The Compleat Fidelitarian

The phrase high fidelity – authorship unknown – actually has been around for about 30 years, but during its first two decades it led a sort of disembodied existence. It was, so to speak, a description in search of a fact.

In the late Forties it found its fact, and began at once to enjoy what the French call un succés fou. I say fou purposely, in the sense of crazy, since in the last few years the words high fidelity, and their contraction hi-fi, have been used to help sell a weird variety of commodities ranging from uplift brassieres to windshield stickers that glow in the dark.

Even these antic employments, however, have failed to blot the concept of hi-fi as we understand it today. It is dual. First, it involves sound reproduction of a peculiar true brilliance. Second, it connotes the means to this end, the separate audio components – amplifier, loudspeaker, phono pickup, and the like – eclectically assembled by the buyer-listener, who thus satisfies his own personal taste in sonic flavor, assures himself continuing flexibility in home-music outfittings, and makes himself distinctive by eschewing conventional cabinetry.

This personalization has given the whole idea of high fidelity a special appeal. Hollywood uses a high fidelity rig as a ready-made (continued on next page) symbol to establish intellectuality in a tycoon. A high fidelity system also is commonly accepted as a badge of sophisticated masculinity. Indeed, one hears it said that high fidelity has supplanted the etching as a sure lure to seduction, a thesis which compels me, in conscience, to interject a note of hazard. As follows: Bert invites Belinda to his rooms after dinner to hear his hi-fi system. Belinda brightens (a bad sign) and assents. They arrive, and the awful truth unfolds as Belinda informs Bert that: (a) his pickup cartridge is obsolete; (b) his loudspeaker is raspy at the top and boomy at the bottom; and (c) there exists a recording of the Greensleeves Fantasia much newer, cleaner, and more transparent than the one he is playing for her. Poor Bert! Not only is his little nocturnal project kaput, but Belinda now dominates their relationship, which puts him in clear and present danger of holy matrimony.

But enough of ill-fated Bert, the Incompleat Fidelitarian, and of other folk who buy fi uninformed. There is only one reason to invest in high fidelity: good listening.

Now this is nothing to get throaty about. I said good listening, but there are all kinds and degrees of good listening. Total immersion in the sonic glories of a Beethoven orchestral allegro or a Bach organ fugue or a thumping good Dixieland passage, such as can be experienced through a $1000 sound system, is incomparable medicine for the inner being. Not everyone, however, requires aural delectation quite so overpowering as this. And, as a matter of fact, sound-reproduction on a much more modest scale can be just as beautiful, considered on its own terms. What I am getting at is that how high high fidelity must be to qualify as the real (i.e., satisfying) thing, depends in some part on who's listening.(continued on next page)

I have contrived a rough classification of listeners and their needs. First, however, I want to draw a couple of base lines, necessary because the term high fidelity has been misused and misunderstood. What a true high fidelity system, however modest or however elaborate, always delivers are two things: comfortable listening and a degree of sonic realism.

The first of these two requirements is perhaps the more important, because the more often violated. Reproduced sound that shrills, that batters, that tears at the nerve-ends is not high fidelity, no matter what the salesman says.

Yet comfort is not to be achieved at the expense of the natural top treble and bottom bass of the music, or of the natural range of its dynamics – loudness, if you will. That way lies lo-fi. The comfort must derive from purity, absence of distortion. Give your ears full authority; relax and depend on them.

The realism requirement is more variable. Its limiting factors include your neighbors, your pocketbook, and – perhaps most inflexible – your living room. My rule-of-ear, to determine how hi the fi must be for a certain room, is to visualize the kind of music-making the room could comfortably contain "alive," get an intimately microphoned recording of such a performance, then shop for a sound-system using the record as a gauge. The least expensive system that will reproduce your record satisfactorily probably represents your best buy, the point at which the larger expenditures will be attended by diminishing returns.

To exemplify this: in selecting a rig for a small room, the test record I use is Richard Dyer-Bennet No. 2 (Dyer-Bennet Records), a pleasant collection of folksongs featuring the well-known tenor and his guitar. The sound is exact, and almost any room is big enough for a live singer with guitar. For a room a little larger, I use a Unicorn (1034) LP which offers pianist Ernest Levy in two Beethoven sonatas – not outstanding performances, but splendid reproduction of the concert grand. Few rooms can take more than an all-out concert grand: when I think one will, I try Audio Fidelity's Dukes of Dixieland, or any Vanguard platter featuring the Solisti di Zagreb. No living room I ever visited would take the Philadelphia Orchestra or the Grenadier Guards Band, even if such organizations were microphoned intime – as they are not: the engineers almost always, and properly, try to present them at a little distance and mellowed by hall-sound.

