly engineered and they delete all of the hype, gimmicks, cosmetic tricks and, of course, labour. You assemble the kits, choose and apply your preferred finish and wind up with a fantastic set of speakers for a fraction of the price you would pay for commercially built units.

In order to understand the savings possible consider the following:

If a pair of speakers retail for $1000 this is how that price is arrived at.

10% GST - approx $90 or 9% of the retail price.

Dealer margin – 30 – 40% or say $310.

So the wholesale price would be around $600.

Importers profit – say $100.

So the landed cost would be about $500.

Freight from the overseas manufacturer – at least $100 for a small pair of good quality bookshelf speakers.

So the ex factory cost would be about $400.

Manufacturers profit – at least 50%.

So the cost of manufacture would be about $200.

It is a well known fact that the finish and packaging of a pair of speakers is at least half the total cost of manufacture.

So the value of the components would be about $100.

So when you buy a pair of fully assembled loudspeakers the actual value of the components is only about 10% of the retail price.

If you are able to buy those components by themselves, even with freight, dealer margins and GST the price would be less than $300.

In other words by buying a speaker kit for $300, you will get the equivalent of a $1000 pair of fully assembled speakers.

NO WONDER SPEAKER KITS ARE SO POPULAR. The savings you can realize on a full home cinema set are substantial.

Sure, there are some tradeoffs – you have to assemble them yourself, and the final quality of the finish is probably not going to be as attractive as factory made. But The Loud Speaker Kit produces a high quality product, with cabinets that are precision cut so they fit together perfectly. And the speaker drivers are high quality, crossovers properly engineered and supplied prewired so that assembly takes only about an hour for a pair.

Check out the various models on our website http://www.decibelhifi.com.au/category21_1.htm

The Music Maker phono cartridge by The Cartridge Man – latest review.

Len Gregory (The Cartridge Man), who produces the Hi Fi News Test LP, has had his hand made cartridge reviewed by 6moons.com. Have a read of their findings at this link http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/mmaker/mmaker.html

Garrott agency

In the late 70s and 80s the two Garrott Brothers built up a reputation for their phono cartridge retipping service and a cartridge called the P77. They supplied a high quality “parabolic” diamond stylus and were able to fit it to practically any phono cartridge, including moving coil types. Len Gregory (The Cartridge Man) was their agent in the U.K.

The brothers both died in 1992 and the business was purchased by Audio Dynamics in Melbourne. They still offer a retipping service but with a range of stylus profiles (round, elliptical, microtracer, microscanner, Fritz Geiger). They also now have an extended range of moving magnet and moving coil cartridges which have been highly reviewed.

We are now pleased to be able to offer this service.

Retipping Price table: moving magnet moving coil

round	$135	$155
elliptical	$145	$165
micro-tracer	$219	$269
Micro-scanner mkII	$269	$315
Fritz Geiger Signature	$378	$425

It is also possible to replace the cantilever on some cartridges, with either Alloy, Solid Boron, or Solid Sapphire. Prices on request.

Occasionally a cartridge is unable to be upgraded, in this instance a $33 assessment fee applies.

If you have a high quality cartridge which you wish to upgrade, or one which has lost its diamond stylus, use registered post to send it to us for retipping. Turnaround time for the service is about 3 weeks.

We will be adding the entire Garrott range of cartridges to our product list during September, and will be carrying stock of several models. There are 6 models in their “dynamic coil” range plus 2 moving coil models. Prices start from A$149.

A bit of history – Ted Jordan

When I was a hi fi enthusiast in the mid 70s I was intriqued by the theory of full range speaker drivers that had no crossovers. The principle was promoted by Bose, with their 901 speakers which used nine 4 inch wide range drivers in an enclosure that had eight of the speakers facing toward the rear and only one facing forward.

This direct-reflecting design produced a diffused sound by bouncing off the rear walls to give a spaciousness and involvement that recreated the experience of listening to a live performance. In order to compensate for the limited bass response of such small drivers in a fairly small enclosure and the diminished treble response possible with a wide range driver Bose used an electronic frequency boost circuitry box. The results are very impressive and helped Bose to become one of the most successful commercial speaker brands.

They were heavily criticized, however, by purist audiophiles who argued that the Bose system added to what was originally recorded. Nevertheless the idea of a wide range speaker driver has a number of advantages. Firstly the absence of a crossover network reduces phase distortion effects and results in a better stereo image. Secondly, crossovers lower the efficiency of the speaker system meaning you need more power for the same sound level. The material that a speaker driver is constructed from is also a very important parameter in sound quality – large bass speakers tended to use pressed paper cones whereas tweeters were often constructed from metal or silk or plastic. There has been an enormous amount of research and experimentation into suitable materials for speaker cones.

Ted Jordan is a pioneer of speaker driver design having worked for the UK firm Goodmans in the early 1950s. He formed the Jordan-Watts company in 1963 and developed a metal cone speaker driver in which the flexure of the cone material was controlled to allow a single driver to reproduce frequencies from bass through midrange to treble.

I purchased a pair of the Jordan-Watts full range drivers in the early 1970s although they cost many times what more conventional speaker drivers were selling for and have always been impressed with the natural uncoloured sound they are able to produce. In my absence from the hi fi scene for some 25 years I assumed these unique speakers had passed away due to being overshadowed by the technology and manufacturing cost efficiencies of the 80s and 90s.

It was with more than a little surprise that I stumbled across a website a few weeks ago that seemed to be advocating the same metal coned driver idea that I experienced 30 years ago. And it’s the same Ted Jordan! For more than 30 years he has been developing the wide range metal cone speaker driver concept, and his speakers are still in use. There’s a German company ALR-Jordan which manufactures a range of fully assembled speakers (distributed in Australia by Audio Dynamics). But what I found was more interesting is that speaker building enthusiasts like me can buy the drivers and build their own speaker systems.

If you are interested in these unique speakers I suggest you peruse the http://www.ejjordan.co.uk/ site. I have added the drivers to our product list and will be carrying stock in a few months time. We will also have a set of made up speakers available for audition in the next few weeks. They are not cheap, but for those of you interested in speakers that put the least amount of electronic processing between your source and your ear these are well worth considering. While a single pair is not really suitable for really loud rock music, for most other types including jazz and classical they are superb.

As an example of the results possible from a single pair of 4” drivers have a look at this review http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/47lab/shigaraki3.html

The Jordan JX92s drivers used in these speakers (selling for US$3500 a pair) are just A$330 each. So if you fancy your skills at being able to build speaker cabinets to a professional standard you could have a pair of these for well under A$1000. Have a look at the cabinet designs on the eejordan website.

Top Ten Products

We’ve analysed our sales over the last 12 months and found these are our top selling products.

1. AM carbon fibre brush.

2. The new Hi Fi News Test LP.

3. Disc Doctor complete kit.

4. Ortofon stylus pressure gauge.

5. Ortofon spirit level.

6. Ortofon OM10 Super phono cartridge.

7. Origin Live Rega tonearm structural modification

8. Belden 89259 cable

9. Ortofon tonearm protractor

10. Origin Live threaded VTA adjuster, rear speaker stands, 6 channel volume control kit

All the best

Brian Maddern

website: www.decibelhifi.com.au

email: brian@decibelhifi.com.au

post: PO Box 536, Sunnybank Qld 4109

shop: Unit 1, 201 Evans Road, Salisbury, Qld, 4107

phone: 07 3272 7660 fax: 07 3216 6284

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