My Audio Systems: The a/d/s/ Era

 

Audiophiles of a certain age will instantly recognize these as the "new" and "old" logos of Analog and Digital Systems of Wilmington Mass. Before I get into my end of things, indulge me while I get into it's convoluted history a little bit.

Starting all the way back to the 50's and 60's, the area around Boston was the epicenter of the "East Coast Sound". And by the 70's and 80's home of audio manufacturers which in some way had spun off from the mother ship that was Advent were still in the area. That group included companies such as KLH started by Henry Kloss who had been at Advent, AR, and Jensen, as well as other companies either based on the design theories behind the "East Coast Sound" or guided by someone who had worked for those original companies. This second wave that hit the audio scene included Boston Acoustics, Allison, Analog and Digital Systems (ADS), etc.

Bear with me while I go off on a tangent from my digression! In the speaker world (and somewhat the American audio world as well), there are basically two camps; the East Coast and the West Coast..... yeah, like Rap. At the risk of starting a flame war, here goes! Generally speaking, the East Coast "sound" is thought to be smoother, more refined at the cost of efficiency because of acoustical suspension (sealed boxed) designs. Whereas the West Coast "sound" was a more "boom and sizzle" presentation, but more efficient due to the use of ported designs. The West Coast "sound" is associated with JBL (James B. Lansing) and it's off-shoots such as Altec Lansing, Cerwin Vega etc. Not surprisingly, the Japanese makers tended to be more West Coast oriented, whereas the East Coast sound is similar to the "British" makers (eg. B&W, Tannoy, KEF, etc.). That's all I'm going to say without commentary since everyone's hearing and tastes are different. As for me:

I grew up listening to a German Telefunken system belonging to my father. Then later, that was replaced by a system built around a Dual turntable, KLH cassette deck and Jensen speakers. When I started buying equipment of my own, I started with B&W speakers fronting a Rotel stack. Then came the a/d/s/.

It started innocently enough when I came across an a/d/s/ C2/3 Cassette deck sold on clearance. It sounded good and was nicely understated. Around that time, I had taken some bad advice and replaced the Rotel electronics with Adcom. Don't get me wrong; there wasn't anything wrong with the Adcom, but it was a bad marriage between it and the B&W DM500 speakers that I was using at the time. We'll just leave it at that.

Around that time, a/d/s/ stopped it's home electronics importation from Braun leaving those components orphaned. That was just the nudge that shoved me off right off of the edge of cliff and down that proverbial slippery slope! Next thing I knew, the Adcom was gone and I had a house full of a/d/s/ equipment. This included:

• R4 Receiver
• PA4 Amp
• CD3 CD Player
• C2/3 Cassette Deck
• P4 Turntable
• A2 Integrated Amp
• T2 Tuner
• CD4 CD Player
• C2 Cassette Deck
• P2 Turntable
• L1290 Tower Speakers
• L300 Speakers
• L200 Speakers

Now, this took some years to do and a lot of it was less equipment that I seriously listen to, but were part of a "collection" and run as a secondary system in my bedroom. 

In fact, I was close to owning all of these iconic pieces designed by the famed Deiter Rams. Then home theater intervened. By that time, it had been a few years since a/d/s/  had stopped importing this gear from Germany and availability was drying up. That was before the common use of the Internet. Although I loved the way it sounded AND looked, it was just a huge headache to connect/disconnect and haul around when I moved (which was a lot since I had just started in Higher Ed Administration in those days). Doing home theater meant that I had to patch in an external decoder, try and match a center channel and get more speakers and amplification. 

 

So, I said goodbye to Dieter Rams designs and greatly simplifying my systems and moving!