The best place to start your investigations of hi-fi gear is at a good dealer's. A good dealer can be identified by his responsiveness to your wishes. It is his job, as expert, to advise you what to buy, but only after he has carefully found out what you want to hear. (Incidentally, some of the hi-fi mail order houses have excellent advice departments, too, but local shopping is generally advisable where possible: for one thing, what a dealer sells he will service.) Since no dealer can possibly carry all makes of equipment, what your man does stock may narrow your choice of components.

This brings us to the central question bearing upon your choice of high fidelity equipment. Namely, what kind of listener are you?

Presumably there are as many kinds of listeners as there are people, but for convenience I am grouping them according to five prototypes. These are the Modicum Hunter, the Serious Listener, the Devotee, the Audio Exhibitionist, and the Gadgeteer. The last two of these, I must admit, I mention simply because they exist; there is little I can offer them in a general essay like this. At any rate, the well-versed Gadgeteer probably knows the subject as well as I do. And the Exhibitionist thinks he does.

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To the Modicum Hunter, comfort is paramount in his listening; he is not terribly exacting about sonic realism. It would be unfair to him to call his music a home furnishing, but it probably is something he wants to be proud of in about the same degree as his martinis. He doesn't mind if his rig sounds like a phonograph so long as it sounds like a damned good phonograph. When it performs for his lady friend, she should be able to distinguish all the words in My Fair Lady and get a little tingle of theatre out of the timbre of the trumpets in the pit band. And he doesn't anticipate changing his components with great regularity.

The Modicum Hunter probably can do pretty well phonographically for something under $300. For this he will get a loudspeaker and enclosure, a combination amplifier and preamplifier, and some variety of record-playing equipment: cartridge, arm and turntable, or changer. If he wants a radio tuner (FM or AM-FM), it will cost him more; call it an additional $100. (It is hard to advise on tuner prices. In some areas nothing worthwhile is broadcast. In others, distances or reception difficulties may make it necessary for even the Modicum Hunter to buy an expensive tuner and antenna to pull in any non-network material.) In any case I am assuming that the record player will simply be mounted on a base, and the amplifier unit placed on a shelf or table. Many of today's units look quite good enough not to need hiding.

Let us start with Mr. M.H.'s system where the music does – at the record player. (And let me say right here that when I mention a particular product, it is probably because I happen to be familiar with it, or because it illustrates a type. Its approximate equivalent may well exist in several other makes.) Should he get a changer, or a big turntable and precision arm (chosen separately), or a small manual-play combination? I'm against the last, unless economy dictates it, and unless Mr. M.H. can try it before buying. For some reason, these units, of whatever make, seem to vary widely in quality. A changer is desirable if Mr. M.H. is primarily interested in social background music. Changers are better than ever before, but they are still compromise devices: besides just playing records, the changer's tone-arm must work a trip, the motor must lift the arm, and so forth. The custom turntable and arm need not do these chores (you do them), so they can be designed for optimum smoothness, resonance-free-dom, and groove-tracking. They cost more. Examples: the best-selling Garrard three-speed changer, less pickup cartridge, is $66; the Rek-O-Kut Rondine 743 turntable with Rek-O-Kut 120 arm is about $93. I'd buy the latter, but then I am not a Modicum Hunter.

One of the developments that launched the high fidelity enthusiasm in the late Forties was General Electric's magnetic (variable reluctance) phono pickup cartridge, much more faithful in sound reproduction than the crystals then common. Magnetics have dominated the fifield since and the GE has continued to lead all other magnetics in sales. Wherever he shops, the Modicum Hunter probably will come out with a GE Triple-Play cartridge – inexpensive, untroublesome, sonically respectable. It has competitors, of course, though none are quite so inexpensive. The Audak is similar and even sturdier, worth considering especially for use with changers. The new imported Miratwin exceeds it (to my ear) in tonal delicacy, and indeed rates comparison with much higher priced cartridges. In all cases, the cartridge should be equipped with a diamond-tip stylus for microgroove playing. A sapphire may suffice for the tip where-with to play 78s.

