Edgar Villchur in his laboratory, circa 1965. Courtesy, Steven E. Schoenherr.
Edgar M. Villchur was a seminal pioneer in the development of high-fidelity audio equipment. In fact, in its 50th-anniversary issue in 2006, Hi-Fi News ranked him No. 1 among the “50 Most Important Audio Pioneers.” Villchur, who innovated a small loudspeaker that markedly improved the way people listened to music, died on Monday in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 94.
Villchur (b. 28 May 1917) graduated from New York’s City College in 1938 and then earned his master’s degree there in 1940. But within a year he was drafted into the Army Air Forces and was trained as an electronics technician. For most of the next five years, while rising to captain, he was responsible for his squadron’s radio operations in the Pacific. After the war, Mr. Villchur opened a radio shop in Greenwich Village, making repairs and building custom hi-fi sets.
During the early 1950s, the Long Play (LP) record had been developed – making it possible to reproduce sounds across the sonic spectrum. Up until that time, loudspeakers been designed with a cavity in the rear and were literally huge: in order to adequately reproduce forty hertz, they could reach fourteen feet in height. But where could such speakers be placed? Certainly not in most homes.
Now a professor at NYU, Villchur had a novel approach to this problem. By sealing a speaker’s enclosure, he could use the springiness of the trapped air, rather than the mechanical spring of a driver’s suspension. “All I needed to do,” Villchur remarked later, “was to decimate the springy stiffness of the speaker suspensions, and reduce the size of the enclosure until the air spring was strong enough to replace the springs we threw away. It also turned out that within the compressions and rarefactions this air spring would undergo, the response was almost perfectly linear.”
By 1952, Villchur was married and had moved toWoodstock, N.Y. The speaker research he conducted in his basement caused him to realize that if a loudspeaker cabinet were completely sealed, the air trapped inside would act something like a spring that would control vibration, greatly enhancing the drive unit’s low-frequency performance. Thus was born the compact, full-range, air-suspension speaker; that is, except for one small detail. Nobody wanted to make it. After having been rejected by the two established speaker manufacturers he’d approached, Villchur had become greatly discouraged.
Henry Kloss, co-founder with Edgar Villchur, of Acoustic Research
But his spirits were revived when Villchur was contacted in the spring of 1954 by a former student, Henry Kloss, who was then building Baruch-Lang speakers for mail order in his Cambridge, Massachusetts workshop. Later that spring, Villchur demonstrated his prototype to Kloss, who immediately grasped the possibilities of the speakers and offered his Cambridge loft as a manufacturing facility. Acoustic Research (AR) was founded with $4,000 Kloss raised from his friends and an additional $2,000 from Villchur.
An advertisement for Acoustic Research's AR 1 loudspeaker. Courtesy, Steve Schoenherr
Their first venture was called the AR-1. Kloss, Villchur and a physicist friend, Tony Hoffman, managed to assemble two AR-1s in time to demonstrate them at the New York Audio Show in September, 1954. Although critics seemed impressed with the “miniature” speakers’ bass response, the general reaction was why would anyone want to own such miniature speakers. It was an attitude akin to the widely-publicized opinion of Digital Equipment Corp.’s co-founder Kenneth Olsen, who once wondered why anyone would want a computer in their home. In each instance, it was a massive miscalculation.
Julian Hirsch. Courtesy, paul-lehrman.com.
Noted electronics writer Julian Hirsch was particularly puzzled, noting “The AR-1 had the lowest electro-acoustic efficiency of any loudspeaker on the market,” but understood that “at twenty-five hertz and below, it was more efficient than the Klipschorn, which had the highest efficiency of those tested.” His ultimate judgment was that the AR-1 “established a new industry standard for low distortion bass.” Hirsch, for his part, was nothing less than the “Walt Mosberg” of his day. He first tested gear for Popular Electronics magazine, and later, starting in October 1961, for Hi-Fi/Stereo Review, later renamed Stereo Review. His opinion was arguably the most valued in the profession.
AR-2 loudspeaker ad, from "Audio", Oct. 1958. Courtesy, Steve Schoenherr
Reassuringly for Kloss and Villchur, the AR-1 proved very popular with the listening public. It offered the very full and rich sounds of a larger speaker in a small package. And, with the AR-2, the two men were able to reduce the price of the speakers to $89/each. And their next model, the AR-3A, introduced the dome-tweeter.
Kloss left Acoustic Research in 1957, to found KLH audio and later, Advent and Cambridge Soundworks; but Villchur, as co-founder, continued to innovate at AR. The company produced a consistently popular line of hi-fi loudspeakers, turntables and other stereo components that Villchur had designed. After selling the company in 1967, he went into hearing aid research and developed the multichannel compression hearing aid that has become the industry standard.
Acoustics for Audiologists (1999)
In 1999, Villchur published a book, Acoustics for Audiologists through Cengage Learning. Booknews.com reviewed it as follows:
“Villchur (president of the non-profit Foundation for Hearing Aid Research and former visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) addresses the acoustical principles that underlie hearing aid design and fitting. Its nonmathematical presentation makes it a suitable guide for clinical audiologists and hearing aid dispensers.”
-Chris Hartman
An original three-page contract establishing Apple Computer, dated April 1, 1976, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s New York on December 13. The documents, which are signed by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, also include Wayne’s addendum to the original contract, where he dissolved his own 10% interest in the company. Sotheby’s estimates the documents could fetch between $100,000 and $150,000.
