About Us

Looking for decent speakers

My background is that of hobbyist; I have no experience in retail sales. I designed and built my first pair of loudspeakers in 1979 - they were so big I gave each one a name, "Ferdinand" and "Irving". I was nineteen and had fallen in love with the tight, articulate bass and natural midrange of transmission line speakers, but commercial products were out of my price range. Over the next eighteen years or so I built around fifty different designs, and along the way published a couple of articles in Speaker Builder magazine. I almost went into small-scale commercial production once, until I got a close look at all the expenses involved.

In the mid 1990's I realized that my projects were becoming so expensive that for the parts cost I could buy a pair of used Quad USA Monitor electrostats, so I did. I was never entirely happy with the midrange of the Quads - there was a mild prominence around 4-6 kHz that irritated me. I guess that's just something I'm especially sensitive to. Anyway, after spending a great deal of money trying to fix and/or equalize the midrange, I finally started looking for another speaker. My search was narrowed down to two speakers, the Audio Artistry Beethoven and the Magnepan MG-20. Both were dipoles - I found dipoles to sound even more natural than transmission lines. The Beethovens were actually well out of my price range, but that didn't stop me from dreaming.

What could be better than Quads?

About this time I saw a classified ad in the back of Stereophile - somebody was selling a pair of used Beethovens for close to half price (retail was $28,000). I called the man and the speakers were already sold, but he was quite willing to answer my questions about them. I asked him why he was selling them, and he said he'd recently bought a $40,000 pair of speakers and so needed to sell the Beethovens. Then, out of the blue, he told me of a pair of speakers he'd once owned that he thought were wonderful. They were SoundLAB A-1's (I had never heard of SoundLAB before). I could tell he missed them, so after we hung up I went to SoundLAB's website and read every word.

Because of my background as an amateur speaker builder, Roger West's design absolutely amazed me. I could see that his speakers would do a combination of things right that no other speakers did, assuming the design was well executed. And since the basic design was about 18 years old, I figured he'd gotten most of the bugs out. I called SoundLAB and asked more questions. I ended up buying the very first pair of Millennium-1's ever made, without ever having heard a pair of SoundLAB speakers. I would never advise anyone else to do that, but I've never regretted it for a heartbeat.

The SoundLABs with a $300 amplifier and $500 preamplifier sounded across-the-board better than my Quads did with modifications, subwoofers, active crossovers, and $13,500 worth of preamp and amps. Well, the Quads were more efficient, but that was it.

Share the joy

Since no local dealers carried SoundLAB, and none seemed interested in doing so, after a few months I asked Roger West if I could represent his company in New Orleans. I told him all I had was my living room and my enthusiasm, and he agreed! So that's how I became a dealer!

Now, the universal question that arises once you own, or have decided to own, SoundLAB is: Which amplifier? So that became my next quest - to find a few amplifier lines that worked especially well with SoundLABs. From there we move to speaker cables, preamps, interconnects, source, powerline accessories, and so forth, not necessarily in that order. It's sort of an ongoing quest, but boy is it fun!

Have a seat... make yourself at home

Since my living room is my showroom I can only give auditions by appointment only, but I try to give anyone seriously interested in SoundLAB a reasonable chance to have an audition - see section entitled my offer.

I will treat you with respect - that means not trying to impose my taste and priorities on you. If you've gotten this far in audio you are a serious player. I will not try to make you dissatisfied with any of your present equipment or try to talk you out of your price range. If I think a competing product would better suit your needs, I'll tell you so. I pride myself on being an audiophile first and a dealer second.

I also welcome your input - many of you know of products or tweaks that I have no experience with. All of the products I now carry were at some point recommended to me by someone else (as were many others that I ultimately chose not to carry).

One more thing - I respect other dealers' territories. So if it turns out you have a local dealer for some product we've discussed I'll refer you to him, but I'd still be glad to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

A philosophy kinetic

Listening to music can be a transformational experience - it changes you, makes you a little bit deeper and better person than you were before. In a world where we often hide our emotional side, music can be intensely healing and enriching. Whatever it is that music does for you or means to you, may you end up with a system that makes it as real for you as possible.