Three for Three

IN THE early 1950s, Edgar Villchur, Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and Josef Anton Hofmann founded the Acoustic Research and Development Corporation.

- Thomas J. Norton

Of the four founders, Henry Kloss may be the name best recognized by audiophiles with a bit of mileage on their wheels. Kloss left AR (along with Low and Hoffman) and founded KLH. Kloss later founded two other loudspeaker companies, Advent and Cambridge Audio.

In the 1970s, Kloss also designed and marketed the Kloss Videobeam video projection system, a product that was something of a revolution in an era where the 21-inch, direct-view TV dominated. It’s been said Kloss started Advent to raise the money needed to develop the Videobeam. But the home video world wasn’t yet ready for such a relatively expensive (though primitive, versus today) video projection system. Kloss also worked on improving FM radio, introduced Dolby B noise reduction to the audio cassette, and even built a prototype Dolby B open reel tape deck that was never marketed.

Most loudspeakers in those early days of consumer hi-fi were either huge or lacked anything resembling deep bass. Those that managed to reach the depths were often horn-loaded (such as the immense Klipschorns) or porttuned bass-reflex designs. In the 1950s, the mathematical techniques needed to mate a bass-reflex-bound woofer to its cabinet were far from perfect.

The cut-and-try methods employed to tune such designs often produced sloppy, boomy bass.