Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring Ralph Waters founder of Richter Acoustics. Listeners are treated to an engaging narrative with Brad Serhan and Andrew Hutchison that explores Ralph’s design philosophies, opinions and thoughts on sound, music, loudspeaker design and life. Ralph passionately discusses his commitment to Australian manufacturing, highlighting his collaboration with the biggest names in the foundation of Australian HiFi. His dedication to crafting speakers that emulate the essence of music rather than simply producing sound is both inspiring and thought-provoking.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 007 and Episode 011
TRANSCRIPT
SEASON 1 – EPISODE 007 – Ralph Waters, Richter Acoustics & Australian HiFi
Andrew Hutchison talks to Mr Ralph Waters about Richter Acoustics
Ralph Waters: And it was great because it played both ways. If people were pro Australian, I could push the, Australian made down under thing. And if they preferred imports, well, we just ignore that and pretend it was German.
Andrew Hutchison: And hello. Welcome to Not An Audiophile. The podcast today is, episode seven, season one. And we’re speaking to the founder of Richter acoustics, m Mister Ralph Waters. Ably assisted, with, in fact, by his good friend Brad Serhan, recalling some of, the tales of yore and, of course, myself, Andrew Hutchison.
Brad: I don’t remember meeting Ralph. I thought it was Trevor Wilson
So, without any further ado, part one.
Brad Serhan: Remember meeting Ralph?
Andrew Hutchison: Right.
Brad Serhan: and, it was, You know what? I don’t remember. I thought it was Trevor. No, I thought it was Trevor Wilson, possibly introduced, us or something. I’m just. It’s so hot. It is hard, but it’s almost like, we came out of this amorphous mass of, in about 85 or something like that. And, and Paul Keating was talking about the fact that we were going to become a banana. Our nation’s, ah, treasurer at the time was talking about us being, becoming a banana republic. and, and we had to start buying Australian products. And it was around 85, 86 that we, you know, started. Ralph and I started to get out there, but we must have bumped into each other at a HiFi shop, surely, Ralph. And, you know, like I said.
Ralph Waters: Brad, I simply can’t recall. All I know is that, Yeah, I just can’t recall that quintessential moment. It’s lost to me.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m guessing it goes something like this. You, Ralph, were doing the good work of driving around to various dealers and showing off your wares and Brad washing, following you around. He was stalker style, serial stalker, store by store.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, store by store, stalker, in the.
Andrew Hutchison: Hope that he might pick off a, dealer that, has said no to Ralph and maybe will take the alternate product instead.
Ralph says naming the speaker after earthquake studies helped boost sales
But, I mean, you as far as starting, I mean, I mean, firstly, the name Richter, I guess, is did you have some kind of small, fetish for earthquake studies or where did the title come from, do you think?
Ralph Waters: Ok, that is something that I do remember. It’s a very significant name, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Ralph Waters: because I discovered very early in the piece, when I was out talking with people and I. And, talking with dealers is that they had, absolute, almost contempt for anything that was made in Australia.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Okay.
Ralph Waters: And, that was the first thing that I noted. And secondly, I wanted, I’m a bit like Brad. We love to play with words. Yeah, he’s a wordsmith. I’m a wordsmith. And, So the word Richter, the slogan was, the force from down under.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: Okay. So we have Richter, which could be german, but it’s not, And the force from down under, which is obviously a play on words. On, the speaker from down under being Australia. that was the, And it was great because it played both ways. If people were pro Australian, I could push the Australian made down under thing. And if they preferred imports, well, we just ignore that and pretend it was germane. It was a case of mistaken identity, by the way. It worked for me. And, Yeah, So that’s the basis of the name. And I’ve always said in marketing. What’s in a name? Well, I think everything, actually. Everything. If you get the wrong name, you know, it makes it very difficult for the, product. Like if the product had been called rw, you know, it just wouldn’t have the same resonance, wouldn’t have the same functions.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, couldn’t agree more. that you could set yourself up for a
00:05:00
Andrew Hutchison: really hard task. Marketing. Ah. Brand new brand, if you’ve exactly. I mean, and a lot of people do that, of course. I mean, they’re still doing it today, aren’t they, Brad? So, But, But, Yeah, it’s There’s some classic examples of brains gone past that are, you know, pretty much just named after the founder, which sometimes work if they’ve got an interesting name. but, maybe not so much in the case of waters. Watery acoustics probably doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as, well as Richard acoustics does. But, So you. So you sort of, I mean, at some point you must have made the decision. I mean, I’m assuming, rightly or wrongly, that you built a few speakers for your own amusement. And I guess they went well. Is that how you sort of decided that perhaps, you know, maybe making them commercially was for you?
Ralph Waters: No. No?
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, fair enough. Tell us how it happened.
Ralph Waters: That was a bad guess. I should finish the other question off too. by saying that, all the advertising that I put into shops, I had these big, boards made up and it had a little boy, with no pants on, actually just wearing a little shirt. He was about two and a half years of age and he was on an Australian beach. He was behind him was, the original, the absolute first Holden car ever made.
Brad Serhan: Australian 48, 215. Wasn’t that cord pre the.
Ralph Waters: That’s it exactly. And that was, that was the Australian part. And that little boy happened to be me.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: it was just a cheeky way of saying, I’m Australian. I’m proud of it. And I’ll push Australian however hard that I can, wherever possible. And I’ve always been that way, and I always shall.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Pants off style, Ralph. I love it. Pants off. There’s this. Get the table out and just pull simmy.
Ralph Waters: Which boils back to the original observation. m all right. Okay.
Andrew: You resigned from your job to start a loudspeaker manufacturing company
The second question that you asked was, I’ve forgotten. Sorry.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, it was it was it was sort of how you decided that you might start manufacturing landscapes.
Ralph Waters: Okay. Okay. Well, I never really I never really started, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: I feel as if you might have, because the brand is still going today. So.
Ralph Waters: Like, I can’t remember having well, let’s put it this way. Ever since I was a little boy, I was fascinated with music. I lived, with my grandfather. He was a very accomplished concert pianist. And, shared the same room with him. and he introduced me to a whole range of music. everything from South Pacific through to breck Bannon. And I was always fascinated with how the sound of a piano and musical instruments and voices. Could come out of a piece of paper suspended between a bit of metal. It is impressive. And I was very fascinated with this. And ever since I was a little fella, I was always pulling things apart. and in speakers, I had just kept on pulling things apart. And being fascinated with speakers, and listening to them discreetly. And, that was my living memory. And I’ve never really stopped doing that. and it got to a point in time where actually a couple of things coincided. I was having it. I was in a job. And, I’d already started to sell a few speakers here and there. Very well paid job, actually. I had a car and great conditions and so on. I just went into work one day and said, I’m resigning.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: I thought, what will I do now? I thought, I don’t know. I know I’ll start a loudspeaker company.
Andrew Hutchison: So I did well, so that’s how it began. And yet, the decision to resign from your job, that probably offered a package of, goodies. far in excess of anything you’ll ever have in the loudspeaker manufacturing business. the decision to resign was more about just because you were sick of that job. And you were sort of subconsciously looking for a new challenge. Do you think? Is that what that was?
Ralph Waters: Yeah. I got tired of things, fairly easily. And I
00:10:00
Ralph Waters: just sort of lost interest in it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Ralph Waters: And I thought, oh, time to move on.
Ralph Mao trained as a teacher before becoming a loudspeaker engineer
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Ralph, were you a psych, were you a psychologist, like, if you don’t mind me asking. Originally, yeah.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, I, trained as a teacher, because I didn’t have the money to, go into, electrical engineering like my uncle. And so I did teacher training, not because I wanted to become a teacher, but because it was a free pass through university. I had a child at the time and, we were lush with cash because when, my oldest baby came along, on the scholarship that we were on, we actually received an extra dollar per week, for the baby. So, they funded our, university career. And afterwards I thought, well, I’m a crummy teacher. What can I do now? Well, as it turned out, I jagged a scholarship to do a master’s degree doing psychology, which seemed like a good exit to all the teaching. So I did that. really I wasn’t all that interested in that either. I just basically, it was a sequence of accidental. And I thought, oh, I’m sick of all this. so I resigned. And then I thought, okay, well, I’ll start a loudspeaker company, which was absolute folly.
Brad Serhan: What a great word.
Ralph Waters: I had no money. I had no idea what I was doing. Basically, none whatsoever. But a little bit of background. I had been, tinkering with my, commodore computer and I had been, designing, the base performance of loudspeakers using a, program which was written by doctor small, Richard Small. And I, started to correspond with him. he was at the university of New South Wales at the time. And then he went on to kef loudspeakers, I think, to, head their research division. And he sent me copies of their, of their papers. And so even at that very, very early stage in about, gee, 84, I was, designing things at home just for the fun of it. Using, what was, groundbreaking, revolutionary and world leading, technology, devised right here in Australia by Neville Thiele and Richard Small. So technically, even in the early days, I had that kind of edge, which was very handy. So although I went in blind I was slightly equipped. Slightly equipped. I’d read the papers. I’d read a lot on acoustics. it was sort of like a natural next step, I guess.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, you clearly had a strong interest in it to be doing that. And, I would guess from afar that you clearly must have, I mean, Richard small must have, cottoned onto the fact that you had an understanding and a strong interest for the backwards and forth that, was going on, which you immediately think you were emailing him. But of course it was the eighties and you were, I don’t know, were you sending him letters or ringing him up? How was the communication happening?
