Audio Dealers

Welcome to the forum BobNY, sorry it took so long to approve you - I just noticed you were waiting. Thank you for joining!
 
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So I go to the "Forum Rules" page and this is the first thing I see:

"If you are retailer or manufacturer, you are encouraged to promote your business."

Mike, you had me at hello.

It is really nice to not start out as a second-class citizen, assumed to be deceptive and/or incompetent.

I only build and/or sell stuff that I believe in, and respect anyone else in this industry who is doing the same, and frankly don't think there's anyone left in this industry who isn't.

For many years I was an amateur speaker builder, then bought a pair of Sound Labs and loved 'em so much I became a dealer. About a decade ago I returned to my roots and started designing commercial speakers of my own, having had the good fortune of working with Earl Geddes on the speaker that emerged as his Summa.

During the Great Recession when sales of expensive toys plummeted, I started building bass guitar cabinets, on the theory that there's still a market for a decent "tool of the trade" even in hard times. Bass players got me through it, and I continue to build bass cabinets today.

I consider myself very fortunate to participate in this industry.
 
Duke said:
So I go to the "Forum Rules" page and this is the first thing I see:

"If you are retailer or manufacturer, you are encouraged to promote your business."

Mike, you had me at hello.

It is really nice to not start out as a second-class citizen, assumed to be deceptive and/or incompetent.

I only build and/or sell stuff that I believe in, and respect anyone else in this industry who is doing the same, and frankly don't think there's anyone left in this industry who isn't.

For many years I was an amateur speaker builder, then bought a pair of Sound Labs and loved 'em so much I became a dealer. About a decade ago I returned to my roots and started designing commercial speakers of my own, having had the good fortune of working with Earl Geddes on the speaker that emerged as his Summa.

During the Great Recession when sales of expensive toys plummeted, I started building bass guitar cabinets, on the theory that there's still a market for a decent "tool of the trade" even in hard times. Bass players got me through it, and I continue to build bass cabinets today.

I consider myself very fortunate to participate in this industry.
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Welcome Duke...I am not super familiar with your Audiokinesis speakers, except that they tend to be very tube-friendly, presenting an easy load to the partnering amp with a benign impedance curve and are usually designs of high sensitivity, so SET amps are welcome. Tell us more about your speaker design philosophies.
 
cmalak said:
Welcome Duke...I am not super familiar with your Audiokinesis speakers, except that they tend to be very tube-friendly, presenting an easy load to the partnering amp with a benign impedance curve and are usually designs of high sensitivity, so SET amps are welcome. Tell us more about your speaker design philosophies.
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Thank you, Cyril! Yes my speakers tend to be tube-friendly, and quite a few people use them with specialty tube amps like SETs and OTLs. But they'll work just fine with solid state as well, either high or low power.

My speaker design philosophy is, amp + speaker + room = a system within a system, and don't forget that the target audience is a pair of ears rather than a set of test equipment. Recreating the acoustic event on the recording is an unrealistic goal, but recreating (or at least closely approximating) the perception of that event is arguably a realistic goal.

I do indeed shoot for a smooth and benign impedance curve, which works well with both low-damping-factor tube amps and high-damping-factor solid state amps. Inevitably we still have some impedance peaks in the bass region, so the enclosures are vented boxes with pluggable ports, with vented mode being more likely to work well with solid state and either low-tuned vented mode (more than one tuning frequency is possible) or sealed box mode usually working best for tube amps.

As for the speaker/room interface, I give a high priority to the off-axis sound being free from significant glitches and anomalies, so whatever reflections the room contributes are likely to be beneficial rather than detrimental (slap echo excluded). Two regions where room acoustics vary a great deal are the bass and the high treble, and the above-mentioned box tuning flexibility often helps with getting good results in the bass region. For the high treble, I include a "tilt" control in the form of a single high-quality resistor in a terminal cup on the back of the cabinet. This is a much higher quality solution than most L-pads, and because it's a tilt instead of a level control, it does a better job of addressing a room that's too bright or too dull without messing up the lower treble region.

