Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring episodes with VAF Research Founder, Philip Vafiadis and Product Developer, Nick Ataliotis. Australian designed, engineered and manufactured since 1978. Uncommon design philosophies create a big noise in HiFi. Past, present and future of VAF Research.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 032
TRANSCRIPT
S2 EP032 In HiFi, uncommon design principles leads to uncommon sound. 47 years of VAF Research.
Episode 32 of Not An Audiophile season two features loudspeaker designers
Philip Vafiadis: And then I was, I was 17 later, part of 17. And and the first speakers that went into a retail business was that. That year.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. And we’re back, episode 32 of Not An Audiophile season two. Today we speak to loudspeaker designers. I know, frustrating. We’re going to head off in a different direction in the coming episodes with all sorts of different people. Oh, and some more loudspeaker designers. today, of course, as per the outtake at the start, we speak to Philip Vafiadis who explains to us all how to start a loudspeaker business in 1978 as a child and then have it still running today. And then to dovetail that, ah, Nick, the new loudspeaker designer at vaf, research, tells us what he’s been getting up to to improve the the breed, so to speak. Now I would normally say without any further ado, but in fact we’re adding a new segment at the top of the show where I get to sprout on about things that bug me. So that’s up next. Are you craving incredible sound? I think we all are. Well, those listening to this podcast. For over 47 years, Len Wallis Audio has been guiding hi fi enthusiasts on their audio journey. They’re not some corporate machine, just a tight knit crew of audiophiles and entertainment lovers obsessed with great sound. From precision turntable, immersive home theater systems, they hand pick gear that delivers. Stop by the store in Lane Cove, Sydney, Australia or visit lenwallisaudio.com Len Wallis Audio where your passion finds its sound.
Some people now want to go to hi fi shows and not listen to equipment
So, a new segment in the podcast today, really it’s just me talking about something that I’ve heard, seen or read about in the last, I guess, 14 days. And in this particular case it’s someone else’s podcast. John, Darko, interviewing his, not interviewing but with his friend Six Moons reviewer, They now want to go to hi fi shows and not listen to equipment
Srajan Ebaen.. We’re not listening. If you get, if you can invent a hi fi show that doesn’t have music, we’re in. We have two distinct types of show. One that’s pure B2B and one that’s purely to consumers and not have one show try to serve both audiences with their disparate needs.
John Darko But if it’s B2B and they’re still listening, I’m still out. Because it’s not really B2B, is it? It really needs to be. Get rid of the listening. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: B2B means to me that people that no longer have consumer needs, their needs are to do business. yeah, I don’t know. Have you given up at that point where you, you no longer want to listen to hi Fi? Because I’m in the hi fi business. You know, it’s a business to business show. B2B show. But I don’t want to listen to the stuff. This is the most bizarre, oddball thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, 99% of the people I know that are in the hi fi business are in it because they love listening to music. And yeah, a show is not the ideal place to listen to equipment, duh. But, it’s still useful and interesting. And as is also mentioned in the same episode, and quite correctly, the two guys, John and srajan, state, that, comparing Dacs or something like that, of course, is clearly ridiculous at a show, which it is. So I don’t completely disagree with what they’re saying, but I do, I do wonder how worn out they both are, and maybe should be looking for new jobs, if they just want to. If they don’t want to go to a hi fi show and listen to music. So, you know, I thought I’d report on that. You guys have already heard it anyhow, probably. It’s a very popular podcast. It’s slightly more popular than ours. but, and look, always a great listen. They’re very interesting guys, highly experienced, but perhaps worn out. So of course, I would like to know, we would all like to know what you think. You can leave comments about any of our podcasts on the, YouTube channel, not an audiophile podcast. You leave comments there for the particular video. and when I say video, of course it’s a video with a still frame. And, and, but the audio is playing. You can listen to it there. You can listen to it on your favorite podcasting app, such as, you know, Spotify or, or a, podcast app on the Apple iPhone, et cetera. But, that’s where you can leave some comments. I’d love to know. So what hi fi shows without music, that would be better? Or should we continue on the way we are, where we actually turn on and listen to some music through the equipment? Because that’s what it’s designed to do. Oh, and speaking of hi fi shows, a local one, Stereonet hi Fi show, the Home Entertainment Expo, I believe it’s called, Pullman Hotel, end of August 29th through to the 31st this year will be there reporting and you should probably go and have a look. An amazing amount of exhibitors. Very impressive. Stereonet.com
00:05:00
Andrew Hutchison welcomes Phil Vafiadis to Stereonet podcast
so here today we’ve got Phil, Vafiadis on the line from Adelaide, the hot centre of Australia. And and Brad, Serhan assisting with probing questions. I’m Andrew Hutchison. This is not aan audiophile. Hey Phil, thanks for your time today and joining us on this podcast.
Philip Vafiadis: Oh, it’s wonderful, thank you.
Andrew Hutchison: Wonderful. Well that’s, that’s good to hear. I’m sure you’ve probably got better things to do, but we really appreciate, appreciate your time.
Did VAF start out as a loudspeaker business or did it meld into
interested to hear some of the, the VAF story and how it got started and, and perhaps why, I mean clearly you, you saw a hole in the market or something. Is that. And did VAF start out as a loudspeaker business or did it kind of meld into it from something else?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, no, it was about speakers. Right from day one.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: oddly enough, oddly enough I wasn’t setting up a, building a company. I was I was making a kit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Okay. and I bought the parts and built it up. And it turned out that it wasn’t quite as good as they said it was. So I was. I’m a little kid. I spent 600 and something dollars because I was I had a job, doing milk deliveries at about 4:30am in the mornings. I didn’t. This is, this is before we were able to drive. Right. I’m a teenager at that time.
