SOUND TRAVELS
79
EQUIPMENT LIST
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TW: What would be your ‘desert island’
music albums if you could only choose, say,
three works?
NN: Likely these suspects—Beethoven’s
Piano Concerto No. 5 (‘The Emperor’),
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Leo
Delibes’ ‘Sylvia’.
TW: How would you describe the sound
you’re getting from your current system?
NN: Very revealing from 100Hz upwards
but there’s still scope for refinement. It
needs more oomph below that! Room
acoustics and layout need attention too. My
DSP solution is a temporary one (I think!)
because I’m too lazy to sort out the room is-
sues right now. It really helped a lot with my
old B&W speakers—they were very boomy
in this room but the DSPeaker largely cured
that and made them listenable.
TW: In what way does music affect your
life, your emotions and the way you feel?
NN: Some might say I’ve gone loopy,
but in every quiet moment there’s a tune
going in my head, so I’d have to say music
is probably integral to my life. I’ve always
been surrounded by music—some might
say I’m obsessed with it. And I’ve made my
kids promise to crank up the volume at my
funeral in celebration of my taking flight!
TW: You seem to be someone that
would play a musical instrument...?
NN: I played piano a bit when I was
young, but I was never very good. Actually,
something I’ve forgotten to mention until
now... when I was young I used all my ex-
pertise and ran a sound studio for six years.
We broke down part of a wall between
two rooms and put a double-glass isolation
window up to create a studio and a control
room. I designed the acoustic treatments
for both rooms. It was all fairly rudimenta-
ry by today’s standards. We also did sound
re-enforcement and live shows. I drifted
out of that when I got into photography,
video and then multimedia and eventually
became a professional photographer.
TW: Where do you see the high-end
audio industry going in the future?
NN: It’s great that there are now all
these amazing new materials and manu-
facturing processes available that make it
possible to build audio components that
were inconceivable years ago. Anything
new tends to be expensive though, hope-
fully, the technology will trickle down.
Prices and profit margins are outrageous at
the high-end of town, but there is tons of
outstanding equipment providing massive
bang-for-your-buck. That is the gear I look
for! Personally I don’t think it’s necessary
to spend 100K for a good system. And
with the faster CPUs we have today, we
can write even more clever software and
excellent DSPs. Evidence of this is already
making itself obvious in small clever boxes
(MiniDSP, DSPeaker, DEQX, etc.) that do
amazing things with audio. There will
always be the high-end but I really don’t
think you need to spend huge to achieve
high-end sound.
TW: Where would you like the audio
industry to go or to evolve to?NN: More rapid trickle-down of high-
end technologies to the low and mid-mar-
ket to better democratise the wonderful
experience of hearing great sound in your
own home. Technologies such as beryl-
lium and ceramic cones, diamond vapour
deposit cone coatings, five-axis precision
milling machines, 3D printing, MQA, DSP
and many others are feeding the revolution
in bringing high-end sound to the masses.
I want to see that continue at an even
faster pace and revolutionise products at
affordable prices. Interview by Tom
Waters, President, Sydney Audio Club.