As for taking human hearing into account, that's where it gets fun. When Floyd Toole listed the five measurements that were good predictors of subjective preference, four of them are heavily influenced by the off-axis energy. I believe that getting the reverberant field right (and the reverberant field is dominated by the off-axis energy) is critical to rich timbre and long-term fatigue free listening, so some of my designs have additional drivers, or arrays of drivers, dedicated to the reverberant field. This will not look good to a measurement microphone, but I believe it more closely approximates the "feel" of being present at a live performance.

I like the idea of a speaker that gives you a great deal of latitude as far as listening position, such that the presentation holds up well even for listeners well outside the "sweet spot". This results in some rather unorthodox design choices and setup recommendations, which I can go into if you'd like.

My speakers usually have good dynamic characteristics, though this is more a by-product of my choice to use prosound-style drivers than a deliberate goal. I use these drivers primarily for their radiation pattern characteristics. The downside of prosound drivers is that they tend to be less smooth than high-end home audio drivers, so I'm picky about the ones I use and beat them into submission (via the crossover) when necessary.

In the subwoofer region, imo the biggest problem is the room, which inevitably imposes a severe peak-and-dip pattern on the subwoofer's output, no matter how smooth it starts out. The solution I embrace is a distributed multisub system where we scatter four small subwoofers around the room. Each produces a different peak-and-dip pattern, and the sum of these dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be far smoother than any one alone. Credit to Earl Geddes for the idea. I'm currently in the process of revising my "satellite" speakers intended to be paired up with my "Swarm" multisub system.

So I like to think my speakers are more room-friendly than most, in addition to being arguably more amp-friendly than most. Of course what would be really nice is if they're more ears-friendly than most!

I have not mastered the art of high wife acceptance factor, which probably dooms me to being a niche market manufacturer. Well, there are worse fates!

Feel free to question me about any of this.
 
Duke...thanks for detailing your primary design principles. For those of you who may not be familiar with Mr. Lejeune's speakers, here is a link to his web site: Home

Duke...I seem to recall you were primarily a direct seller but reading on your website it seems like you are selling through dealers for some models, can you walk through your sales model and why the hybrid approach. Also, can you list who your primary dealers are as I did not find a list on your web site. Thx
 
I'm the owner of the world's best audio forum Audioshark and Suncoast Audio. www.suncoastaudio.com

You guys help me decide which brands are great and worth picking up! [emoji106][emoji106][emoji173]️[emoji173]️
 
cmalak said:
Duke...I seem to recall you were primarily a direct seller but reading on your website it seems like you are selling through dealers for some models, can you walk through your sales model and why the hybrid approach. Also, can you list who your primary dealers are as I did not find a list on your web site. Thx
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I've been selling my own brand direct since 2006, and for most of that time one dealer in particular has let me know repeatedly that he'd like to sell my speakers. Up until recently I haven't been confident of having something that would be competitive with dealer markup factored in, but that recently changed, with the incorporation of Jim Romeyn's "Late Ceiling Splash" technology into a couple of my designs. So the time had finally come.

That persistently encouraging dealer is Brian Walsh of Essential Audio, and my other dealers are Tony Chipelo of Electra-Fidelity and Jim Romeyn of James Romeyn Music and Audio, LLC. I'm not allowed to post links yet, too much of a newbie here still.

That being said, my website is due for some updating. My wife does the website and we've both been swamped lately but it'll get done soon.

Right now the Zephrin and Dream Maker LCS systems are sold through dealers. I plan to replace the Prisma with a through-dealers-only updated version, and add a stand-mount as well.

The Swarm multisub system will continue to be sold direct only, as I think it would be counter-productive to raise the price to accommodate dealer markup.
 
Thanks Duke. I believe Brian Walsh participates on this forum.
 
Welcome to the forum Duke. You and I used to riff a lot back in the day. I even remember speaking to your kid at one point. :D Glad to see that you're still doing what ya love. I hope to catch with you again sometime in the near future!
 
New Dealer in Plymouth, Minnesota.
Proudly representing Bricasti Design, Shunyata Research, Purist Audio Design and Stillpoints.
We have a lot of product on order and will be demonstrating Bricasti M1 DAC and also the new Limited Edition M1, the M28 Mono Blocks, Shunyata Research Sigma HC power cables, the new Venom Series Interconnects and speaker cables, Purist Audio Design Corvus interconnect and Speaker cables. Much, much more to come...
 
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