Ralph Waters: I wrote to him. it was by letter. I didn’t actually speak to him. I think I only had one or two conversations with him. But. Excuse me, I was just recovering from the flu. Yeah. So it was all by correspondence.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s how it was done. I mean, it’s kind of, forgotten. and so you. I don’t. I mean, that’s, I mean, the fact that you were using software, that early, I just wonder how many serious manufacturers were really, even in the mid eighties, I mean, they would, they would have had some very expensive measurement equipment, chart recorders, what have you. But I mean, how many people do you think were using? I mean, do you remember the name of the software? Was it something that Richard smaller kind of written or was it. What, what was the, what was the product that was running on your, Commodore 64 that was booting off a, no doubt a cassette drive or something?
Ralph Waters: Well, you’re going to laugh. The original, equations were, translated into a series of commands and they’re published in the back of a radio shack designed.
Brad Serhan: Wonderful.
Ralph Waters: Oh, man.
Andrew Hutchison: What? The red book.
Brad Serhan: The red book.
Ralph Waters: That’s it.
Brad Serhan: Chairman Mao.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have that book any other many. I think I’ve got all of the books that I bought except that one, which is kind of frustrating, but I think I bought it when it was like twelve or something. So, Yeah, it’s, it’s been lost in, you know, I don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s gone. But, I think I have vague memories of some, some basic, is it. So we’re talking basic, I guess. Is that the programming language? Is that what it was?
Ralph Waters: Yeah, that’s right. and I didn’t know anything about basics, but I had a friend who did, and he programmed up the €2, the Commodore trash 80, I think it was, and the program was actually fed in via cassette tape. It was all very beautiful.
Andrew Hutchison: The TRS 80 trash 80 or the totally rat shit 80, I think, were the two joke, titles.
Ralph Waters: But, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Anyway, so that’s, that’s amazing.
Richard Small was very generous and open to sharing information with Ralph
that’s, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Brad Serhan: Because both I’m going to drop my buffet in here and say that dick small. Ralph, I went and saw Dick small. I thought it was at Sydney uni because that’s where I was studying initially. And, and, went and knocked on his door and he gave me some formulas. Ralph, this was 1979 or 80 and. But he was very patient and I only saw him once. The fact is, it seems like he was very generous and open to sharing information. it’s really good to hear. I didn’t know that he had that, those conversations. Inverted comments with, with Richard Small. It’s bloody Marvis. Get that.
Ralph Waters: Acknowledge that. all of the Australian loudspeakers, manufacturing companies had an edge over their imported competition, because we were ahead of the game in every way in that regard. and it made a huge difference to the quality of our product.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, clearly. Absolutely. And,
Andrew: What do you feel Australian designers have as an advantage over others
I, have another question which I’ve forgotten. So I’ll hand over to Brad for a second while I find it. Way to go, Brad.
Brad Serhan: So in that advantage. And you can interrupt any time, Andrew. so the advantage you feel, Ralph, what else did we have? Well, then what else do you feel that Australian designers, manufacturers had as an advantage? Just that you have that sort of. How would you describe that?
Ralph Waters: M. Is that a question to me?
Brad Serhan: that was me talking to you, Ralph.
Ralph Waters: Who’s me?
Brad Serhan: God, this feels like so 1980s, Ralph. I do remember now. I remember. I do remember meeting you now. It was a. Our eyes, met across a bevy of our loudspeaker behead cabinets. And I just knew it was on from then on. no, I was just. What was our so called advantage? That’s what I’m trying. I’m attempting to ask.
Ralph Waters: I don’t know, bluff, bravado, capacity for great amount of punishment, condescension. I don’t know. A willingness to have a go.
Andrew Hutchison: I think the willingness. Yeah, the willingness to have a go, I, think is. I mean, I think it is. It’s got to be part of it. I mean, you. So you. Because you’re. You touched on the fact earlier that you would walk into a store and allude to a product being made in Australia and you would not be well received. Is that what happened initially?
Ralph Waters: I got, well laughed out of a few stores.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Ralph Waters: And worse still, I remember one store in particular where they weren’t laughing at me. They were, sneering.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Ralph Waters: they were condescending, which was far more painful than,
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And being sneered at or ridiculed openly. It was that sort of quite sort of snobby, superior, type attitude. So you have to be pretty resilient. And, But Brady was a great mate because he. We used to bolster each other up and encourage each other and help each other constantly. And it was, I think with. Yeah, that really gave me a lot more courage than I might have otherwise have had. it was hard. You had to really, keep at it. Really had to keep on flogging
00:20:00
Ralph Waters: away.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Ralph, was that a Sydney based door where they sneered at you, may I ask? Yes, because I had a similar, sneer. It might be the same shop, but, Yeah, very interesting, because this was a particular shop that sold a lot of english loudspeakers. And, I, was told by the owner that I was most welcome to come in with my prototype because I was getting my cabinets and, speaker stands made by an old english gentleman that looked like. He looked sort of almost like Winston Churchill. And, yeah, he used to have a seriously. Len Richards, the marvelous, marvelous Len Richards. He was an Englishman who I think was in the navy. He was a photographer in the navy in the second world War. And he always didn’t. He didn’t. He used to have a cigarette dangling from his mouth and just the ash. He perfected the art of having ash that didn’t fall off. Now, that’s not a cigar. This is a cigarette. And I was always amazed while he sort of doing cabinet sort of assembly, he could make crossovers up. And Len Richards knew this particular character, another Englishman who owned this shop, and he used to make speaker stands for him. And I had lunch with Len Richards and this particular character. And the guy said, oh, no, bring you. The bloke said, bring the speakers up. I’m happy to hear what you’re doing with Len. And so I took them up with the crossover on the outside, foolishly, and. Because that way you can adjust it. Oh, no. He pulled my pants down, metaphorically. Oh, yes. He and another bloke just. They just tore strips on me. How not professional. It was. You. You know, Australia, never going to be able to design a speaker like the English. And, I supposed to leave the shop with my tail between my legs. Now, the fact that I haven’t, I haven’t got a tail, per se, but I did feel like I should wrap the tail around myself and strang myself initially, but then I thought, no, call me old fashioned, Ralph. What happens when that people do that to you? You say, fuck you. Pardon my language. And I’m going to have just keep going so you have a hearty crack. So I.
We’ll discuss it off air, but I’m pretty sure it’s Ralph
We’ll discuss it off air, but I’m pretty sure. Did I just say off air?
Andrew Hutchison: We’Re going to make it a radio show in the future.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, we’re making it. Well, we’ll discuss it off air to see if it’s the same person. But by Jingi, it did work to our advantage, Ralph. And it’s about. The show’s about you, not about me, but on the Len Wallace audio. And this particular guy used to have alternate weeks of, in the pink guide, advertising their stuff, doing their stuff. And then this particular fellow was bagging Australian loudspeakers. And then Len Wallace would the following week say how good, Richter was or Orpheus was. So I love the fact that we actually sort of got some benefit out of it. So I’m going to stop talking and you take over now, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’ll let Ralph take over, actually.
Ralph, when you bought your first speakers, reviews were overwhelmingly positive
But, because I’m interested to hear how many years, Ralph, you had to drive around banging your head against, HiFi shop doors or walls or the owners to get some, to get something happening. I’m guessing that you got a few supportive people initially.
Ralph Waters: but yeah, Andrew Goldfinch was, the guy that owned, a HiFi shop in Cremorne.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And, also in the city.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And, Andrew, was, very good to me, in the first year or so. he was very good to me and very, very encouraging. He took me under his wing, to a certain extent. And, that made a big difference. but, in regard to the english speaker thing, I recall when I was buying my first set of speakers in about 1975, I went to a HiFi store, one of about 3 million on Kent street in Clarence street. And, I was very impressed with the reputation of, the KEF concerto, actually.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay?
Ralph Waters: And it had rave reviews from m british, reviewers. And, I listened to it and I thought, oh, it doesn’t really do anything for me. There’s nothing in that speaker that I like. It doesn’t excite me or interest me much. but the reviews were so positive, I thought, oh, I must be wrong. And I bought, a kit, a KEF concerto kit speak, put it together, and, I proved to be right. It just had no interest in me at all. this didn’t do a darn thing for me. And I thought, well,
00:25:00
Ralph Waters: what’s all the fuss about? You know, and around about the same time, I bought a pair of coral, speakers. they were coaxial eight, cx 50. I think they were. and, on my second set, the first set that I bought were when I was, twelve. And I mounted them in a box. And they just sounded magnificent. They were alive. They were natural. they were alive. and they were interesting. They were really involving. You just wanted to listen to more and more music. And I thought, well, that’s the kind of speaker that I want to listen to. And so from that point, I really, I didn’t have a very high regard for a lot of the british speakers. I thought they were a, ah, bit like stirring your porridge. If you like porridge, wonderful. But if you like music, yeah, you could probably do better. That’s a bit of a gross generalization. There were some goodies there amongst them. but I thought a lot of the english reviews were rather pompous and had a rather inflated view of their own, you know, their own product.
