On how he came across Armin Galm's Enviée widebander: "That too was your fault. At another Zürich High-End show you either met him or heard/saw his driver. You said so in a show report. At the time I still worked with Bernard Salabert of PHY whose health was failing. I had six of his 17cm drivers to start with. Then he passed away and those drivers became unobtainium until much later when PHY relaunched under Samuel Furon. That's when I called Armin. We met in Munich the following year. I knew that his driver was ~€900/ea. so steep but he agreed to meet at the show with a few units. We hit it off and over time developed a really friendly association. He's different in that for his work, he doesn't listen to music. He prefers speech but above all, measurements. I prefer simple networks without complex notch filters like 2nd-order electrical to minimize phase shift. I eventually came to hear issues with the whizzer cone in his original 8" driver which I used in the first Wave 40. Because it measures well and Armin doesn't really listen to music with it, our opinion differs. Joachim Gerhard too tried to use that driver without tweeter and told him the same thing. Armin meanwhile tried hundreds of different whizzers. This one measures best so is still used. Nonetheless, Armin is always up for a challenge and draws from a really deep well of knowledge and experience. So he'll often come back and say "I've thought about it and perhaps we can try this?".

Actual Swiss cow bells used to play music.

"I always have great fun when he and Chris disagree. It's in that collaborative frisson between masters in related fields that interesting things happen. As you remember, we did a bronze basket for the Vox's small widebander. Chris ran simulations. I'd done the hole where the 28mm voice coil enters the magnet at ~32mm so a small gap. Chris predicted issues with eddy currents. I mentioned it to Armin. He waved it off. Chris insisted that I make the hole 3-4mm bigger. When that batch of samples came back, I asked Armin to measure that and the original. He did and conceded that Chris was right. The new motor measured better. So the three of us are very much together on this learning curve.

DSUB 15 in Kilrush.

"Over the years I've managed a lot of creative subcontractors. I never really wanted employees though I did have about four in my main business. But I prefer networking to pull in independent expertise wherever needed. That seems to be a personal strength. It works a bit like being a conductor who assembles particular musicians for his dream ensemble. The same goes for Simon Oehrli, my local woodworker. He's an incredible obsessive. Just recently he did all the 3-layer engineered timber floors when we remodeled our chalet here in Feutersoy. He laid into all the other craftspeople on site who plied their own trade. He was just being an extreme stickler for detail which drove others up the wall. But it takes someone like it to achieve unusual results. Such people are rare and precious. In Japan you'd probably call him a sensei like a 10th-degree Aikido black belt. Such masters are very hard to find. If you do and put a few together from different fields, you have a big part of the recipe for success. It's about strategic alliances. I'd be nowhere just by myself. My real job is coming up with the creative idea and sonic goal, explaining and refining that vision while letting my collaborators fill in the holes.

AMT tweeter Martin is investigating for his forthcoming Liber|8 model in dipole mode. He tried the Mundorf but didn't like it.

"Chris often wonders 'where did that come from' when one of my ideas once again won't follow the usual routes. It's because I'm coming to this discipline from outside the typical education for it. I'm looking at solving particular problems and approach them from the very practical training my upbringing instilled. And then I also come across unusual solutions like those Carbide Audio footers which their designer asked you to forward to me after your review. They turned up about 10 days ago and I put them underneath my Liber|8 prototype open baffles. I couldn't believe the difference. I've never tried anything that made such a huge improvement. I've been in this 24m² room for 5-6 years. No matter what speakers I use, I always had the issue that the right one would play more forward. I always had to compensate with asymmetrical placement to get imaging right. I've agonized over probable cause and futzed around with different attempts at room treatments. What cured it in one fell swoop were these footers. Not only that, I now have the best bass I've ever had. I didn't realize that the floor coupling which these footers interrupt has such a pronounced effect. Before my prototype small dipoles gave me too much bass which also was ill-defined. With the Carbide footers that's wholly transformed. It's a real mind bender. Needless to say, I'm already working on incorporating them into the actual Liber|8 plinth. Even for the Vox 3 I'm consulting with Jeff Jenkins on a solution that'll be size/load appropriate for the monitors.

Expected size.

"My mind was already preoccupied by visions of a floorstanding Vox but now that I'm hearing the Liber|8's six 8" woofers on Jeff's isolators, that idea is fading. It's very difficult to describe how clean, quick and linear dipole bass is. I still can't get my head around it. I keep coming back to your Ripol descriptions of time smear and how used we are to it from the usual room interactions in the bass to which I now must include floor coupling. I haven't quite figured out the feedback loop that sets up when speakers are allowed to couple to even a very substantial suspended floor as we have here. But the difference is undeniable. It now has me think on the subject in an entirely new way. In a room like mine, one certainly won't need a subwoofer with the Liber|8. It's in bigger rooms where open-baffle bass begins to drop off prematurely. It's why Siegfried Linkwitz always compensated his dipoles electronically. Hearing those very low frequencies whereby good recordings map venue acoustics at very low levels creates real magic. Disbelief suspends and everything feels more real.

Liber|8 concept drawings.

"A dealer of mine had just one issue with his Vox. He found the bass amazing but the midrange not full-bodied enough. Having just tried the Vox on Jeff's Carbide footers, I realized that by cleaning up their bass just like Dawid Grzyb described with them in his Carbide review, it brought out the midrange exactly like this Belgian dealer was after. I'm already drawing up how I might incorporate a single Carbide under the Vox plinth, then use two small outriggers for stabilization. The details of the execution will come but I'm certainly very excited to make it happen."

Carbide Audio footers in Kilrush.