It is my notion that the Modicum Hunter's amplifier and loudspeaker should be considered together. A good amplifier driving a modest loudspeaker to me almost always sounds better than the other way around. It used to be standard practice to outfit the beginner with a 10-watt amplifier and let him splurge on his speaker. I think it preferable to get more than 10 watts' worth of amplifier and keep the speaker simple. Let the latter be a single cone unit of good quality, mounted in an infinite (continued on page 42)Fiedlitarian (continued from page 34) baffle (sealed all around) or bass-reflex (hermetic except for a port, or vent, to lower the resonance and reinforce bass) cabinet. In many a small apartment, an eight-inch speaker will do, especially if it can be so positioned that the sound reaches listeners by reflection. Otherwise, a 12-inch. Good standards of comparison here are the James B. Lansing and Wharfedalc (British) cones, priced at below S25 for the eights and below S75 for the,twelves. Once exception to this rule: the Acoustic Research AR-2, at just under S100, is a two-way speaker, (tweeter and special air-supported woofer) of extraordinary smoothness. It is definitely a bargain.

In an amplifier, more is needed than plain power and tone range. There must be a minimum of distortion of any kind. This is one area in which I think the shopper should get technical. Among makers of amplifiers in the 10-to-20-watt category, competition is keen and design imitative. Merit may vary more widely between two amplifiers of the same make than between two of different makes. I suggest that (at least to begin with) you follow your dealer's suggestion as to make, but offer to pay him to run a couple of test response-curves on the unit you are to get. You may or may not know whether the resulting chart is good, but the point is, he will, and you are unlikely to get a lemon. If this procedure isn't feasible, at least read the model's specifications. The key-item is intermodulation distortion, of which you want as little as possible. At one watt of operating power, a good amplifier should show about.1% of IM distortion. At its full rated power (i.e., 20 watts for a 20-watt amplifier) it should show less than 2%.

Possible future developments should not be ignored even by Modicum Hunters, which is one basic reason for buying components instead of a ready assembled set: changes can be made more easily. Within the next decade, 3-D stereophonic sound will probably become an irresistible "must." And it will require double amplifier and loudspeaker facilities, not too dissimilar one from the other. This is especially worth keeping in mind while choosing a speaker and speaker enclosure: some day you may want another just like it, to place beside it at a six-foot distance.

There has not been room here to go into detail about speaker enclosures, yet they are very important. Especially important is the point that they should be extremely solid and internally padded with fibre-glass or layers of felt, and braced until they simply do not resound when pounded.

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I am inclined to identify the Serious Listener as someone who either has, or intends to have at some future time, a good listening room. Meanwhile he wants to get the absolute most out of his music. And it is music he's after, not just sound, be it Boston Symphony or Brubeck.

In equipment buying, he takes up where the Modicum Hunter left off. Probably he is conservative about amplifiers, shopping from 20 watts upward with an eye to precision manufacture and low distortion. He may even try wiring the excellent and inexpensive Heath Company's 25-watt amplifier-preamplifier kit (S79.50), or the superb 50-watt Dynakit amplifier at S69.75 (both are rather easy, the amplifiers being more so than the preamp). If this doesn't appeal, there are still dozens of good power amplifiers ranging in price from slightly under S100 to slightly under S150. a fair allotment for a power amplifier in a rig which (let us say) may total S500.

Mr. S.L. probably buys his preamp on a separate chassis from his amplifier. One reason for this is that, of late, preamps have been improving very rapidly, and this may continue. (Transistorization is making headway here too.) Further, when and if he "goes stereo," and has to have two amplifiers, there is a secondary way he can use them (on monaural material). By dint of a faixz crly simple switching arrangement and a new type of dividing network (not yet common, but a good dealer can get one), one amplifier may be made to feed the bass speaker only and the other the tweeter only. This gives better control and cleaner sound than the conventional, electrically wasteful method whereby one amplifier drives, both tweeter and woofer.

It probably behooves Mr. S.L. to spend somewhere near as much for his preamp-control unit as for his power amplifier. Any distortion or imprecision his preamp contributes will be magnified by the amplifier and revealed mercilessly by the speaker system. It is astute to pay for a distortion-check on your preamplifier as well as your amplifier. Acceptable intermodulation is about.1% at the output the power amplifier needs for best results – call it 2 volts.