Andrew Hutchison: I think there would be many people who would agree. and I guess I mean, without going off on too much of a technical sort of, in a technical direction. But, do you think that the way they went about the crossover, where they had priorities related, I don’t know, more to low coloration and somewhere along the line, due to the lack of decent, available, I guess, software and measurement systems at the time, they were prioritizing the wrong things. And you clearly had priorities elsewhere, which the corals were, were doing it for you. But, is that part of it, do you think? Is it the kind of crossover design, or do you have thoughts on what.
Ralph Waters: They forgot to listen to? Their speakers?
Andrew Hutchison: That could be it. Maybe they were peering at their instruments too much.
Ralph Waters: Yes, it was a minor oversight, but I think it was an important one nevertheless.
Andrew Hutchison: I, do. It’s funny you say concertos, because concertos there, is a. There’s still a strong following for them. And I have on one occasion heard them sound good, but on so many occasions, I don’t know. And I put it down to age. But they, have quite a weird thing in the mid range that’s quite unpleasant and, sort of a sharp edge and some distinction weirdness in the mid. And, Yeah, I never quite warmed to them much as yourself, except this one pair once that sounded really good. But I have no real idea what that was about. I mean, maybe there was two different versions of the crossover. I mean, KEF, you know, they. I mean, I guess they had multiple iterations.
Ralph Waters: The drivers themselves were brilliant. Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. The discrete components were wonderful. But what I noticed was that I’ve always liked to play music loud. And, I crank, I cranked. Sorry, I’m still laughing at the thought. I cranked them up to get them to, give a bit of live sound levels. And then all of a sudden, there was this m amazing crack.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And then a little bit later, crack.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: Like a snapping sound. I thought, goodness gracious me, what on earth, was that?
Brad Serhan: That might be called our, english indigestion, mate.
Andrew Hutchison: So I guess.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: Well, Bernie, do you know what it was?
Brad Serhan: I assume that the voice call, former, hitting the back of the magnet.
Ralph Waters: No, it wasn’t really.
Andrew: Ralph, when inductors saturate, their value changes dramatically
Andrew Hutchison: All right.
Brad Serhan: Holy snapping assholes. What was it, Ralph? Suspended in suspense.
Andrew Hutchison: The strong pause to build tension. Away you go, Ralph.
Ralph Waters: The pause is a dramatic pause. It’s meant to intensify the tension in the conversation.
Brad Serhan: You peaked our interest. You’ve definitely peaked out.
Ralph Waters: Elevate the general level of, anxiety that you’re feeling because you can’t answer the question.
Brad Serhan: Oh, I don’t care whether I have no idea. What was it, Ralph?
Ralph Waters: I may not answer it. I’m not sure. Oh.
Brad Serhan: Ah, yeah, here we go.
Ralph Waters: No, no. Okay, okay.
00:30:00
Ralph Waters: I’ll give you.
Brad Serhan: This is the sort of stuff, Andrew, that used to happen when Ralph would say, Brad, would you like to come down for a design day? Which is normally a frolic around his office and his factory sort of on two chairs with wheels and us, ah, sort of attempting to sort of modify drivers, then falling about, laugh, laughing when something had fly off the cone because they were driven, the driver. So anyway, stop. Back to you, Ralph.
Ralph Waters: All right. Okay. Well, I’ll answer the question. the base driver was crossed over quite low, and it used a tiny, tiny little ferrite inductor.
Ralph Waters: And the ferrite inductor was saturating and when it reached saturation point, it went crack. Is that right?
Brad Serhan: Wow.
Andrew Hutchison: Interesting.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, yeah. And what happened was that I removed the inductor and replaced it with, you know, an air coil version. And all of a sudden, bingo. We had dynamics, we had sourcing, free, and no cracking. So that was just a little, thing that happened to me in about 1975. And I realized at that early stage that inductor quality was a very critical thing in both, dynamics, distortion. And of course, when a ferrite saturates, it changes its value dramatically. Wow. What was happening with, a lot of the designs, they were fine if you wanted to play them at pussy level. but if you wanted to crank it up at all, what would happen is that the ferrites would start fluctuating in their actual values. And as the current build up in the ferrite, so too would the value of the ferrite deviate from its theoretical, nominal value. So that would mean that the crossover points are also wandering all over the place like a loose goose. So that strange m mid range sound that you heard, that disconnected mid range sound that you heard in the KEF concerto. Yeah, yeah, due to the fact that the crossover points were wandering all over the place like a hairy goat.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, well, that. Yeah, well, that, man, then that’s probably it, because it may well be that the one that sounded all right, that I heard someone had, you know, maybe upgraded it, maybe you, Ralph, put some air cord inductors in there. I don’t know. That’s, I do remember those inductors, though. They, They were, they were tiny, weren’t they? They were literally like a piece of ferrite out of an AM M radio antenna. you know, short, little sort of, I don’t know, two inch long slug of ferrite that had, you know, not a hell of a lot of wire wound around it. I mean, it was, I mean, obviously it was, it was. The core was working very well, very effectively to generate, at least statically, a, larger value. But, But yeah, obviously, saturated extremely easily. But I had no idea that, you could get that, that kind of effect from, obviously complete saturation. But I guess. I guess when it fully saturates, its value changes to what? To very low inductance or some kind of weird. I don’t know. What do you think happens at full saturation?
Ralph Waters: Sounds like shit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Brad Serhan: Cracking shit like a whip.
Ralph Waters: Exactly.
Brad Serhan: That’s amazing story, Ralph. An important time to happen in the seventies. Mid, seventies quality of components, in other words.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, crossover components. A company called refa rifa. Everything was made in Australia in those days. And we got the most magnificent capacitors from a company called reefer.
Ralph Waters: And, they were great methylized polyde opryline capacitors. and they just sounded so good compared to the english, little bipolar things that they used to shove in. I must admit I had as much contempt for some of the english speakers as they had contempt for mine. So, Yeah, it went both ways, I guess. It allowed me to withstand the, condescension and the insults. yeah, you had to be pretty brazen. And I know that Brad suffered the same thing. they treated you as a kind of a miscreant, no hoping misfit, when you wandered
00:35:00
Ralph Waters: into their store.
You started manufacturing Australian loudspeakers at a time when they were virtually unknown
Andrew Hutchison: Well, you know, to some degree, you know, some things haven’t changed in a way. I mean at the moment it’s I mean, so you started, Ralph, at a time when Australian manufactured speakers were not a thing really, they were just proper ones, were just thanks to yourself and Brad and I guess, color what now? And a couple of others were just kicking off and, and So you were going into uncharted territory and I guess, you know, to some degree that’s the way it’s been for the last few years where the industry has slowly wound down as all of Australia manufacturing largely has, with the demise of lots of serious manufacturing such as obviously motor cars. You know, it’s actually a similar time. It’s not as bad as when you started because there’s history to show that of course you can be successful manufacturing loudspeakers here, but there wasn’t at your stage, I mean you something of a, I mean, you know, a pioneer really. I mean in reality, what, what loudspeakers were sold? I mean, I know there were loudspeakers manufactured in the seventies, but they weren’t, they weren’t slightly more of the banger variety, I guess. Is that, is that a correct, thought.
Ralph Waters: I should clarify that it’s very hard to some people to understand what the marketplace was like in those days. and during the sixties the Australians made a multitude of televisions, amplifiers, transistor radios. there were a lot of electronic manufacturers in Australia.
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely.
Ralph Waters: And similarly, there are a lot of loudspeakers made in Australia. I mean, when I say a lot, an inconceivably huge number of speakers were made in Australia because in those early days, I remember when I was twelve, I bought a stereo test record. I just booked my first stereo at the age of twelve. And it comprised a ping pong ball bouncing from left to right speaker one and returning from the right speaker back to the left speaker. And we used to listen to this for hours on end. Everybody became obsessed with stereophonic, very ephonic lifeability, you know, and everyone had to have a set. And so what happened was that in four, at least four that I know are factories in Sydney alone. during the late sixties and seventies there were fairly large factories pumping out speakers on sometimes 24 hours shifts.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: There was a big Phillips factory over at Cogger. there was Cole Mort over at, Liverpool. Yep. there was a speaker company called Chadwick. And people don’t remember Chadwick. I do.
Andrew Hutchison: That rings a bell. Yeah.
Ralph Waters: Goodness me. They had all this automated, machinery, for making cabinets. The machine would feed the sheet of particle, board onto the thing that would be cut all in one hit. All the cuts would be performed at once. All the holes would be cut and then it would be folded up and made into a speaker in no time flat. It was the most incredible, time. There were literally tens of thousands of speakers going out into the marketplace. There was no computers, so everyone, was buying a stereo. And, so there were. But the trouble was that nearly all of them sounded ghastly.
Brad Serhan: That was the catch. And the word ghastly is about appropriate for that age. You don’t hear ghastly anymore. But, I tell you what, Ralph, that was used back then. So there were some pretty nasty things out there.