Andrew Hutchison: So what are you, how are you delivering the mil, on your push bike?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, no, we had the van and
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, you’re the runner, so to speak.
Philip Vafiadis: I’d be one of the runners, yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: Yep. And so the old days, we don’t have that now, but way back.
Andrew Hutchison: It is going back. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah. And so I got a bit of money and the first thing I bought myself was a Hewlett Packard calculator which seemed like a science fiction thing way back then.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I bet it did.
Philip Vafiadis: And. Yep. And the second thing was the speaker. I wanted us to make a speaker. So, one of the electronics magazines, had a makeup of it and I did that. I bought the parts, I bought some special plywoods and things to make the cabinets. and I had access to a fairly sophisticated lab so I could get very good accuracy on the winding of the Inductors and all of that. And after I put it all together and stuff and the people that put that together said that the inductors will be perfect. Less than 1%. If you follow it up this way, they were 20, but they were 20% off.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: And I’m a kid, I spent 600 bucks back in the 1970s. Yeah. And I’m going, no, that’s not right.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, you know the weird thing always with looking back at these things is that even just to measure inductance, how are you doing doing that? Or you weren’t. You, you had someone else measuring them and telling you they were 20 out. Is that, is that right?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, my brother had was working with What was it called before, before our ah, current, telecom. Telecom. That’s what it was called.
Andrew Hutchison: Pmg.
Philip Vafiadis: Prior to that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And, and we had the access to. Oh, my brother had access to the lab.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Wow. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And he had, yeah. And he had put. He had permission to use those. So. So we actually had access to ridiculous amounts of technology.
Andrew Hutchison: He certainly did. Yes. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Yes. Okay. And so that’s, that’s how we could measure what we made.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Right here.
Phillips three way speaker from 1974 was a disaster
Okay. And so what do you want to say what the kit was or do you remember what it was? I mean at this stage I guess they’re not going to be too litigious. It was it was 40, 50 years ago. So What, do you remember what it was or what. Or at least what the. What the speaker design. The gist of it was like a two way, six and a half or something. Or what?
Philip Vafiadis: the three. A three way, three way, driver, three way speaker.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: 12 inch woofer, a four inch diameter, mid range.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: A. A pretty basic tweeter.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And and they were Phillips parts, but it wasn’t Phillips that did dip.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I was going to say.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: A disaster. Some would say the Phillips three way of 1974. Phil.
Philip Vafiadis: Or look, it was a long time ago and it wasn’t really the It wasn’t really the thing about audio. It was about the fact that I felt cheated.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: That was the, that was the trigger for wanting to do other, things.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, 600 was a deposit on a house. So I mean seriously, it almost was, wasn’t it? I. Sorry, deposit on a car. I mean it, it. It’s a significant amount of money and so it was not the way the advertising had portrayed it. At all as far as the performance you received.
Philip Vafiadis: That’s exactly right. Yep. Yeah. And then. Then I started thinking about making, Speakers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And I did that. I had a friend that was Was helping out. And And We were looking at how to build crossovers.
00:10:00
Philip Vafiadis: Okay. We do filters and all of that. And then. And then even that seemed difficult because all of the books that we’re talking about, crossovers, Or frankly they were wrong. And.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: You know, how do you. How do you. How can you have a. A perfect, 12, you know, different kinds of rollouts? You know, is it first, second, third, whatever.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And And that’s what we were told. But then I knew that these. The. The drivers had different impedance, at different frequencies. So I thought, well, obviously the math doesn’t work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And And that’s when we started diving in about time domain. And We were right at the beginning of time domain stuff. And And I won’t say we’re the first, but we might have been the first. And there was another Australian, company that was doing something at about the same time.
Andrew Hutchison: And funnily enough, in the same state as I remember it.
Philip Vafiadis: That’s correct. Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: So, Yeah, we. We don’t know who was first, although we suspect. Well, we won’t say. But We’ll give them.
Philip Vafiadis: Give it. Let’s just have a bit of a fire. Sure. I’m gonna.
I’m gonna give you. I’m giving you a little bit of history. Far away. Interested to hear you look at the Duntech speakers. It was John Tun. Levy that That was doing that other stuff. And And John had been mucking about with putting felt on the front. And And I was doing that as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And. And his. One of his staff said, philip, you’ve got to stop doing that because, we’ve got a patent on that. And I said, what was the patent? And And he went, here it is. And I looked at it and said, yeah, you’ve got this. But. But I actually sold the first commercial speaker using that two weeks before the patent was lodged.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah, I thought that was. I thought that was cool.
Andrew Hutchison: And actually I don’t know enough about patent law to know. So I guess really the patent should have. Should not have gone ahead. Is that right? Because it was a product. Product already in the market. Was that, that. Is that the. Is that how that works?
Philip Vafiadis: It was an American. Yeah, There was an American speaker company that was quite famous at the time and they were, I won’t, I don’t want to get too many people involved. The bottom line is, they were pushed to say you can’t use that. And they, they agreed to not do it. Yeah, but I didn’t, I didn’t try to beat my chest. And they said that he’s passed away, so this is a long time ago, so there’s no, there’s no negativity to this conversation right now. And and, and I told his staff that, Look, I, I won’t share it out. But, but. And they said, yeah, okay, good. Just please don’t tell too many people. That was pretty much it until. Yeah, yeah. Rather than battling on yes, today is a piece of history. Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: the AES had articles and I think there was a bit of research. There was a research paper on using felt as well, back in the 70s, coincidentally as well, maybe. Yeah. And different kinds of felts. Yeah, different kinds of felts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
VAF Research developed innovative speakers for large venues
So. So ended up amicably, so to speak. Well, I’m not sure about amicably, but there was no, there was no, process of being aggressive.
