GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The Sakuma's Show

Post Subject: Sakuma's placePosted by nl on: 11/30/2008

I have visited Sakuma's restaurant myself.

You don't need to travel to Japan to know that stock Altec A5s and Lowther-based designs from the 1960s basically run in the 70hz-12000hz range. They are in mono, and not particularly well-placed. That is merely the given.

I don't think Sakuma has the opinion that mono is better than stereo. Setting up a pair of A5s would be all-but-impossible in his environment, certainly if one also wanted to listed to some Lowther designs as well. So, the decision to go mono allows him to do that. Also, it allows him to build very exotic amplifiers with tremendous numbers of parts, which would be of course twice and expensive and twice as hard to build if you had to do two of them all the time.

I myself listened to mono for a while, largely for the same reasons. I had a small apartment, but wanted to use a big speaker. Also, I wanted to build a variety of amplifiers without having to do everything twice.

I would say, and I think that Sakuma would agree, that this can be a satisfying strategy, if you have similar constraints and interests. However, I now listed to two channels like everyone else.

Within that context, Sakuma has built a number of amplifiers that he enjoys. Maybe others do not enjoy the same thing, but he has built enough of them now (note: about 40x more than Romy has) that I think we can say that he has accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.

Systems like these are all about understanding the emotional content of the music, not about Sound.

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