Ralph Waters: That turned, like people like myself and Brad into a huge advantage because these speakers were often the first purchase these people had made and they were looking for something better. They’re out shopping for something better. And we just sort of fell at that moment in time when, when it was fortuitous, there’s no doubt about it, that Australians were ready to buy something better. And we, just fell in that moment where buying Australian was also a favored idea. And, that was our advantage. And I think it might be, almost like one in a million event,
00:40:00
Ralph Waters: where all these things coincided. And, it worked to our advantage. So it was just a brilliant time to stumble into the market. And so we stumbled around the market and we kind of, I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. I had no idea, really how to market or how to do anything, really. I just sort of kept at it and, bit by bit. one of the things that I did get, early in the piece was some very, very good, test gear. I had a, ML double sample test, system.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: which was very, very sophisticated. And even today there’s not a lot that would.
Brad Serhan: Melissa, it’s commonly called.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, Melissa. Yeah. And, it was brilliant. And I think that that would have made with the leap program that we were using, which was based on small teal’s, pioneering work. We had the technology to probably be better than most of the imported speakers. most of the, overseas companies were still using, what do they call them? the neutric. It was a bar, Nodrick chart recorder. A chart recorder. Exactly. That’s the kind of technology they were still using. Whereas, we had this, we were actually ahead in our, technology. And, we were able to, I think, put out a better quality product because of that. That was certainly, one aspect of the equation.
Andrew: Remember that first HiFi show in Melbourne?
Andrew Hutchison: Anyway, Andrew here from Dellichord loudspeakers. Yeah. That was me talking, interviewing Ralph. And now I’m doing my own ads. It’s a low budget operation. we’ll be, at the show, the Australian HiFi show, the stereo net show at the Pullman hotel, Albert Park, Melbourne. In a few days time. Please, drop into the room 2204. We’ll, have, our new model on display, which, we are, very happy with. it’s, something a little different. It sounds delightful, I think. But, of course, you know, highly biased opinion. But come, by, have a listen. And of course, you’ll see, Brad Serhan wandering around the show, taking interviews. Feel free to speak to him. he will record your wise words and we may put them to air. So if you’re at the show, please, you know, speak to us. Drop into the room and have a great time.
Ralph Waters: Brad and I used to get in the car at Sydney.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: Remember that first HiFi show in Melbourne? We would call it the whole way. And when we got to Melbourne, we would talk till 04:00 a.m. m in the morning, go to bed, talk for the next three days, 12 hours a day, jump in the car, drive all the way home and talk all the way home.
Brad Serhan: Yes, we did.
Ralph Waters: It’s one of the skills that Brad and I had developed very keenly.
Brad Serhan: With the ability to talk projapurlixity. All those bullshit words. We we marinated in them.
Ralph Waters: Unfortunately, we never developed the skill of talking sensibly.
Brad Serhan: I’m not commenting. Is it. Is it okay, Andrew, to tell a little story about that trek to Melbourne? The first HiFi show we did together? Well, I think it was our first.
Ralph Waters: Oh, please. Tell the story about lazy stocks.
Brad Serhan: Well, there’s one. There’s another story that got us to Vezie stocks.
Andrew Hutchison: You have permission. Proceed.
Brad Serhan: Thank you, sir. And you could always, you know, cut it out. So Ralph and I, we thought we’re going to give the Melbourne market a good old crack. And, we decided to do the Melbourne HiFi show. Now, this is 19, I think. 1989. and we happened to go down when there was. We had the show war. There was the show wars, HiFi show wars where two people were putting on or two, what have you called people? Let’s say people were putting on the shows on the same weekend.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, the same weekend. Okay. Yes, that is a show war. That’s,
Brad Serhan: yeah, yeah. And we chose this particular one which was being housed for what? A bit of words in a gps school, a private school, and beautiful, grounds and that sort of thing. So Ralph and I got packed up his trailer and put my kid in it and his kid in it. And we got these light blue Toyota Corona. The one which handled
00:45:00
Brad Serhan: quite well, if I remember rightly. But when Toyota suddenly decided to do an RTs thing like Holden did. So Ralph had this sort of wonderful old Toyota Corona. And we drove to Melbourne and we did a lot of talking. And I said, ralph, what about accommodation? As we got in the car, what are we going to do about accommodation? Because we hadn’t planned that. And Ralph said, oh, Brad, don’t worry about that.
Ralph Waters: I’ve got, I’ve got an old girlfriend. I think.
Brad Serhan: I know we can stay with her. She’ll be fine with that. You sure? He said, yeah, no worries, mate. No worries. Anyway, off we went. And it’s not just sort of modern day drive to Melbourne. No traffic lights like we’ve got now. It’s sort of the Hume highway and over bumpy roads and whatever. Let me tell you, Ralph’s a very, very skilled driver, okay? And no one can throw a corrupt way to credit circa 1983 or 82 with a trailer on the back end of a corner like Ralph and get it through the corner. Just getting the apex right with the trailer hanging up the back, beautifully poised to sting. Shot you around the corner a little bit like NASA. Take your spaceship from, Saturn to Uranus. or Uranus.
Brad and Ralph were camping in a Melbourne school when fire alarms went off
Anyway, so we finally get to Melbourne, it’s late, and I said, ralph, what do we got to what’s happening with the, with your friends? So we had to find a public phone. It’s pre mobile phones. And we. He rings her and she now has a boyfriend. Which meant that unfortunately, she wasn’t very well. I don’t think she was too excited by the fact that she might have Ralph staying with, with a friend. And, No, I’ve got a boyfriend now, Ralph. It’s not possible. So we look at each other. Where the fuck are we going to stay? But fortunately we had. We were able to get into the old, school building and we found our room and we. I think, Ralph, I don’t think we took all the gear up at that stage, but we had sleeping bags and stuff with us. And they had benches outside the school rooms. But unlike public schools, these private schools had padded benches. Very lucky. And so we were able to sort of camp down on that. And I thought, gee, this is just, this is. This is what I call quality living. You know, this is just superb. it’s like camping out with a fucking airbed. It’s just superb. You can’t get better than that. It’s called glamping. We were glamping in this private school. And, Ralph, funnily enough, I’m sitting down, getting its light really late in this stage, and we’d be talking too much. And Ralph thought, geez, I’ve worked up a sweat here, so I might go and have a shower, okay? So off he went. And, I’m sort of starting to sort of go off to sleep. And next minute, I hear these fire alarms go off. And then next bit, there’s. I see all this, what looks like smoke. And. And then there’s. I hear the e. E or e or e or. And that’s the fire trucks arriving.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: What in fuck’s they is going on? And next minute, I see Ralph with a towel around him, quasi naked, as you tend to be when you have a shower. He’d had a hot shower because it was very cold. And there’s so much steam, so much steam. It triggered the fire alarms and. But Ralph, I’ll let you take out, because you were you from your point of view.
Ralph Waters: I was having a lovely hot shower at, something like 04:00 a.m. in the morning. And then two burly firemen, guards, into the room, into my, into the bathroom with me. And I thought, this is just a bit too close for comfort, you know, to put out flowers. Not out showers. Not put out showers. They got it back to front. anyway, I was very confused. I thought, what’s going on here? Maybe I, got into some sort of gay dress up party or something.
Andrew Hutchison: And you’d forgotten your fire. Fire brigade, obviously. Uniform.
Brad Serhan: Very exciting.
Ralph Waters: Yeah. So, anyway, eventually, the, the whole misunderstanding was ironed out. but, so, yeah, that was just a typical, typical scenario that wherever Brad and I went, we seemed to attract chaos, actually.
Part one of an interview with Ralph Waters is up on YouTube
Andrew Hutchison: so that’s a wrap on part one of the Not An Audiophile interview with, Mister Ralph Waters, the, founder of, Richter acoustics ably assisted, in this case with Brad and himself, Andrew Hutchison. So, thanks again for listening please, like, follow, subscribe, all of that sort of, stuff. It really helps to move the podcast along. reviews are great, feedback, comments, et cetera, on the YouTube versions of these, videos, or they’re not videos. No audio only podcasts. But, they are on YouTube. and comments can be left there. Love to hear what you think, either, positive or negative. I mean, probably positive is preferred, but, we’re certainly open to
00:50:00
Andrew Hutchison: critiquing. No one’s perfect. And, of course, see at the Melbourne HiFi show, which is on any day, and of course, part two of this, interview with Ralph will be up soon.
00:50:09
TRANSCRIPT
SEASON 1 – EPISODE 011 – Ralph Waters, Richter Acoustics & Strong Opinions on sound
Ralph Waters is the founder of Richter Acoustics
Ralph Waters: These things were only ever created to emulate and mimic. Mimic is a better word. Mimic the real thing. Music. so you can become a lover of hi Fi. But that’s idolatry to me. what we should all be is lovers of music.
Andrew Hutchison: Hi folks. Welcome to not an Audio File, the podcast, episode 11, season one still. And ah, today we have part two of Ralph Waters interview. The founder of Richter Acoustics, Richter Loudspeakers. And today he continues some of the saga of travel and but more about the first models and how they came about and what his design priorities were. And then he follows that up with a, a somewhat haunting story of a meeting with the Garrott brothers.
Brad: I remember meeting someone who wanted to invest in Australian hi Fi industry
Ralph Waters: Seeing as we’re on a theme here, Brad, of places, to sleep that you really shouldn’t.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: I’d like to share a little anecdote but my own. I went down to, I think it was sale in Victoria and we did a week high five show down there and I traveled down with Peter Stein.