Andrew Hutchison: No, there was an understanding, I mean, that you. I guess in some ways the understanding was that they, they knew that you had had something on them, I suppose. And so it just, I mean the reality was, I guess it was, it was, it was you and them. And And you know, it wasn’t like, BMW had decided to, to do it, so to speak, you know, or someone selling 50, 000 pairs of speakers a year as well. I don’t know that vaf didn’t sell 50, 000 pairs of speakers a year. So I should retract that statement. But, And I should also say that we are talking about vaf. So, I mean the, so the company you started, was it, Was it VAF something something, or was it just called vaf?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, it’s still registered as VAF Research. I wanted it to be a. I wanted it to be a research company. And that’s what I did. we did. We, we used to make a lot of things. We did the work for, We’ve made products for other brands. We, we, We did some amazing things for, things that were in say, large venues. So the Adelaide Festival center was, We put 400 speakers in there. That wasn’t about the noise, it was about actually Optimizing the the. The purity of sound in everyone’s seat. And We weren’t the only one. Sorry. We were. There was one company in the world doing that, but they chose us to do that with them. And And then we did that in New York in one of the largest. The largest church in New York because they had a huge organ and they were getting down into. I think it was 12, deep. It was way down at very low frequencies. And. And the same thing, we were getting it down to well under a single. It was almost flat. Absolutely flat.
Andrew Hutchison: So you just.
Philip Vafiadis: So it was nothing. Yeah, we did some
00:15:00
Philip Vafiadis: interesting things.
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely.
March Audio designed a multi-speaker room for a conference
So that, that whole multi speaker thing. So was that a seat, sorry, a chair in everyone’s seat kind of thing? What was. Tell us a little bit about the design of that. What, Because I’m. Maybe I’m thinking of something else. But when you say there were four.
Philip Vafiadis: We had to put. It was about 400, I think it started at 300 and something. And then they added another. I can’t quite remember 15 or 20 or something like that. So I think we nudged just over 400.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And we started with 380 something I think.
Andrew Hutchison: speakers.
Philip Vafiadis: And basically, Basically we looked at They looked at. Because it was an American company that did the work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And what they were doing was they were
Philip Vafiadis: Optimizing. what you hear is not just the direct sound from the speakers. You also hear the reflections from the rooms. And it’s a big room. Anything under about 2 milliseconds, our brain doesn’t know what to do. It, it blends the sound together with the The direct sound.
Andrew Hutchison: Sure.
Philip Vafiadis: if it’s, if it’s, if it’s beyond 2 milliseconds, then our brain goes. I figured that out. Yeah. So all of us, any, any audio guy knows that there are some rooms that sound fantastic and other rooms that sound crap. And And a lot of that is Is getting the time domain sorted, which very few people do it well. And m. The reflection, of the sound around the room at different frequencies as well. Sounds complicated, but it actually isn’t that complicated. It’s just difficult to understand.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah. I think acoustics, full stop is Well, there’s an expression that starts with the word head and finishes with a different word. So you’d say it’s easy, but is that because you’ve tackled some difficult jobs and you’ve, you’ve Gained an understanding and a comfort with solving the problems. Because I’m not sure that most people would say that acoustics is easy. So you’re finding it easy. But this, the, the 300 odd, 400 speakers, where were they placed? What, how did that work? March Audio state of the art. Purify audio amplifiers and loudspeakers. A pure pleasure to listen to. A sense of pride to own. March Audio. Excellence in audio.
Philip Vafiadis: The walls and the ceiling of the, of the center.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Radio. And you did.
Philip Vafiadis: And they were positioned fairly carefully with regards to the position of every seat. So even though they were a long distance from the people, they wanted to standardise that each of those had an input. that was a different input.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And we also had to, we also had to have the, the crossovers in a particular way so that we could get the Again, it was a time domain issue. It wasn’t not just a flat, a flat lined kind of thing.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, no, you haven’t got 400 speakers connected up in series parallel. You’ve clearly got them delayed, I guess.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah. That one source each. Each speaker had a source?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Wow. Okay, so. So they’re all active effectively. Is that what you say?
Philip Vafiadis: They all had, they all had input, individually.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Philip Vafiadis: Okay. That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that’s a hell of a complex arrangement. isn’t it? I mean so some smart cookies work.
Philip Vafiadis: But when the end is fun.
Andrew Hutchison: You.
Philip Vafiadis: Know, the industry is kind of.
There’s a lot of people that love the industry and you know, I
There’s a lot of people that love the industry and you know, I know you guys love the industry so. And I know there’s quite a few people around the world that love the industry. And yes, there’s businesses as well, which is, you know, you’ve got to make money to cut to staff. The staff. But if you don’t want to, if you’re not fun, if you’re not doing fun. I don’t understand. I picked on the whole industry.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Philip Vafiadis: Because the high end, the high end audio stuff is. It’s a small industry. I think, I think it was in seven figures. It wasn’t you know, it wasn’t like you know, Sony putting in you know, hundreds of millions and so. No, so you know, we were, we were doing okay. But but it was because of the fun we would do. I just couldn’t not do it.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, I mean. And when you say fun, you mean to some degree just the, the challenge of designing this thing and getting it to sort of facilitating and Getting it to work. That’s that.
