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(a)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. …