Brad Serhan: Oh, ah, Steiny.
Ralph Waters: Yeah. And we went down in his ute. And we packed up fairly late and we went up the coast and finally we arrived and then we went cross over, crossed over to Canberra. We went over the pretty wild and woolly country up there. And we were getting very tired and I said why don’t we stop at my sister’s house, she lives in Canberra and we can stop there. We had our sleeping bags with us. So it was about 2:00am in the morning I think, something like that, 2:33, something like that. So we said yeah, okay. So we went up to her place and I thought I said to Peter, I don’t want to wake my sister up. so why don’t we just put our sleeping bags down here in the, in the backyard. And we did that and we went fast asleep. We were both absolutely stonkered from you know, these hi Fi shows. And about 6:00 in the morning, what I didn’t realize is that I was being inundated with icy cold water. And I it turned out my sister had an automated sprinkling system. Oh Jesus. We had about three hours sleep or two hours sleep or whatever it was. It wasn’t much only to be woken up by this icy cold water. So anyway, that was probably not the best choice of places to sleep. That was what it was like. It was like the wild West. You know, we were all living on the oil. You know, as Brad said, the smell of an oily rag. and it was touch and go, you know, from week to week whether we could buy the petrol to put in the car. Yeah, and it was, it was, it was hard work, but it was. Gee, it was fun. We had so much fun.
Brad Serhan: We did. There’s characters like Mazie Stocks. Well, I think that’s Busy’s name. Maybe it wasn’t Ralph. Where the Melbourne hi fi show, that same one where the sprinklers came on or the alarms went off and there’s a guy going around. I think it was called Constellation Audio who was trying to. Ralph, can you remember what he was trying to do? Sign us all up? I think the telltale sign was in the name Constellation. Because if we take stellation out and have just con, that was the word, I think that stick comes to mind. He was a con artist and he was trying to try to. What was he trying to do? Sign us up to something. He wanted to sort of put us all under that one umbrella. We had the ME M amplifier. Your speakers. My speakers. Sorry, I’m illuminating here. You go ahead, Ralph. Do you remember it?
Ralph Waters: Well, I recall that he had a. He was very well dressed and he very well presented and he had a business card. And the business card said that he was on something like the 37th level of you know, a pretty major building in in Melbourne. And he was talking to me about buying Richter Acoustics even in those early days. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. You know, he said, ah, we’ve got investment money available. He said, what we want to do is invest in the Australian hi Fi industry
00:05:00
Ralph Waters: and we would like to become a shareholder in your company. And initially this was a recall. It was very, very. Oh, you can imagine, you know, like you’re a nobody and then somebody wants to buy half of you. and was very exciting. And Brad probably can remember in a bit more detail, but over the next three days, two to three days, the conversations became more colorful, more exaggerated, more embellished and ultimately we realized that he really was completely deluded.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Ralph Waters: was that your recollection, Brad?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, it was. He was coming in regularly. He was this tall, dark headed world, reasonably sort of dark headed and that we didn’t have much gray. But he was this young fellow that seemed to sort of have a sort of carried, carried himself well. And he just kept on bombarding us. But it just became weirder and weirder, didn’t it? And, it did, it did. and then you started to realize the name Constellation also Had another power fact because he was out of, you know, he’s out of space, really. He really. He was, you know, playing all these sort of puns, but he really was out there. But that was what it was like. That, that was exactly what it was like. Well, it was, in the early.
Andrew Hutchison: Days, it was, it was, it was the start of something, wasn’t it? And I guess it was, not, not obvious where it was going. I mean, Ralph, what. What year did you start to. I mean, I’m assuming at some point you had 10 or 20 dealers across the country. What can you pin a year on that? And what I’m getting at is how many years of hard yards did it take to get a bit of momentum going?
Ralph Waters: Well, I was very fortunate. I flogged it out for about 18 months. and what I’ve always been pretty good at is looking around and finding out what’s not there. and I wanted to find the product that nobody was making or selling. And so I had a bit of a think about it. And I know it sounds incredible to hear this, but in those days there was no such thing as a twin six.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Ralph Waters: It just didn’t exist. All the English speakers had two ways, eight inch. And the American speakers were pretty much 12, inch, three, ways. But there was no twin six at all on the market.
Was that employing Audax drive units? Um, what drivers was it using
And so I thought, well, I’ll have a crack at it. And, it fell into place very quickly as a design. It was very, very quick for me to execute and everybody loved it. And it just sort of went like a, rocket ship after that.
Andrew Hutchison: Sorry, I didn’t mean to.
Ralph Waters: A lot of speakers from that point, so.
Andrew Hutchison: And that.
Ralph Waters: And Rich.
Brad Serhan: A Wizard.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I was going to say. And what was the model? Yeah, it was the Wizard. Was it?
Ralph Waters: Yeah, yeah, the Wizard.
Andrew Hutchison: And is that. Was that employing Audax drive units?
Ralph Waters: what drivers was it using?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, Yep.
Ralph Waters: Okay. Well, I should, I should mention that my. I was very, very committed to Australian manufacturing. And, that’s always been my passion. And, I worked very closely with a company called Magnavox.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: they were an Australian company. They had pioneered Australian drivers and they had worked closely with Richard Small. and it was a hard. It was much easier to. My first drivers were Tony, Foster. Right. Foster. And then I swapped over, to make. To include as many Magnavox drivers as I possibly could.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And, there were 1, 2, 3, 4 models that I was using Magnavox drivers. And, it was. Yeah. So I was very, very committed to using the Magnavox drivers wherever I could. and so that was. The drivers in the wizard were Magnavox. And but over those, over the years, people, I mean I’ve used Fosters, Tonigen, Pioneer, Seyers, Peerless, Dyneaudio, Utone, which was an Australian company, Aural, Phillips and Audax and probably a few others as well. There’s another couple that I just can’t recall. But Yeah, but my main, My main commitment was to the Magnavox company. And yeah, we sort of. They made a
00:10:00
Ralph Waters: very nice driver. They. Everything was hand hand assembled. All the overseas stuff was, not hand assembled, apart from, I think Peerless. and what it meant was that they were able to get very, very high flux densities in the voice coil.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And that made the the driver very, very fast. It was a very, very quick driver. And I think that was my signature. I always tried to go for a very. I focused very heavily on transient response, transient response on the driver, a transient response in the actual crossover and transient response of the enclosure. And So a very strong focus in my design was always in transient response. And I think a lot of people enjoyed that. They had quite a lively sound to them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And on cabinets was the Since I’ve got the drive thing, drive unit thing completely wrong and oversimplified it by suggesting you kind of just used Audax. But which, which of course is the later models, I guess that maybe you’re more familiar with. But the. Maybe there was more built of them, I don’t know.
Every loudspeaker is constrained by limits, including materials and cost
But what, what, what cabinet materials did you have a preference to? you know, what kind of board or how was it heavily braced or not braced or what? Have you got any thoughts on that at all?
Ralph Waters: Yeah, well, every speaker is constrained by limits. Ah. They could be the size, weight, cost of the speaker, availability of m. Materials, cost, of materials. You know, there are all sorts of factors, which come into play. So what I would have preferred would have been a heavily braced plywood cabinet. Ah. But the fact of the matter was that plywood in New South Wales anyway was a very expensive commodity and it simply wasn’t possible. So we just used mdf. Mdf.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Ralph Waters: But MDF is not a particularly good product for making loudspeaker cabinets. So we tried to brace it as best we could. but still it’s not really an ideal material. so it was always a trade off, always a Compromise.
Andrew Hutchison: What’s, what’s the part, what’s the character of MDF that you feel works against it for loudspeaker cabinet design.
Ralph Waters: Okay. all materials have a resonance characteristic, which is characterized by the letter Q. and so a high resonance object like a tuning fork is a very very high Q. So you put a little bit of energy into it and it keeps on ringing and ringing and ringing at a fairly fixed frequency. The opposite of that would be piece of plasticine. You can hit a piece of plasticine with a hammer and it won’t ring at all. Indeed, that’s what you ah, like a low cue, characteristic. And with MDF it has this sort of nasty characteristic of resonance, high frequency, mid frequency resonance. So if it’s excited it does tend to color the sound of the music coming out. now in a sealed design that’s not too hard to control because you can fill the box with fiberglass, or you know, soft foam. But in a vendor design it’s a little bit tricky. So you have to be careful about the shape of your box. Sometimes you got into real strife. Like with the taller boxes that we made, I started to divide them up into smaller, smaller sub boxes. And in some of the boxes I put a whopping great bit of foam in the top and the bottom.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: So that we wouldn’t get these standing waves within the enclosure itself. Other boxes I used wool. wool was fairly readily available in those days There were huge stock pool, stockpiles of wool, which were being converted into home insulation would you believe. Yeah, and the wall was quite effective at damping resonances down. But it all boiled back to me anyway. I was in a very competitive sector of the market and that market demanded that I had to make a product at a particular price. And so you were constrained about the extent to which you would go
00:15:00
Ralph Waters: to you know, to get the product that you wanted. yeah, so there were limitations there.