Philip Vafiadis: Curiosity.
Andrew Hutchison: Curiosity.
Philip Vafiadis: Curiosity.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah.
You started making speakers when you were 15 years old
Andrew Hutchison: So this was almost in your 20s, was it or early 30s that you pulled this off?
Philip Vafiadis: I was born in 1960. And and the company. I started making speakers when I was 15 years old. I did not know that I needed to be a company. And so I didn’t bother because I didn’t know I had to. Then I was told that I need to set up a business. And that was January 78.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: And then I was. I was 17. The late later part of 17.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: And, And, the first speakers that went into a retail business was that. That year.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Philip Vafiadis: M. And
00:20:00
Philip Vafiadis: And I was making speakers, to a, a retailer that was well respected and the boss said, these are the best, the best. What was this? Exact words? the thing is that it was about the price and the performance and I didn’t realize that I should have charged more because I was very young.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah, yeah. You were working at building them for $2 an hour, obviously. So. Yeah. Value for money was very high. But obviously they performed well. Otherwise there’d be no point them being cheap. You still can’t. You can. You can’t sell a ch. Poor sounding speaker, mainly because there’s too many good, Cheap, good sounding speakers. But, So that’s. That’s mightily impressive.
Philip Vafiadis: It’s actually d. Use the word. I think I’ve heard the word phenomenal use for a while. Not in my.
Andrew Hutchison: And from the 17, 18 years of age and obviously building speakers. I guess the cabinets were being built in the back shed or what was happening there.
Philip Vafiadis: started off in a shed, that my brother was building a boat in.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And it was going to be sailing all around the world, like all boats being built. Yep. And of course my brother is, a very technically minded person because the design of the boat was designed, by himself.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: To be able to. To be able to be ice. In. Into the, Into this, you know, in the southern part of the world. Wow.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: And for two years. And it could have the body heat of two people, with a 20. With a 20 degree, temperature differential. And and it could never tip over and and a whole bunch of things.
Andrew Hutchison: so you.
Philip Vafiadis: I was the slave. Me and my other brother were the slave labor.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay. So, so he was. Was he a, I mean, clearly he was a boat builder, but he didn’t start off as a boat builder. He Just had an idea. Is that. Is that. So this, this stuff run.
Philip Vafiadis: Obviously, it’s our dad that was the one that helped, us dad was. Dad was a, ah, very high level, defense guy. And And we didn’t know that until we were much older. he didn’t tell us about that.
Andrew Hutchison: The plot thickens.
Philip Vafiadis: and But he taught us a lot.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, clearly, we’re building.
Philip Vafiadis: We’re building. We’re building an edm. You know what an EDM machine is? You know, how do you cut, really hard metals? And And we made an EDM machine. And we didn’t have, We didn’t have huge capacitors because they would have cost a fortune back then. We just put lots a thousand, thousand volt m. light bulbs. And And we’re making, cutting through, some of the strongest, metal in the world with tiny, tiny little bits of very fine wire. And
Andrew Hutchison: Right.
Philip Vafiadis: So we could actually make things that normally,
Your father taught you how to make things back during the Cold War
Those machines would have been impossibly expensive. He taught us how to make things. Okay, that’s kind of, That’s the family I didn’t understand. We traveled a lot. He was a pilot. We traveled a lot. And so we didn’t end up having. I didn’t have a lot of friends because every year we were moving.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And, And But we learned how to make things. I just assumed everybody makes things. You know, when. When the family cars needed to be repaired, we didn’t take it anywhere. We just.
Andrew Hutchison: We just fixed it. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And, my mother. My mother didn’t complain when I put, a fiberglass sheet on the dining table because I was making some flexible parts. Put a piece of plastic down.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, you actually laid it up on the dining room table. You got the resin out. Crikey. Yeah. All right. This house smells of resin for some reason.
Philip Vafiadis: Oh, and, ah, in that bedroom, my two brothers and me, we had a. We had a metal lathe in the bedroom.
Andrew Hutchison: This is just getting better and better.
Philip Vafiadis: okay. Didn’t you. You did clean up after you saw. Oh, we’re careful. But I gotta say, I really enjoyed that we could actually make things. Yeah, it was good fun. I think your. Now, we’ve spoken before, but your dad dove. did he fly Spitfires? Was that back in the day? May I ask that question? Well, I’ve asked the questions though. Back at the beginning of the Cold War, this is something that I don’t talk too much publicly. I don’t think I’ve ever talked publicly about this, but Dad’s passed away a bit of a decade ago. but he was at the beginning of the Cold War and And And he was teaching the Brits how to fly properly at low level. And And even though they thought knew how to play how they fly, they didn’t know how to fly low. And he’s the guy that taught them how to do that. And And they used to have these ridiculously large cameras for 3D imaging back in the 50s, which is something that nobody understood back then. And he became a. He was the highest ranking Air Force officer. He was a guy that government he talked to, not the other people underneath him. And he became a bit of a hero. So that’s kind of nice. And that’s And that’s why he understood how to,
00:25:00
Philip Vafiadis: how to organize things, how to do things that are very difficult. How to help us. He was designing a a trimaran.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Philip Vafiadis: And And he asked me to model up the This is. I was 10 years old or something and he was asking me how to. He wanted me to draw the ah, the structure of it. And I said but I don’t know how to do it. He said well it’s just. Here are the formulas. Just do that, don’t worry about anything else. In other words, he was teaching us to do one thing at a time. And And And that’s kind of interesting.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s very interesting.
