[linux-audio-user] Talkin Sound 2 (conversation with Viren Bakshi of Lyrita Audio)

[ISh]

Talkin Sound 2 (conversation with Viren Bakshi of Lyrita Audio)

Hi All,
Following is a conversation with Viren Bakshi of Lyrita Audio 
(www.lyrita-audio.com)
He makes fantastic Valve Amplifiers with Speakers system which are great 
sounding with any kind of music ranging from Indian Classical to Jazz. 
By this conversation I was trying to understand what are his design 
concepts and his reasons for stepping away (and in some ways back) from 
mainstream Amp design by going into Valves. Valve Amplifiers had always 
captivated me from the time I was introduced to them, which was 
basically from guitar players/magazines and other printed literature. It 
was only when I actually got to play one (Marshall) in college I got the 
equation of the Valve Amp and what it does to the guitar tone. So it was 
the case when I experienced the Lyrita Audio’s Music System at a friends 
place and I heard valve amps used for almost ‘transparent’ Audio 
reproduction likes of which are very hard to come by(only in high end 
circles) …..I then really understood the power of this old skill of 
‘Valve amplification’. We were listening to CD’s through and through 
without having any conversations for hours. That’s how entrancing music 
actually became along with the beautiful dim-glow the active Valves.

I would recommend all music lovers to check out Lyrita music 
systems/Web-site as he has a range of products and services like buy 
backs/Upgrades and even installment system for broke people like me.

Thanks and let’s Listen

ISh

ish at sarai.net
(sarai.net/ frEeMuZik.net)

________________________________________________________________________


Q: How did you start off with Audio and Audio systems in particular.

Ans: I started off in Audio basically as a hobby. I m trained to be a 
chemical engineer, Good thing about engineering is that you are versed 
in all the basic sciences, so the knowledge is there and you can take 
off in any direction you want to. And then there was a change in my life 
as such moving from one part of the world (USA) to my home country so I 
decided that I will make a complete switch in my working life, and in a 
way make a business out of what I really wanted to do which was to make 
high quality audio systems.

Q: Around what time was this?

Ans: It was in the early 90’s. I was working as a researcher in a big 
Chemical Company in the US. I was in R&D and I had some amount of time 
to look into other aspects Like sound and Audio and through their 
library I could do some amount of research on things relating to my 
interest and one of those were acoustics because this company also 
produced materials for acoustic applications. So that helped me to study 
the fields of sound and sound reproduction to some degree. Then I tied 
these two things together when I came back(to India) and decided that I 
wanted to make high quality components for home listening primarily and 
also do some consulting in acoustics. Both of them are going on hand in 
hand now.

Whenever a manufacturer starts out building for the consumer market he 
needs to have a very clear idea what he needs to do. Mass market in 
India is flooded with goods from all over the world like Europe Japan 
and China now, but the unfortunate thing is that they are targeting what 
I call the lowest denominator. Where they are not bringing in products 
which are of very good sound quality. They have decided that they will 
fight on the price line. They have decide is that what the consumer 
wants is features and it is a approach like this which has sidelined the 
real purpose of a Music system that is to produce ‘good sound’. The 
whole focus has become on providing bells and whistles rather than 
producing good sound. So my intention was to reverse that cycle and go 
back to the basics of what sound equipment should be and approach a 
market which has been totally neglected in India which is the Audiophile 
which is a higher end market. So actually to come out with music systems 
produced in India which can complete with the high-end imported goods, 
that was the intention and that is how I have gone about making my 
equipment.

Initially I had started making solid state transistor equipment and 
amplifiers. (round 1995) Original intention was to make loud speakers 
because my first interest was in loud speakers so soon I discovered that 
if you have to sell a high quality music system to a customer you have 
to sell it as a complete system you can not sell it as piece meal. 
Because all components interact with each other and produce the overall 
sound. The final sound is what the consumer hears so they will have to 
be in a way matched. . I did not find good enough amplifiers in the 
market which I could use do demonstrate my loud speakers with. So for 
that purpose I came into Amplifier design through a back door. I had 
made some amps for myself as a hobby, so I had some basis of what a good 
design should be like. So I decided to sell the whole system with my 
Amps and speakers and people can be assured of good sound. CD’s were 
available around that time so reasonable good sources were available. My 
intention was to provide good quality sound system and Indian prices so 
a lot of people can afford it.