It is at the record-playing stage of his music system that Mr. S.L. should become a perfectionist. Nothing is more distressing than to hear a fine amplifier-and-speaker array reproducing music flawed by turntable vibration or improper groove tracking. A good turntable will cost about S100. The kinds I know best are the Garrard 301, the Sug-den Connoisseur (both British), and the Components Corporation Professional (belt-driven). Other makes of comparable price also are well spoken of. Check With your fingertips. You can feel most vibration you can hear.

Phono cartridges improve day by day. Their most important quality is stylus-compliance with the groove wiggles, which determines also how lightly they can track, and how little they abrade records. Concomitant with this goes freedom from wild resonances in the audible treble range, damaging both to vinyl and to aural comfort. Top rating in these qualities (at the time I'm writing, anyway) is held by the Weathers phono system (pickup, arm, etc.) which is not a magnetic at all, but a frequency modulation device which works through an oscillator. It can reproduce music – even massed strings – with surprising fidelity. The Weathers tracks at one gram and, with its own arm and oscillator, costs about S90 (diamond LP stylus only). I have been using an Electro-Sonic Professional arm and cartridge, Danish-made and at once compliant and sturdy, which costs about S106 and tracks at three grains. I have also heard excellent results from the Fairchild Model 225, and from the new Pickering Flux-valve. And very impressive among recent developments has been a Shure Brothers magnetic, of extremely simple design and high compliance.

Most fashionable (deservedly) of current tone-arms are the viscous-damped ones made by Gray Research and Development Company, at roughly S40 and S55. They are non-resonant, and they can't be dropped – they float down to the disc surface!

What most readers want to hear most about – especially at the S.L. level – are loudspeakers, but it is precisely here that the remote counselor can be least dogmatic. The listener's room – heed this – is part of his speaker system. Anyone whose residence isn't permanent, therefore, ought to have a speaker array which is adaptable to various placements; the wrong positioning can arouse irksome room-resonance. Hence I am mildly opposed to mounting speakers in walls (moving a hole in the wall is rather difficult) and even to "folded horn" enclosures which must be placed in corners. Corners in square (or nearly square) rooms can be sonic trouble spots.

For the Serious Listener with a small room, there is one standard recommendation these days. This is the Acoustic Research AR-1, the big brother of the AR-2 mentioned earlier. It is very small and compact, but delivers real big-speaker bass for a mere S185. Further, it is a good first-half of a future stereo system.

If you have more room and want more oomph, there is a profusion of two-and-three-unit loudspeaker-and-enclosure systems to seek among. Some are coaxial – one unit nested in the other – and (continued on page 76) Fidelitarian (continued from page 42) among these, as a general thing, I am disposed to prefer the two-element to the three-element combinations. It is easier – even for a manufacturer – to balance two speakers against one another than three. Don't buy a cheap coaxial. Only two I have met under $100 have impressed me, the Bozak 207A ($84) and the Goodmans (British) Axiom 80 (69), 10-inch two-cone speaker, sweet-voiced but strictly limited in its power handling.

There is a myriad of more massive coaxials of various makes, most of them costing around $150 and most of them well-adjusted (not disposed to scream) if properly cabineted. I must admit here that I have lived happily with one for some years. It is a 15-inch Tannoy, not the ultimate, but quite capable of conveying real musical beauty reliably. It is mounted in a folded corner horn cabinet which I do not use in a corner. The combination costs about $275. Were I to replace it – let us assume that my standard of living has gone up, as The Wall Street Journal says it has – I think I probably would do so with an electrostatic tweeter, either a Janszen or a Pickering, and a pair of cone woofers, most likely 12-inch Tannoys or Bozaks, mounted in rock-solid completely-sealed enclosures. This would cost me from $60 to $150 more than what I have now.

Furthermore, it would mark me as partly Devotee as well as Serious Listener. If I were pure S.L., I might incline instead toward the triple-Wharfedale system: a 15-inch woofer in a bass-reflex cabinet, with an eight-inch mid-range and three-inch tweeter sitting on top of it, face-up in free air. This is a British system, and mellow, though it may lack the slam and bite of the multiple speaker systems put forth by such estimable American makers as Altec, Jim Lansing, Electro-Voice, Jensen and University.

Electrostatic tweeters are an intriguing development, to be approached cautiously. The good ones (meaning expensive, and push-pull constructed) are very good, perhaps cleaner in treble reproduction than any other type. However, they must be used in conjunction with conventional cone woofers and the two may clash, especially where their tone ranges overlap. An electrostatic tweeter works according to the principle that makes amber attract (or repel) cat's fur. A diaphragm is sandwiched between two grills that alternately attract and repel it, setting it into vibration. It vibrates uniformly over its whole surface, but it also vibrates a little more promptly than most bass-range cone speakers with which it may be teamed. This can produce trouble in the middle range, where most musical fundamentals occur, so you see the need for caution.