Philip Vafiadis: yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: When you said he’s teaching you how to do things, I was thinking things like what, how to winch a lathe into a bedroom through the window.
Nick Italiotis: Or something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: How big a lathe?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, I think we had to put it there because the garage was full.
Andrew Hutchison: Sorry boys. I’m just turning your room into a metal turning space. Oh, that’s great.
And so ah, the the Antarctic exploration spec yacht that your brother was. I assume it was a yacht, as in it had sails. He did that, that that got launched at some point. I take it.
Philip Vafiadis: It did. It got, it got launched and was in the water. And I hate to say this and I’m going to embarrass my, my brother but but he, he found a girl.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And wanted to get married and she’d prefer a house. So he said okay, I’ll sell the boat.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah, oh. All boat stories end that way.
Philip Vafiadis: We spent years And I felt like he stole our boat. It felt like a bit. Was mine. Yeah, yeah, of course.
Andrew Hutchison: What,
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So timberboat, obviously, and what?
Philip Vafiadis: no, no, no, it was. It was steel. Oh, it was, Well, yeah, the propellers had, propellers that can change their dynamics. This was something that was early stage stuff that wasn’t popular back then. And then we had, yes, we did have sails, and all of that. the boat could be, The boat could be, It would never. It would never, go. Go back under, you know, it wouldn’t go under. It would always right itself.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Everything was sealed. Yep. The, The, the. The little pipes where we can get fresh air in. This was way back at the beginning where there weren’t too many, maybe none of us. So if the boat does rotate water, wouldn’t get in.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Philip Vafiadis: things, like that. The kitchen was, The kitchen was using the same fuel in the boat, but it was, It was sealed in so that we could get the kitchen hot. But the gas would be going outside. Yes. Things like that. We really optimized. He was. He is a very smart guy.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Well, you need that for the southern ocean. You’re going to need both heating and you’re going to need the ability for the thing to get rolled over because, you’re bound to strike. Horrible weather. Because it’s horrible half the time, I think. And, Yeah, so he never really went, annoyingly. You’re ruining the story, Phil. So he never went too far, in the vessel. He sold it for a lady or a house, really.
Philip Vafiadis: He sold it for his wife. Yes. And, And, then. Then he built the house.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Which is something that is not in that common. Or he did. He got a few tradies, but he did a fair bit of the work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And anyway. Oh, that’s another story.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: It’s an interesting life.
And the VAF stuff was fantastic. I never treated it like an audit a company. I never did. I treated it like it was a. It was a playground. And, everything else I’ve done, I’ve treated like a company. But vaf, I still to this day don’t treat it like a company. When Simon Hackett bought. It’s fine. Simon’s a rather lovely guy and, anyone that understands the Internet knows who he is. And, And he decided to ask, if he could buy the company. And I said no. And then. And, And, I’d known him for a while and we agreed. So I could be free. So I still own a chunk. And. And. But, But his team, took some measure and, And, And it freed me to do other things as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: So. But to that too, still this day, I don’t treat it like a company. I just like. I just like making audio stuff. the sound wall that I designed. In my house here, I’ve got seven sound walls. If anyone doesn’t know what the samples are, look at the VAF website and have a look.
Philip Vafiadis: But, Parliament House Tamboura has, those things. They’re flat panels. And, And I love them. Everyone that walks in, my wife’s happy because it doesn’t look like there’s audio equipment anywhere, but. But you know, I can shake the walls still with no problems.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. Yep.
Philip Vafiadis: And our theater. Our theater room here. I’ve got, I’ve got the, the main projection screen is sound walls. That’s the sides. Either side. Nobody realizes when you walk in that they’re doing that. They look like they’re not the same thing because you can make them
00:30:00
Philip Vafiadis: look different in different ways. I print it over here. I’ve read something else over there, and people, just assume it’s artwork. And, But it’s not. It’s audio stuff and acoustic treatments and things like that. So, That absolutely love it. So the signature 93s, the 66 and the 93 sound a little better. Yeah. Sandals is something that, That, It’s. It’s. They’re kind of like. You want to put them in every room. whereas the sound wall. And so the signature stuff is for the hardcore music lovers where they. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So music listening room only. The, The Parliament House connection. So the sound wall and the Parliament. So, Parliament. Australian Parliament House in Canberra. The new one, obviously. That’s the paging system in Parliament House or what. What are the.
Philip Vafiadis: No, no, it was about. It was about, It was about. They had to. They. They asked a bunch of companies to put some, products in there so they could check. And it wasn’t about price, it wasn’t about bass or anything. It was about human speech. What they said to us is that, this is about human speech and make sure that we can hear it so that we’re not making mistakes. Because, the, The ministers have to make decisions. And,
And so they wanted the things that sounded the most realistic to a human voice.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Philip Vafiadis: And, And, And I don’t know what other brands they bought. But there were quite a few. It wasn’t just one. And then, and then once they tested them all, they chose ours.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, you got to be happy with that. Right?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, I’m recording. When I say recording, I’m remembering what they said that they wanted. And yeah, we were proud of that because they were looking for human voice and not a sound that they prefer, but an accuracy that they prefer. Speech. Intelligibility.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I guess intelligibility comes with accuracy of reproduction. Is that what you’d say, Phil?