I have stayed away from the mass market completely because I can not 
complete with them on the price side. I want to attract the discerning 
listener who is not satisfied with what is available and is looking for 
good sound at an affordable price. Even now to look at good quality 
sound is to look at imported equipment which is expensive proposition 
for most people. So my equipment sought of falls in between. So there is 
a fair amount of audience who can afford it and who will appreciate the 
quality also.

What becomes a problem for small manufacturers is how to do the 
marketing. In my case it has all been through word of mouth. I have 
elected to remain a small manufacturer so my consumer base is also 
limited. But I have been having a satisfying experience in helping some 
music lovers appreciate ‘good sound’. The word has spread around the 
Delhi area primarily but now they are going around all over India.

I am very happy to keep it small because this equipment is mostly hand 
made and it (equipment) doesn’t take easily to production techniques. 
Because a lot of compromises have to made when you go into mass 
production of Audio equipment I have tried to keep it small scale.


Q: When and why did you switch from Solid State Amps to Valve Amps

Ans: I was given a valve amp by a friend of mine design of which goes 
back a 40 years, it is a very well known amplifier made by a company 
named ‘Quad’. It is a classic product because it has survived for so 
long and they are still making it by the way. The same model is still 
made for nostalgic and still produces for the same nice sound.(as the 
criteria for good sound reproduction systems would still remain the 
same: through ears)

It is unfortunate that some of the old stuff is being forgotten. You 
should always learn from what has happened before, but the sad part id 
that we have a series of designers and engineers now who have completely 
neglected this aspect of technology.

Valve technology is very well suited o audio sound and in some ways it 
is superior to transistor technology but because of this rush to get 
into something new it has been neglected by the main stream of designer. 
There has always been a group of people who have kept it alive in Europe 
in t he US and there has been resurgence in this technology because 
people have realized that there is some value in it. It still sounds 
better than solid state amps and there is no reason to negate it. And my 
intro to them was these two valve amps I got and I started to listen to 
them with my speakers and I realized that there is definitely something 
in it that has to be looked into and my intention was to take that sort 
of a design and improve on it using material which are available to me 
in India.

India has always had a very active electronics industry. A lot of 
equipment has been manufactured here in fact the largest manufacturer of 
Valves was ‘Bharat Electronics Limited’ and they are still 
manufacturing. They make Valves for radio frequency use and not for 
audio use any more, but they still have a lot of old stock

Q: A lot of guitarists were using Valve Amps

Ans: Yes because valves have a unique distortion characteristic when you 
push them too hard and a lot of guitar player like that. It’s called the 
‘Crunch’ in sound, and solid state has never been able to deliver that 
even though a lot of them have tried. A lot of Guitarist use valve 
amplifiers and that have actually kept this industry going, and the 
manufacturing is still taking place. There are factories in the Checz 
Republic, Russia and Yugoslavia making Valves and the entire production 
now is dedicated to Audio use. So there is no real shortage of Valves in 
the world and the production is taking place and also there is a lot of 
old stock also floating around. I also started using old Stock of BEL 
(Bharat Elect Ltd) which was still available with some traders in India 
and I can get them at a reasonable price. That is how I started off.

(More about the Amps)

It takes one to two years to come out with a good design so you have to 
give yourself that much of a lead time but the end result is always 
worth it.

Q: were you testing the subsequent designs and how many drafts did you 
actually go through to come up with the present design.