. . .

We are now well over the border and into the territory of the Devotee, a man who has much in common with the Serious Listener. Indeed, the main difference between them may be that whereas Mr. S.L. would like to be satisfied with his music reproduction, Mr. D. wouldn't. What he wants to do with his is improve it. His eye is on the future, which is always a little closer to him than it is to us. Just about now he is most acutely conscious of having two ears, which are starving for some stereophonic sound.

And well they may be. Stereo sound, as no doubt you know, is produced by making two simultaneous recordings, with two microphones spaced apart, and playing them back, also simultaneously, through two speaker systems spaced (about) as were the microphones. This yields perspective that single-channel reproduction simply cannot. With stereo you can play an organ recording so that your own small room does not limit it. You can almost see the great spaces of the church beyond your walls.

Tape seems, so far, the most promising medium for stereo, though Sugden in England has produced some experimental stereo discs (vertical and lateral modulation in the same groove) which are well spoken of. It must be admitted that tape-stereo is expensive; I think unreasonably so. A stereo tape of a symphony may cost as much as $19. I don't see why it should, and perhaps it won't for long.

At any rate I wouldn't, at this juncture, buy a tape recorder – for musical purposes, that is – which was not equipped for stereo playback (you can still do your own recording monaurally on it, of course). Manufacturers seem in accord with this theory; nearly all are tooling up for stereo, and by the time you read this there will be many models from which to choose. For the time being, the one to get would seem to be the Ampex A121 or A122 ($495 and $449.50: the difference is in the casing), an excellent small machine of which I have heard nothing but good. Its chief rival, currently, is the Viking, which is far less expensive but also less sturdily built. Still, I know of at least one person who has used a Viking for a year without complaint.

In some areas there is a source of stereo sound other than recordings. Various "good music" stations broadcast programs microphoned stereophonically, one channel being transmitted by AM and the other by FM. Separately controlled tuners, their outputs routed to the separate amplifier-speaker elements of a stereo system, are needed to reproduce such broadcasts. For such service, there are on the market several AM-FM tuners wherein the two modes of reception are independently controlled and have separate outputs. The two I am acquainted with are made by H.H. Scott and Electro-Voice, and sell for – respectively – $200 and $240. Individual AM and FM tuners can be bought for less than this, but not on the same chassis.

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Nearly all Audio Exhibitionists, of course, have gone stereophonic already, except for a penniless few who had earlier responded to the seductive news that McIntosh, that estimable company, had produced a 200-watt amplifier, which anyone (and that may be the wrong pronoun) could own for a paltry $500. One A.E., who writes to me occasionally, simply had added stereo to his existing system. Now his giant Electro-Voice Patrician speaker is flanked by two Ampex amplifier-speakers, which share with it a portion of their separate sonic fares. All I can think of to say is amen.

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Among Gadgeteers these days there seems a strange and selfless urge to go into gratis service work, which I for one acclaim, and so should others – for instance, the Heath Company. Heath makes kits, be it remembered, not only of sound equipment items, but also of test devices like audio analyzers and oscilloscopes. There is no doubt that buying and assembling an analyzer, for example, can bring Mr. G. startling social success, of a kind. Never would he have guessed how many of his friends, however outwardly stoical, secretly suspected their preamplifiers of grinding out more intermodulation distortion than any good fi-box should, and these will flock to him, some even bringing their own gin. On the other hand, not to every human creature is a rack – mounted audio analyzer the ultimate in living room decor. By which I mean, Mr. G's current girlfriend may decide to move out on him. All one can say to this, of course, is that every great endeavor had its hazards. And, as the poet put it, a woman is only a woman. Whereas an audio analyzer is a real convenience.

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Most fi-fanciers will not, of course, be willing to pigeonhole themselves in any one of the classifications limned above, which were employed simply for the sake of clarity and convenience. Overlapping there will be, and you may well come out of it part Modicum Hunter, part Serious Listener, part Exhausted, but better-equipped, I hope, to foray still further in the fascinating field of fi.