Philip Vafiadis: Elements. Yes. Comes back to time domain again and look at the work that a new staff member came in a year or so ago looking at pushing the time domain a little bit further. So I was proud of the work I did with the the original stuff. And we were right at the front of the world. You’re probably aware of what what Rolling Stone magazine did for us in terms of saying with the ultimate in high fidelity performance with the best pace in the world and we were not putting advertisements in them. They just decided to pick us as the best there is. And so that wasn’t, that wasn’t begging us to do it. It was. They decided to say something nice. And that was a surprise, a really big surprise. Now over 20 years ago you’ve probably seen the new reviews and I’m really proud of the fact that the new guys that we’ve got that’s doing the work and it’s the foundation, it’s a step above the foundation that I created. So I’m really proud that the guys are doing. Taking another step. Yeah, well, it’s kind of. I hope I’m never going to stop. But yes, you’ve got to let the people, you’ve got to let the guys go down their path. They’ve got to extend the stuff that you know, what we did before and put another layer on top of that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, certainly. my listening experience at the recent, relatively recent Melbourne International hi Fi show, was that. Yeah, the product sounds fantastic. I heard. the little coaxial model, which is a delight. And then the very large monster, which I think is a new version of something that you developed some years ago, Phil. That large. Well, because it’s, you know, it’s the, some would say the Duntechs.
Philip Vafiadis: It was a, it was a flagship.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And it was a flagship.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. It’s, it’s, it’s a surprisingly affordable loudspeaker for something of that Scale. And the scale of the sound and the cleanliness and the, the realism is is impressive. And I can say that because I don’t make a loudspeaker in that size and price range and neither does Brad. So we can, we can pile on with the praise. And it’s not, it’s not affecting us. But, but genuinely. In fact, I tell you, when I was in your room, there was a, a well known other, South Australian loudspeaker designer slash manufacturer of some, of some size, sitting in front of me and also singing the praises of the sound. So, so, yeah, it’s
And on that subject, what the hell is it with South Australia and speakers? Do you want to throw some light on that?
Philip Vafiadis: Well, I’m going to say that we kind of, I think Krix and me are the the oldest ones in the game. I could be wrong, but I don’t think anybody’s been running, you know, around 50 years. And I was fortunate that I started as a very young person.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Philip Vafiadis: But, And I’ve got to say I, I like, I like Chrix’s, work. I’ve. I remember when his son was born
00:35:00
Philip Vafiadis: and my daughter was born. It was two weeks apart from each other.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, is that right?
Philip Vafiadis: Okay. Before, before we had, before he had all that wonderful equipment. He had a shed, ah, what looked like a farm sort of area.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: and it was on the other side of the city. It was about a 45 minute drive from where I lived.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: But I decided to drive down and and I asked him whether it was possible for us to make a speaker together. And he looked at me really weird. So I think, I think there’s a, I think there’s a risk. his product is different to our product. It wasn’t competitive. I really, really am happy for them to have succeeded. Yes. It wasn’t the same stuff.
Andrew Hutchison: No, it’s not the same stuff. It’s quite.
Philip Vafiadis: They do a lot of the theater work. They’ve done a lot of, you know, they’re doing some really interesting and So out of all of Australia, I’m really proud of what we’re doing at baf and I’m also proud of what they’re doing.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, it’s, it’s. Krix is completely impressive. probably, I mean clearly the, I guess, the most successful Australian manufacturer of loudspeakers from the point of view of probably just the range of Products. And I, I feel like with their overseas sales, they seem to be sending them all around the world now, with pretty significant sales happening in Europe, I think, which is kind of amazing, and completely impressive. Although I guess more in the home cinema realm. But they’re, they’re. Their cinema wall that fits behind a, acoustically transparent screen is a, It’s a very Australian looking product. It’s, it’s pretty, you know, bold looking and impressive and, and sounds impressive. So, yeah, Scott seems like the, Actually the, the nicest guy. And and it’s, it’s. I meant what I said about the South Australian thing because of course, your, Your, fellow user of felt around drivers, at, Mr. Dunlavy. I mean, I know he’s American, but for some reason he set up shop in Adelaide. And vaguely I’m thinking that was something to do with some local government tax incentives or something. Although that’s probably not why you and Scott got started. But is that why he ended up there? Do you remember, or does it even matter?
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah, that’s what, that’s what, that’s what he and his wife told me. Yeah, it was about, it was about, it was about optimizing the, profitability of the company.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But there’s been a bit of a few other brands over the years.
Philip Vafiadis: there’s a few.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. So whereas, whereas Queensland, for instance, where I’m from, absolutely nothing really. It’s been very, very few. Sydney would appear to be the other hub of speaker, building activity.
Philip Vafiadis: obviously there’s Michael in a hand and you’re still, as far as I remember, we built Speakers quietly. We, we hardly ever went. We every now and again, maybe I’ll rephrase that. On two occasions, three occasions, we explored, going through retail and. But we didn’t really.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I was going to ask you the only one.
Philip Vafiadis: So the only one, is about Rab in Melbourne. he’s such a nice guy, good family and stuff. And he asked me, he asked me about it and I said okay, because I really like the guy. It wasn’t that complicated. No.
Andrew Hutchison: Rab’s a charm, but there’s no doubt about that. Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah, he is. Yeah. And it’s a good, It’s a good arrangement. so anyone in Melbourne is going to see VAF speakers. They’re not a problem. But, But we don’t have them anywhere else. And we’ve never had, you know, we never. Like I said at the beginning, when the business was really moving forward. It was kind of crazy because most of our sales were not in Adelaide. They were all over the place. And, and we could. People would come in. This is when we used to remember before we had these phones that we’re using right now. We had magazines. And then there’d be a little thing that you cut off on the magazine and you put your credit card details on and you put it in the mail and, and that started coming. Electronics Australia. put, we did a lot of work with them because, I don’t know why they chose us because I think it was just because I liked them, I guess. But we’re on the COVID We’re on the COVID a lot of times.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I can remember that. Annoying. Annoyingly. I remember that it was. I mean you, you market your marketing.