Andrew Hutchison: But that’s the, that’s the smart end of the market in a way where you’re constrained by costs and availability of materials and you make the very best with a relatively simple design. I mean that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s where the smarts are at. I mean anyone can build a a fifty thousand dollar loudspeaker that sounds pretty good where it’s very, very hard to make a 1500 one that’s much chop. which, which clearly,
The wizard actually started out as uh, 599.99 for retail price
Well, I mean of course in your day the price points were as I remember them, something like, you know, probably 9.99 for your retail price.
Ralph Waters: The wizard actually started out as 599. No 499 speaker.
Andrew Hutchison: Is that right? Wow. Okay. I guess it.
Ralph Waters: By the time I reach out, they said, why is it so cheap?
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, why is it so cheap?
Ralph Waters: They did, they complained. They said it’s too cheap. I said, I don’t get it. I thought my job was to give you the best speaker I could at the cheapest possible price. Profits putting people off. Put it up a hundred, you’ll sell more speakers and we’ll make more money. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And guess what? That I did that. And put it up to 599. And it sold a lot more.
Andrew Hutchison: I thought the step perception. I thought the dealer’s response would have been ralph, these speakers are too cheap. We’ll put them up to 5.99 but keep charging us the same amount. But they actually chipped in and gave you a little more as well.
Ralph Waters: But yeah, so I also realize that. Oh look, no, no, I won’t get, I won’t get into the marketing. But
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, so you won’t get into the market.
Ralph Waters: I’m not even sure what the question is anyhow.
Andrew Hutchison: I think, I think. Well, the question was really. Well, I did ask about cabinet materials, but but and you’ve previously mentioned, you know, crossovers. You obviously use air core. Air core chokes as much as you could, I guess. And you were using reefer capacitors, is that right?
Ralph Waters: Yeah, that’s right. but with loudspeaker design, the finished product is more than the sum of the components. there are just very briefly, my design parameters were first of all, transient response. Already mentioned that. Second one was distortion. The third one was dispersion, the maximized dispersion. The fourth one was eternal characteristics.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And the last one was actually frequency response.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: that’s very interesting.
Ralph Waters: Frequency response. Well down the list. And the way I measured frequency response was very different from what most people did. so I had I ah, think a quite distinctive approach to the way I did it. I should say at this point that I learned in an enormous amount from Brad. his attention to detail was staggering and frustrating.
Andrew Hutchison: and annoying.
Ralph Waters: No, no, he was, he was very, very careful. I was a bit more avant garde, but Brad was very, quite meticulous. about the way he approached things. But, overall, the, the design process for me was focused, on things that were very important to me. And the most important thing for me was did it sound like music? And, that was the ultimate test. And, subset of that would be, vocal. I’m very, very strong on vocal. Did female voice particularly sound natural? And, but those were things which for me was always the last step. If I had a speaker that, didn’t sound natural in the vocal region, I would scrap it, start again. And I made a few dogs too, I should say. but I learned very quickly that if you make a dog, best thing to do is to shoot it.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Not bring out a Mark 2 version.
Brad Serhan: Right?
Ralph Waters: Yeah. Shoot the dog, bury it and forget it ever existed.
Andrew Hutchison: Bad dog.
Brad Serhan: yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So. What?
Ralph Waters: What.
One of the great delusions of the hi Fi industry is that they’re making music
Andrew Hutchison: So on that subject though, what. What was your. Do
00:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: you had a. Did you have a favorite child, so to speak? Not, that you should perhaps mention which one it is, but I’d love it if you did.
Ralph Waters: I never did like any of the speakers that I made.
Andrew Hutchison: Hang on, let me just.
Brad Serhan: He loved them like any, any child that you might not bear, but your own child. You don’t like them, but you love them. Maybe.
Andrew Hutchison: Maybe.
Ralph Waters: What do you mean by that, Ralph? I love them dearly, but I didn’t like them much.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, you heard it here first. And why is that? Because it was a commercial decision to make money and you would have built something else for your own listening or.
Ralph Waters: It was never about making money. It was never about making money for me. It was the fact that one of the great delusions of the hi Fi industry is that they’re actually making things which sound like music. Great.
Brad Serhan: Point.
Ralph Waters: I have never heard a speaker that sounded like music, with possible exception of one.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, one.
Ralph Waters: Well, it was a speaker that I can’t even remember the name of. It was, a guy from Launceston. yeah. They were not electrostatic. They were, electro. I forget what they used. it was, about seven foot tall. And they were using, ribbons. And, they were so exciting and so real. They, were really magnificent. And, I never heard what happened to them, but maybe raising stocks invested in them. I don’t know. but the fact is that there is no speaker that does justice to a piano or a human voice. we pretend. All we’re doing when we’re listening to a loudspeaker is that we’re creating an illusion. And when we listen to a loudspeaker we are allowing that illusion to govern, our perception.
Brad Serhan: Basically, you’re saying we’re sonic illusionists. That’s the trick. We’re tricking. We’re trying to trigger the memory of what we heard.
Ralph Waters: The main thing is that we’re trying to fool ourselves.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: if you go into a. Like, listen to a drum being played. Set of drums, and you listen to it on a loudspeaker, it’s a very, very, diminished, very, compromised, sound. Or if you listen to a brass band live, you know, or if you listen to anything, actually, it’s very hard to get a speaker that’s a good emulation of the real thing. So you’ve just got to accept the fact that there’s nothing that you will design that will ever fully satisfy.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Ralph Waters: And the people that believe that they’ve got the perfect speaker, I think, spend too much time listening to speakers instead of listening to music.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah, there’d be a bit of that, yeah.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Well, I suppose what you’re saying, m.
Ralph Waters: We shouldn’t let our love of speakers or high five, displace the obvious reality that these things were only ever created to emulate and mimic. Mimic is a better word. Mimic the real thing. Music. so you can become a lover of hi fi. But that’s idolatry to me. what we should all be is lovers of music.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: And on that note, we will have a quick break, and we’ll be right back.
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Brad Serhan: We can look at a ponder still. Like Monet did some great pond paintings with willow trees and you know, lilies and. But when you see them, see that particular painting at the, in the French gallery and see the light, natural light coming and hitting that those paintings and it just pops off the bloody canvas and you go shit, that looks good but it’s not real. So it, it’s more. We’re impressionists, that’s what we are.
Ralph Waters: Exactly right. We’re, we’re saying it’s great sound, it’s not real, but it’s great.
Brad Serhan: It’s a painting.
Ralph Waters: You’ve got to be honest with you.
Brad Serhan: It’s a sonic painting. Geez, I’m waking on. But it’s a sonic painting.
Ralph Waters: Amen. Yeah. Yep, yep.
Brad Serhan: I went Ralph, just because we’re not recording. I went into the Museum of D.C. as I like to say and in, in Paris and I saw.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m back recording again.
Brad Serhan: Oh, okay, you bastard. I’ll never forget going, but you can keep talking.
Andrew Hutchison: Keep going.
Brad Serhan: Anyway, okay, so I went into that particular gallery and saw a whole lot of impressionist Ralph up on the wall. Monet, Manet. Yeah, je de bur. And Yeah, whatever. And when I saw, saw them for the first time and saw the, the natural light that came into the room and the way it hit that, those brush strokes and the way the light dispersed was almost like on some of the Monets. The actual visual effect was that it went beyond the picture frame and it sort of popped. It was quite amazing. So. And I thought. And then, you know, other paintings didn’t quite do it. Other artists didn’t quite capture it for me. So it’s a subjective thing and, but it made me emote. I had an emotional response to those paintings, thinking, oh my God, that’s, that’s amazing. Obviously, if I saw that same pond at that time when he painted it, it’s a totally different thing. It’s not. It’s a sort of alteration or a, version of reality where it’s an impression. That’s why they call it impressionist, I suppose. It was amazing.
Andrew Hutchison: I think your analogy, Brad, is excellent because, poorly told, albeit, well, maybe. Maybe may m. Or maybe not. But I agree from the point of view that perhaps the best loudspeaker is just the one that is clearly the more emotional, creates a stronger emotion to listen to it. I mean, it’s. As Ralph, of course, rightly points out, you can’t get the sense of scale dynamics, the cleanliness, the maintain. The harmonic structure, all of those things. the attack, you know, it’s, it’s all, it’s, it’s all, it’s all much smaller and distorted compared with an original. But if you can do it in such a way that it’s, it doesn’t, you know, the, the failings. Don’t distract too much or, and just.
Ralph Waters: Look, I. I think that if, if you ever get to the point where you say, I’m happy with that speaker, you’re about to end your, your career as a speaker designer.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Wow. Well said.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah, I’ll amen to that too. and at some point my partner will be listening to this podcast and writing down who’s mentioned in it and so forth, and she’ll hear that and then she’ll understand why I keep fiddling with stuff. But, because, I mean, it really is. It’s a bit like panning for gold, I guess, or something, isn’t it? I mean, you really are looking for that. Well, you won’t find a nugget by panning, but you know what I mean, Digging for gold. I mean, you. You remain hopeful that you will find that giant nugget. I mean, is that.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Is that something that you tired of or something? Ralph? I mean, you, you’ve not. I mean, I don’t know whether you play with speakers much these days at all for your own amusement, but, I m. Mean, I know you wrote those series of articles some years ago, which are very informative for those. And we’ll have a link to those, on the website. But So
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Andrew Hutchison: you still obviously have a strong interest.