The Modicum Hunter (above) chooses a smooth-sounding rig to soothe savage breasts all over the place. Sonically respectable is his Acoustic Research AR-2 speaker system ($96) incorporating a 10-inch woofer, tiny tweeter and crossover network mounted in a rugged cabinet. His knight 24-watt preamp-amplifier ($94.50) delivers oomph galore with less than 2% inter-modulation distortion at full power. His Bogen turntable spins discs at all standard speeds, comes with GE triple-play cartridge and wooden base ($68.45 complete). Rounding out the rig is his Knight Bantam AM-FM tuner ($74.50), capable and compact. Total: $333.45.

The Gadgeteer digs dails and testing gear, loves to lamp the blips and wobbles of his Heath kit oscilloscope ($69.50) and audio analyzer ($49.95). Speaker wise, Mr. G. leans toward the James B. Lansing Harts field system, packed with a 15-inch woofer, high frequency driver, rectangular horn, round exponential horn, acoustical lens and crossover system ($726 complete). His preamp-equalizer is a Marantz Audio Consolette ($171 with case) and for kicks, an additional wee Fisher transistor preamp-equalizer ($27.50) is tacked on to boost the fi still higher. In power amplifiers, Mr. G. Picks a 40-watt Marantz ultra-linear job ($198) with its own built-in metered test gadget. For FM listening, it's an H.H. Scott broadcast monitor ($169.90 with case) complete with meter for dead-eye tuning. His tape-recorder is an Ampex 601 ($545) while his turntable is a Rek-O-Kut Rondine Deluxe with Rek-O-Kut arm, walnut base and Audax Hi-Q7 cartridge ($230.60 complete). Total: $2187.45.

The Devotee sports two of the sharpest ears in town, gets a whomp out of the startling, spine-tingling effects stereo can produce. His two 20-watt Pilot amplifiers ($59.50 each) cook up plenty of juice at low distortion, look to a Knight stereo preamp-equalizer ($79.50) for sensitive controls. The dual sounds go round and round, come out of a pair of Bozak infinite-baffle speaker enclosures ($75 each) housing 12-inch Bozak bass woofers ($49.50 each); top tones are carried through a set of Janszen electrostatic mid-range and treble tweeters ($184 each) that sit lightly atop the bass cabinets. The source of the two-channel sound is a portable Ampex A-122 recorder ($449.50) that twirls stereo tapes at home, can be toted around with ease to make on-the-spot monaural recordings. For one-ear platter spinning Mr. D. likes his Presto Pirouette turntable and base coupled with a Pickering Fluxvalve arm and cartridge combination ($159.75 complete). Total: $1424.75.

The serious Listener dotes on music, not stunning sounds, buys with a sharp eye toward low distortion and precision manufacture in his components. His basic amplifier is a 30-watt McIntosh ($143.50) that delivers virtually flawless reproduction throughout the entire audible range, mates felicitously with his McIntosh preamp-equalizer control center ($96.50 with cabinet) that offers a whopping assortment of personal-preference playback settings. His H.H. Scott FM tuner ($129.85 with case) comes with a meter for pinpoint tuning, assures drift-free, noise-free reception. In the speaker department, Mr. S.L. goes for a Bozak infinite-baffle enclosure packed with a 12-inch Bozak woofer, dual tweeters, a mid-range speaker and a three-way crossover system ($231.85 complete) for clean, crisp listening in most any size room. He also likes a wood-mounted Garrard Professional turntable fitted with a Sure Studio Dynetic arm and cartridge ($189.14 complete). Total:$790.84.

The Audio Exhibitionist cottons to the big sound, enjoys watching the little cracks appear in his plaster walls and the jolted expressions on the faces of his friends, who are many and fair. He wouldn't be caught deaf without his big 16-inch professional Rek-O-Kut turntable, no wow, no flutter, with a Fairchild arm and cartridge ($325 complete). His power unit is a hefty 60-watt amplifier by McIntosh ($198.50) controlled by an H.H. Scott preamp-equalizer with Dynaural noise suppressor ($169.90 with cabinet). For fun with FM his choice is a Fisher 90X tuner ($186.95 with case), complete with gold cascode RF amplifier. But his real pride and passion is his Electro-Voice Patrician 600D speaker enclosure, bristling inside with an 18-inch low frequency driver, a mid-base, driver-horn assembly, a treble driver with diffraction horn, an lonovac very high frequency driver, a four-way crossover network, three level controls and an instruction booklet ($928 complete). Total:$1808.35.