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Still Wondering?

Dear AC,

I should probably keep quiet, because this is contentious ground for me to wade into, but I cannot help but at least give some comment.

Products first,

The Audio Note UK product range is far far wider than anything the Japanese ever conceived, both end to end and top to bottom, as it is my belief that we need to offer complete systems within a conceptual framework that prioritises comparison by contrast as the main sonic selection criteria and all technology, circuitry, materials and producton methods are chosen solely based on their ability to optimise contrast asper our mission statement-document-article "Are You on the Road to Audio Hell?"

Technology,

Many posters on the AA will tell you that Audio Note UK’s products are just bad and cheapened rip offs of older Kondo designs, nothing could be further from the truth, because whilst Mr. Kondo always sought to define beauty through the sound of his equipment within what he considered a technically competent framework, we seek a very different overall vision, which prioritizes finding, developing and applying technologies best suited to achieve the greatest possible contrast between recordings with complete disregard for convention, tradition, dogma or technological fashion or whether one likes the end result on certain recordings or not, all that matters to us is to extract the maximum amount of recorded information, whether good or bad or indifferent.

In my view it is not the equipment’s job to interpret the recording in any way, in this quest to find the "truth" or should I say a reproduction completely free from equipment interference, as far as that is possible within the limitations of cost and technologies available?

From this work I developed the Level system which basically places different technologies, circuit topologies, power supply configurations and materials in the order in which they perform sonically in an absolute sense (see article on our web site for further elaboration on this) and which then determined within which performance level they find themselves, needless to say this also has its detractors, although much in current trends seem to support what I said 15 - 20 years or more ago, which is gratifying if not financially rewarding!

This differs greatly from the way the Kondo products are conceived given that Kondo-san largely moved back to push pull and stopped making the transformer coupled M10 (which was a collaborative effort between us) imediately after he broke off from us in 1998.

We strongly believe in simplicity in all things and much of our research and development has been focused on removing, what we consider superfluous, be that corrective measures (feedback, oversampling, filtering etc.) gain stages or facilities and replacing with transformers wherever possible, with the sole view of shortening and simplifying the signal path to the greatest possible extent, this work is still on going, I should perhaps say?

The focus has always been to extract the most from any performers’ art, regardless of how well or bad he/she was recorded, in order to separate the truly excellent from the merely good, to recreate and provide the drama and emotion of any musical performance whether opera, rock or Jazz with the hope that it will allow the best of our forefathers art to remain respected and cherished for its contribution to our humanity.

I know this short piece in no way goes into nearly enough depth, but I hope at least gives some idea, and lastly I would like to offer my gratitude to some of the people who have inspired me to follow this path, Donald Chave, the founder of Lowther, (with Paul A. G. H. Voigt and Peter Lowther, neither of whom I sadly ever met), Peter Snell and Kondo-san primarily, but also Bob Fulton, Guy Adams of Voyd, Peter Dunlop of Systemdek and many others too numerous to mention whose ideas and designs have inspired what I do.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup







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  • Still Wondering? - Peter Qvortrup 03/4/0702:09:49 03/4/07 (0)


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