Well, I’ve taken up painting a couple of years ago
Ralph Waters: Well, I’ve taken up painting a couple of years ago.
Ralph Waters: And that is very interesting to me. very interested in impressionistic painting actually. So that’s, that’s been wonderful. That’s really opened up. I never thought I had a skerrick of artistic ability and actually quite like it. And I. Yeah, so that’s been interesting.
Andrew: Where did Ralph and Brad meet? Ralph: 1990
now the question was, where did Brad and I meet?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, it was at the start, an hour and a half ago.
Ralph Waters: I thought it was just a couple of minutes ago.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah. Time rush has passed.
Ralph Waters: Okay. I know it’s because I still can’t remember.
Andrew Hutchison: Bastard.
Brad Serhan: Jess. Well, while you’re not, or while you can’t remember Ralph, or in that. I do remember one thing though, that Andrew, I can’t remember exactly what year. Maybe it was 1990. Ralph, galvanized a few of the other manufacturers to join force with him, forces with him, to kickstart a thing called AUSFI, the Australian hi fi Manufacturers Guild. And Ralph, through his speakers, getting reviewed by a guy called David Frith in the pink guide for the Sydney Morning Herald. got to know David and then I think Ralph, didn’t you get David Frith to write a story about Ausfi, with a group of Aussie manufacturers working together to do hi fi shows, et cetera. I’ll let you fill it out. You probably better than me.
Ralph Waters: M. Yeah, I’m very acknowledged David Frith because he gave all of the Australian manufacturers a really good run for their money. He was a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald. And instead of scoffing and jeering, he actually supported us. and he supported what we were trying to do. Was a lovely fellow, David. I enjoyed his company immensely. and he really helped us extraordinarily, in those. In those early days. And he was also a great supporter of Ausfire. So it was good to get that kind of support because what happened was that people started flocking back to the hi Fi shops, inquiring about the brands, inquiring about AUSFI inquiring about taking an interest in Australian made product. And I, remember Len Wallis in the very early days, he said to me, a lovely guy then, he said to me, ralph, I will sell your speakers when people come into my store asking for your speakers. And true to his word, we were able to create enough interest around the topic that people started to flow into his store. And, Lyn was always a man of his word. He stopped my speakers from that, you know, from that time forward. But AUSFI helped us. we did quite a few shows, did a couple of shows at, Darling Harbour, and that gave us great exposure. The Osprey was a very important thing. I’ve got a bit of an anecdote about Auspire, if you’ve got time.
Brad Serhan: Sure, yes, please.
Ralph Waters: In the very, very early stages of AUSFI, I thought, well, who have we got? And the first thing, the first name that came to mind was, The Garrott brothers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, absolutely.
Ralph Waters: so I rang up the Garrott brothers and I said, look, could I please come up and talk to you about Osprey, what we’re trying to achieve, and so on and so forth. And so I went up there and I had probably one of the most interesting, if not disconcerting afternoons of my life. Yeah, it was a very, very strange, situation. I walked in there and, it was very, very clear that from the, from the moment I arrived that it didn’t matter who I, who I talked to in the room, that the older fellow, John, I think it was, answered every single question.
Ralph Waters: I’d ask a question of Brian and the two wives were there.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And all of the questions were answered from, John.
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Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And it was very, disconcerting. It was quite, quite strange. And it unnerved me. And all over the place with these little love notes. You know, darling, I love you. And then. Yes, I love you too. And then. And there were. The Garrott brothers were, I suppose, in their late 40s. And they had two Filipino brides. They were about early 30s, I guess. very early 30s. And they were strutting around in little tiny hot pants, very thin singlets. And over the course of the afternoon, I, couldn’t work out which woman belonged to which brother. Every time, every time I looked, it was a different wife sitting on another person’s knee.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And anyway, at the end of the afternoon, I got virtually nothing from anyone except the eldest brother. And I thought, this is a very. I, felt a bit creepy, actually, the whole thing. and I walked out of there and of course, John’s final words to me was, I’m, very happy to join AUSFI on one condition. I said, great. What’s that? He said, I will be the head of AUSFI
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, wow. Okay.
Ralph Waters: Yeah. And I thought, wow, what have we, what have we bought into here? Well, it was rather sad because not long after, a couple of years later, I think it was, they were found and the whole four of them had committed suicide. Indeed, John was ill. not permanently. He just had a faulty, heart valve and could have easily been rectified with surgery. But, what happened was that they made a pact.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: And they all lay down on the one bed together and they all committed suicide. Well, yeah, a dual suicide is very, very rare. And a quad suicide is almost unheard of. And the coroner, investigating it, interviewed their doctor and the doctor down at Pica said it was very strange. He said, because if I asked John a question, if I asked John a question, he would not answer it unless he conferred with, his brother and the other two wives. And she said, I felt like I was talking to one organism.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Jesus.
Ralph Waters: Wow. That’s exactly the impression I had of the time with the Garrott brothers. That there was, I was talking to one person. It’s as if they had all coalesced, and enmeshed into one, personality. And I realized once the Garrott brothers, were all found dead with their wives, what I’d really walked into was a cult.
Ralph says the Garrott brothers were inextricably linked
Brad Serhan: I was just about to say that, Ralph. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s an insight into how cults work, I guess, is that they all become like you say, one organism. There’s a, I mean, that’s the unnerving and odd thing about it, other than what they ultimately did, which was a story that I was aware of.
Brad Serhan: Jones Town.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, that’s right, yeah. It was like a mini version. It’s, it’s. No one, no one talks about it.
Brad Serhan: In a way it reminds me of the old sci fi thing from Star Trek, the Borg, where all the organisms are sort of, linked in a way. But I’m not, I’m not taking the piss in that sense. It sounds as you said, Ralph, they were, they were inextricably linked as one, almost one personality. That’s, that’s, it’s sad and amazing.
Ralph Waters: yeah, yeah, it is. It was. And it was, I’ve still got my Garrott cartridges, by the way. I, got a P77 and a P66 cartridge sitting here.
Ralph Waters: but it was, it was sad, ah, tragic. and for me it was very unnerving because, And you know what? The hi Fi industry, I found intensely interesting for the fact that the vast number of, vast majority of the people involved in the Industry were quirky, were peculiar, were esoteric, were, extremely individualistic, were colorful, were in many occasions utterly bizarre.
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Andrew Hutchison: When did you say were? You’re implying that this has changed?
Ralph Waters: Well, I don’t know if it’s changed, but I sure know this, that I had more. I used to. Oh, yeah, I used to walk in some pretty interesting circles in those days. Artists and sculptors and so forth. But I think that compared to them, the hi fi mob, eclipsed.
Andrew Hutchison: Eclipse.
Ralph Waters: You know, we’ve. We’ve talked about Vezy stocks, we’ve talked about the Garrott brothers. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I can assure you it gets worse. And then there’s Ralph, Waters and Brad
Andrew Hutchison: Now we’re talking.
Ralph Waters: Oh dear.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, the, It’s funny. Not funny in the slightest, Ralph, but it’s very interesting that you had a personal experience with the Garrott brothers, because, as much as I knew the tale, I had no in. And there was the word cult thrown around, but I don’t know whether that was an official thing. But certainly you, you experienced it firsthand. I’m not sure a hell of a lot of people did because I feel like, because they were, you know, involved with cartridges that they were like mailing them in and out. I’m not sure that anyone went there much. Is that, is that your thought? Because I’ve never heard or never spoken to anyone who’d met them until now.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, One of the girls, mothers at the inquest said that she felt that her daughter had been programmed. Programmed to basically satisfy whatever it was that her husband wanted of her.
Ralph Waters: And that’s what I felt like. I felt like I was walking into three automatons, and one talking head. That’s what it felt like.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah, well, that’s, that’s a great insight into what is a horrid story really. But But I mean, you obviously walked away from there that day. And sometimes humans have. I mean, I know I’ve had things like that where I’ve walked away from someone and thought, well, I’ll never. I’ll never speak to them again because I feel like they, you know, they’re an older person and they reach the end of their life or something like that. I mean, I just feel like I’m not going to see them again. That’s happened a few times and I don’t know why. And I guess it’s. In this case, it was an obvious. I mean, you. You felt something because it was, it was quite Obvious, I mean, that things were not normal. when you drove away that day, other than thinking, wow, that was weird and disturbing. Did you have any other thoughts? I mean, you didn’t think for a second, I guess, that they were in within a year or two going to, do what they did?
Ralph Waters: Well, I’m glad they didn’t come on board because I think they would have been, problematic and. But they made it very clear that they had a disdain for, Well, everyone actually.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, I can.
Hi Fi Shop threatened to sue the Sydney Opera House over logo controversy
Do you remember the pyramid? Sorry to interrupt, but Pyramid had a high pyramid. Hi Fi Shop had a sort of a big audio weekend. Or was it an evening, Ralph? at the RSL in Burwood and the Garrott brothers were there, were all, all set up, demonstrating various gear. I, I think it was under an AUSFI banner as well. Do you remember them being there at that particular event? Because I can remember the girls running around with South Sydney football jerseys on and And. But they, they didn’t really engage with anyone. But by golly, their products were good.