Ans: There is a lot of material available for the do it yourself on the 
internet. There are some publications available for the hobby people 
from where a lot of knowledge can be gained from what the other people 
have done. That is how I started out also. And there is a lot of self 
like ‘what are the works of other designers’ and what kind of precision 
is required for making the loud speakers etc. All these things have to 
be studied if you want to come up with good designs. All this 
information is then inculcated in your own brain. And you then select 
your philosophy of design. Like any field of this sort there are 
numerous ways to approach the final result and there in no way anybody 
can say that one actual approach is better than the other. Because there 
are multiple ways to get to it, you have to choose which Design Approach 
is the best way to go and that requires a fair amount of study and 
introspection also. So this how you arrive at your design and you make 
prototypes and you test them and you come out with the finished product 
that still sound good. Then you follow that same design philosophy for 
the range of loud speakers.
If something works for one particular design of loud speakers the same 
philosophy should hold for your entire range of loud speakers. So then 
it is coming up with a range of loud speakers/systems which satisfy the 
different segments of the market. People have space and budget 
constraints and also some have different music requirements which 
require different frequency response from a music system. You also build 
your systems to also fit in those general segments.

In fact in valve amps the designs are very simple and straight forward. 
A lot of work has already been done in the 40s to 60s when there were a 
lot of brilliant minds working on electronics. This was also an 
aftermath of the Second World War when people had worked a lot on radars 
and signals which used valve equipment. All the amplifications of 
signals were done by valve equipment at that time. So there were a lot 
of brilliant engineers who came out of the war and went into the Audio 
field. They were all trained well and they already had good practical 
experience and there where a huge amount of different approaches by 
different designers that came out. So there was a lot of research and 
experimentation done with valve amps. So there is practically nothing 
new a designer now can do. The only thing I have done is basically 
looked at the designs of other people before me and then selected the 
path that sounds right to me and then it is a matter of how you 
implement it like what materials/components are used, how well the 
circuit is made out. Then all that falls into place with your individual 
efforts.

Q: How were you checking you Music systems like frequency response? Were 
you using some special Equipments?

Ans: Basically I rely on my ears the most. I ve listened to a lot of 
live music. I think people don’t realize that human voice is 
recognizable by everybody and you can use that human voice to test the 
loud speakers also. That is because you are so used to of how the vocals 
sound and with that you can judge how well is the sound being reproduced 
by a music system. And If a music system is balanced well over the human 
frequency range you have already covered a fairly extensive range of 
what a loud speaker should deliver. Say from 300Hz to 4 KHz because that 
is the range of female to female voice. That’s the Mid Range and also 
the critical range in out listening. So if you have got that right then 
you have a successful design. Then the really high and low frequencies 
really become the icing on the cake.

Also from my own experience and what all the other designers have said 
the traditional specifications that we have for Amplifiers and speakers 
tell you nothing about how they going to sound like. So I don’t really 
stress on the specifications that much because they are not relevant to 
the sound quality at all. They are basically engineering bench marks.

Q: So because these systems are hand made will for example System A & B 
produced separately with some amount of time gap (say 3 months) be the same.

Ans: They will be reasonably close. As a listener you will not be able 
to tell much of a difference. There are differences in critical parts 
like transformers and the valves which might have some minor 
differences. Nothing is exact.

In the loud speakers the tonal quality of each loud speaker will be 
similar. The only thing that will change is from small cabinet(speakers) 
to large cabinet is the extension of the low frequencies so you get a 
little bit of warmth to the sound because of the bass(low frequencies)
Q: then you mean to say that the mid to the top frequencies are the same 
in all you speakers?

Ans: They should be. Cabinet size basically dictates how low in 
frequency response a music system can go. I have also decided that I 
will have 2 way design for my speakers (2 cones on each speaker) They 
might have more than 2 driver (units which actually produce the sound 
like the woofer for the bass and the tweeter, the whole system of 
drivers is then put together is called a loud speaker) Drive units 
remain the same in all my speaker systems and the only thing that 
changes is the design of the cabinet and possibly the cross over.


Q: Even your Amps design also vary a lot Like the 8 valves 4 Valves 
design and I think that one has 12 of them.

Ans: In that one there are 8 valves and there are 3 input valves. Here 
also the whole design is dictated by how much power you want in the 
Amps, this one is 30 watts RMS per channel. That will determine what 
type of valves you can use and what kind of parallel arrangement you can 
use the output valves in to achieve that power output. Circuitry can be 
suited to many designs but the final design is output oriented. The 
basic design is also similar here from smaller through to the larger 
amplifiers. Again because I like the simplicity and the sound quality of 
the designs I stick to them over the range of my products.

…