Philip Vafiadis: There was a 12. There was a 12. It wasn’t marketing, it was. I was supposed to be making a product for one of the electronic stores.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And, and Woolworths bought the. It was buying the company. and every six months the key staff will be moved into a different position. And and the COVID for the January edition was getting close and close and close and close. And it looked like a magazine was going to miss out on, you know, something decent. And I picked up the phone and I said, how about we do. And also the, the folks that we’re doing the other work for. And I said how about we do this? And now I’ll take the run on this, on developing a high quality, you know, kit and not kit stuff. And and we’re trying to build the industry a bit more. Sure. And they said, yeah, let’s do that. And so that, so we got a 12, a 12 page, for the first DC range, the DC.
00:40:00
Philip Vafiadis: The three models of the DC range. And that kicked off. That really, really kicked off hard. We were making them in, many hundreds of. At a time. That was just me guessing. I said, okay, if we don’t succeed, we’ll have all the product and we can sell it through the following year. Yeah, but if we do, then people don’t have to wait. They can order it. It’ll come in the day that the letter comes in. I tell you, the staff that we want to be shipping it out the same day.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Yeah. That’s how to run a business. Yep.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah. And that worked. And that’s how it started. And then, and then, and then the other Electronics M magazines were putting other things about what we were doing. And that became other stories around different kinds of technologies and.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And this and that. And, And we ended up with, with the majority of our speakers being sold to technically minded people that love music and, all the Sound of Music.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, there was. There was a twist to that, though, wasn’t there, Phil? And that is that you. You kind of offered them as some kind of kit version as well as I remember it.
Philip Vafiadis: Well, that’s because when I was young and, I liked the kits because I wanted to know how to learn how to make things.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And I just assumed that most tech guys would prefer to make it rather than buy it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And, And, And then I realized that some of them just want to buy it.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. Is there a ratio? What. What do you think? Was it 50, 50 or.
Philip Vafiadis: Look, the truth is. I’m going to tell you the truth. Please do it.
Actually, it actually cost us more to package the kits because. Because the speaker fits into a. Whereas the cabinet still has to go in a box.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. And then you got all the drivers.
Philip Vafiadis: So there’s more product to ship, the cost and so on. So I just wanted to make sure that, I just wanted to make sure the people that were buying the product is what they wanted.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: yeah. And then we did the free returns and I think we. To this day, we still do it. If anyone buys anything and doesn’t like it in 30 days, they. And sip it back. And,
Andrew Hutchison: Well, you might. You might have been an early pioneer on that front as well. I mean, I mean, some say there are. We only had, you know, no new ideas. But you. You did this 30 years ago.
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah, but I did it right up to when I took, When I sold a chunk of the business.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: Not all of it, but chunk of it. And, And, out of all of those years, all of those many, many years. Decades, we only got five returns.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Philip Vafiadis: And four of them Enter for four of them was great DC series. They’re fantastic. Better than I thought. Can we get some signatures instead?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. All right. Yep.
Philip Vafiadis: So out of the five returns, there was only one actual return.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s. That’s. The rest was.
Philip Vafiadis: The rest was. The rest was loving it and wanted to buy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Impressive. Yeah, excellent. yeah, I love this whole story. I, I guess from an outs from. From someone who wasn’t in. In Adelaide or South Australia and someone who was in hi Fi retailing, VAF was kind of A pain in the ass. Because. And I mean that in the nicest possible way because the product was clearly good. Customers would come into the store and tell you, oh, yeah, I’ve got a pair of Vass. They’re really good. And you’re like, yeah, okay, well, what do I do with that? Because you. You had set yourself up intentionally otherwise kind of outside the industry. And you’ve already said that. That you didn’t really see yourself to some degree as in the audio business. Will you. I mean, there’s all. There’s 100 stores in Australia at the time that were. That you were not supplying, and yet you were. You were doing very nicely selling them direct and creating a bunch of customers who would come in and tell us how good they are. And I. I did trade a few pairs in over the year and I. Over the years, and I’m like, you know, dude, they are kind of good. That’s really annoying.
because, I mean that.
Philip Vafiadis: There was a lovely guy, that passed away a few years ago in the audio game. And he had a lot of shops down the east coast of Australia. I had Sydney, Melbourne, up in Queensland. They had quite a few stores along the edge. Yeah. And his salespeople flew in to talk to me and said, philip, look, we’d like to. We’d like you to, consider, selling to us.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Philip Vafiadis: because,
Philip Vafiadis: Because we’ll, be able to make you more money. Yes. You’ll get a less percentage of the money because obviously we’ve got to take a percentage in there. But because we sell so many more speakers, you’ll do the math and you’ll be better off.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Philip Vafiadis: And I said, well, let’s have a discussion.
Andrew Hutchison: Can you.
Philip Vafiadis: Can you come in and tell me exactly what the numbers are and stuff. Came back about two months later and said, this is what we’d like to achieve. And I said, we’re already selling more speakers than that. He looked at me and went, oh, oh, I’m not kidding. That actually happened. And that was the number that they thought that I was doing. but, yeah, so they,
00:45:00
Philip Vafiadis: Yeah, m. We’re actually selling more speakers than they were.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, they had an idea that you would be selling X amount, but they’d underestimated that amount dramatically, obviously. And, their. Therefore their numbers were, Yeah. Of no relevance to you. So, Hey, thank you, Phil. Think. Phil Vafiadis, the, founder of vaf, or V. Af you call it. VAF Research. Clearly, it’s a Shortening of your name and a business still going strong in Adelaide. making, designing and manufacturing loudspeakers and selling them and a bit of hi Fi gear as well. in the, in the, the. The. The center of speaker loudspeaker speaker manufacturing in Australia which is Adelaide. The hub. Yes, annoyingly. And thank you Brad. Thank you for chiming in and asking some interesting questions as well. and and yeah. But thank you Phil for your time. Really appreciate it.