Ralph Waters: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, their products were great. So that’s an example of the wonderful zany world of hi Fi.
Andrew Hutchison: Zany.
Ralph Waters: Madcap. Mad Cap. It was mayhem. It was wonderful. It was fantastic. It was a story that you would never have thought of writing yourself because it was mostly unimaginable. yeah, yeah, it was, it was terrific. And Brad, for me anyway, he was, he was the very best of what High Fly offered love, of music, intelligent and made a wonderful, wonderful product. And yeah, they were. Thanks, Ralphie. They were healthy in days for m. Me in many respects.
Brad Serhan: But they were really enjoyable,
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Brad Serhan: Ralph. And But what, out of that sort of laughter and adversity, I think that helped us, forge. Get stuck into speaker design and that was part of the enjoyment to be able to sort of do these shows and you kick starting AUSFI was a huge thing. it did help us establish ourselves with the likes of, as you said, Len Wallis and. And then what’s audio? So you were the one that kick started AUSFI and that all helped. Yeah, you were the icebreaker, if you like.
Ralph Waters: Yeah. actually his, wife Tina designed the banner and
Brad Serhan: Oh, Peter’s wife did that. I forgot that.
Ralph Waters: Wow. Who did the logo? Who did the logo? Who did the logo?
Brad Serhan: I can’t. Was.
Ralph Waters: Yeah. Tina. Tina.
Brad Serhan: Tina. There you go. And it was the sort of the sales of the Opera House, wasn’t it? We had to be. We had to get Permission from this. The Sydney Opera House, didn’t we. There’s a bit of.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, well, the Opera House threatened to sue us, because we used, a logo of the Opera House. But, we. We simply ignored that and they went away.
Brad Serhan: Because the Opera House logo looked like sails, didn’t they, Ralph? So we just sailed through it, didn’t we?
Ralph Waters: the fact is that I think that in life, if you ignore things long enough, they tend to go away. So,
Brad Serhan: So I was Fancy trying to sue the very thing that’s tried, you know, anyway. Oh, dear.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, it’s trying to promote you.
Brad Serhan: Anyway, so the important thing is that you made that. That was. Well, I felt. I always felt that you sort of. By forging the AUSFI connection, it sort of got sort of a band of audio brothers, sisters and audio definition with Glenn and Leah. they came on board, Ron Cooper, the marvellous Ron Cooper firm. what was his audience? What was his brand? Ralph, the right. Good old Ronnie Cooper joined us, from Cool Cool in Northern Beaches of Sydney. some real characters. but it did help us establish the sort of, Australian. Australian audio is worth listening to.
Ralph Waters: Yeah, it was, It gave us confidence, it gave us an identity, it gave us a, marketing power, and it was. It served its purpose. Well, I think at the time.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, indeed.
Andrew Hutchison: And I guess, I just.
You clearly sold the business. I mean, you’ve already stated that you left
To wrap up today, Ralph, at some point, you. You clearly sold the business. do you wish to elaborate how that came about or you just. You. I mean, you’ve already stated that you left. You resigned from your excellent position with a free car and then not being quite sure what you were going to do next, and ended up obviously creating, founding Richter Acoustics. But when it came time to go, was it just like, nah, I’ve had enough of this. Or what were your thoughts?
Ralph Waters: Well, it was, not a happy time in my life, because, my marriage fell apart.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh. Okay.
Ralph Waters: And, I was forced to sell Richter. Yeah, I was forced to sell Richter as a consequence of that.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Ralph Waters: And, Yeah, so it wasn’t, if you like, a. A happy ending. It was a, A matter of necessity.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’m glad I brought that up. Sorry about that, Ralph. That’s, So, I mean, a second.
Ralph Waters: I’m just reaching for the tissue box over here.
Brad Serhan: I’m sending you stomach.
Ralph Waters: Does Andrew always like to make people cry? Is that his.
Andrew Hutchison: I have a skill.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I have a skill. No, I’m sorry, Ralph, I had no idea. the Thing is that I was going to say Brad. The, the brand of course has changed owners a number of times and it’s. It’s It seems that it’s. It’s actually, you know, it’s. It’s travelled along very nicely. It’s. It’s had a. It’s had a great history and continues to be a. Yeah, of course it’s the same force that it is that it was when you started in the sense that it was a marvellous value for money. Loudspeaker at an affordable price point. And it remains that. But do you. I mean you could, you could buy it back, you know, maybe it’s for sale sometime
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Andrew Hutchison: in the future.
Ralph Waters: No, no, no, no, no, no. It was. Look, I had a. About a 15 year period from probably I was intensely involved for about 20 years from about 1974 through to about. Yeah, for 20 years. That’s a good. And in the year 2000 I left it all behind and I started a new phase of my life. And this phase of my life is very different and very satisfying and I’m extremely happy with that. It was a great chapter. It was a great chapter. But I have absolutely no desire to revisit it.
Andrew Hutchison: Good plan.
Andrew: Ralph was innovative. I love these approach. So you’re definitely innovative, Ralph
Brad Serhan: And just quickly Andrew, I have to throw in a couple of things because I just have to. I don’t know what, just memories of Ralph going down for the what we used to call the design days or basically R and D just throwing stuff together and learning. And Ralph was innovative. I love these approach. The fact, let’s have a look at this particular base driver and we’d be putting different types of doping compound on or putting little globs of blue tack in certain parts of the driver, to determine what was happening with breakup modes in the driver cone m and measuring it and listening to it. So in that sense he was inventive, creative and also listening to the speakers raw, with filters and it was a lot of fun but also learning as well. So you’re definitely innovative, Ralph. the piss in your pocket politely. and I hope the warm feeling.
Ralph Waters: What’s that warm wet feeling?
Brad Serhan: That’s what will you deserve it. You deserve all that warmth. But no, seriously, what I’m trying to say Andrew is that he made a huge difference for me because we could collaborate. Although we were slightly in competition but didn’t matter really. We just sort of celebrated if we both managed to get a hi fi shop and get some sales. and we, we managed to forged. Forge a Bit of a market for ourselves with the various shops. Take us on and you know, we, you know that first I remember the twin six. You probably. I think you’re right, Ralph. There weren’t many. I don’t remember any twin six, floor standards being around at the time. So I dutifully copied or mimicked M that a few years later as well. So. Thanks Ralph. So.
Ralph Waters: Well, that’s good as far as I’m concerned that when I saw it I thought, oh that’s great because it lends credibility to my design. it means that we’ve now consolidated that particular configuration as a legitimate design. So it was all good. the way Brad did things was very different from me. And we were quite distinctive in the way we approached things. It was never a matter of. For me it was never a matter of competing. It was always a matter of Well ultimately it was all about music for me for sure.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Yeah, agreed.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, as it kind of should be.
Ralph Waters says his next stage of life was to become a farmer
Hey, on that note, I think Ralph, you’ve given us a magnificent wrap up of your thoughts on both design and life. And some great tales of how it was. and just for clarification I believe the life that your next stage of life was to become a farmer of some description. And I’m not actually sure what kind, but I know cows are involved. So I mean just for completion, do you, do you wish to elaborate on what kind of farming you. If that’s in fact what you’re doing.
Ralph Waters: Okay. Well what I decided was that When we came up here, my wife and I, Joe. been married for nearly 30 years. Brad. How about that?
Brad Serhan: My God.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Ralph Waters: What happened? we both very, very interested in Self sustained living.
Ralph Waters: So we have very interested in growing fruit, and veggies. we’ve always had two milking cows here but for a variety of reasons we recently sold them. We have sheep, we have sheep for the table. We have quite a lot of chooks and eggs. We’ve got a great little grape, citrus orchard. We’ve got fruit trees of one kind or another.
00:55:00
Ralph Waters: Then we’ve got grapevines and we’ve got fig trees and we’ve got We’re not completely self sufficient but we are fairly self sufficient and we have, we’re self sufficient on power. Thank you. we’ve got both on grid and off grid systems here. so yeah, it’s a different project and it’s a different, lifestyle. And, we do a huge amount of entertaining. I’ve never been so busy in my life. Get, non stop visitors. And we have a. An extremely social life. it’s. It’s very. It’s very rewarding. And I love the life up here. I just. I’m so glad I came up here. Wonderful.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, that’s great to hear. Yeah, it’s. It sounds fantastic. And I’m glad you’re enjoying life. And look, I really thank you again, as I know Brad does, for taking your time out of your day, to, enthrall us really, with, the history, of yourself and the brand. And so, thanks. Thank you again. I really, really appreciate it. Ralph Waters. And of course, it’s been very enjoyable to,
Ralph Waters: Yeah. To have a bit of a chat. And, There’s only one downside to this conversation. Ah. For me. And that is I think I’ll be tormented to the day that I die on not being able to remember when I met Brad.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t think you will.
Brad Serhan: At last, I’ve. At last you’re tormented. That’s what I’m happy about. And, not fermented, hopefully.
Ralph Waters: So.
Brad Serhan: My fat. Thanks for that, Ralph. Really appreciate you, coming on board.
Ralph Waters: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: Thanks, Ralph.
Brad Serhan: Thanks, Joy.
00:56:53