Philip Vafiadis: Thanks guys.
Andrew Hutchison: Hey now hi Fi specializes in creating personalized audio experiences with brands to suit all needs and over three decades of experience. Jeff from hey now hi Fi can help find your sound for your life. Have a look at the website now. Right now you’re listening to the podcast later, but soon.
we’re here again at the Sydney Show 2025. hi fi show with with Nick Ataliotis
Nick Ataliotis: Greek. Greek background.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean you clearly you’re probably born in Australia. Imagine. Not that it even matters. I don’t know what we’re talking about. Let’s talk about hi Fi. Well, you do look Greek a little bit.
Nick Ataliotis: You’re the first person that I’ve met in a long time that can actually pronounce it the right way in the first go.
Andrew Hutchison: I speak a small amount of Italian, but that’s nothing to do with it. And when I say speak it, I really can’t remember any of it. But I guess I’ve thought about pronunciation. But no, I’m not monolingual really. But do you speak any Greek though?
Nick Ataliotis: Do speak some at home. have spoken some, you know, growing up with the parents and But my kids unfortunately, don’t, don’t speak it very well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which is one day they’re going to regret because they’re going to want to go on a holiday.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: And painlessly order food and book a hotel and drive a rental car. any. I’ll have a, a conversation with your long lost relatives. Yeah. yeah.
so you are the relatively new, designer acoustic engineer, at vaf. Is it VAF like research or VAF?
Nick Ataliotis: VAF research. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Which is a, a very old really in Australian loudspeaker manufacturing terms. Australian loudspeaker manufacturer.
Nick Ataliotis: I mean been around since the 1978, I believe.
Andrew Hutchison: 78, yeah. And we we have interviewed Philip Vafiadis. Yes. sounds a bit Greek.
Nick Ataliotis: That’s purely coincidence.
Andrew Hutchison: Trust. Yeah. and and we have We’ve been meaning to. Phil gave us a very interesting interview and we are editing it, editing it shortly. And we’ll probably combine it with, with. With What we’re speaking to you about now. And he will probably be on first. So we will have. I guess he will have told us how old the company is. It’s not really your concern though because you’ve been brought on as a To revitalize the range or what. What’s. What was the. I mean I know you told me once you answered an ad.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes, yes. It’s actually very I’m very lucky to actually get the job at VAF because you know, throughout my, my journey I I’ve loved sound since I was five years old. You know, I remember my dad’s stereo and how it was like, you know, a revelation every time I turned it on. You know, I loved it from a very young age. Hi Fi and sound and music and Remember the old days of recording cassettes and playing turn. You know, records on turntable and things like that. And throughout my teens, you know, collected you know, various bits of audio equipment. Eventually decided to study audio visual technology at RMIT M. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: And I had a, One of the professors there that was you know, teaching us audio technology. he was a speaker man, you know and, and we, we got, we got talking and yeah, he introduced me to the technical aspect of speaker design then.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: you know, feel small, all the theory. And I started you know, downloading you know, in ah, stuff over the years and at the time there was not much in terms of you know, what you could get. There was no Internet. So we, we used to go to the library and look at the documents from the Audio Engineering Society. And that’s where I sort of started with the theory and you know, first started with building subwoofers and you know, tuning boxes and all the alignments and all that sort of, you know, stuff and progressed more and more into you know, loudspeaker design alongside other things that I’ve built, been doing. Because I could never really get a job as a loudspeaker designer.
Andrew Hutchison: I know. I mean, and that’s kind of why I mentioned the fact that you answered the ad. I mean it must have been to some degree a dream come true. I mean like I’ve got this interest and I’ve got
00:50:00
Andrew Hutchison: the skills.
Nick Ataliotis: It was.
Andrew Hutchison: And. But I mean really there’s not, I mean particularly in the last. I guess 20 years in Australia, not a hell of a lot of you know, volume, of loudspeaker manufacturing going on. And if there is, it’s always in in South Australia though, for some reason, which is conveniently. Although you didn’t live in South Australia, as I remember it. No, but, but you do now, clearly, unless you’re doing a long commute every day. But Yeah, I don’t know what it is with South Australian speakers. But, the, the point is, yeah, there was a bit of a lull in the industry and I guess it’s, you know, it’s stepped up a little bit lately in the last few years, sort of post Covid, I suppose. And. And
So, yeah, so you see this ad, you’ve got these skills, you got the interest and then you applied and here we are.
Nick Ataliotis: It’s a funny story, Andrew, I saw this ad and I’m like, is this even possible for me to get this job? I mean, I’ve got experience, like real life experience. Not as a professional designer, but as a, you know, I’ve got the audio engineering background, but a. As a hobbyist.
Andrew Hutchison: Really. Yes. Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: with you know, some experience and you know, a lot of tools.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: And, you know, a little bit of experience with measurement and you know, simulation stuff that I’ve been collecting and working with over the years and building various stuff. And then I thought maybe they’ll, you know, have a look at what I’ve made in the past, give me a crack at it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: And that’s the genuine truth. Like I just applied for the job and I spoke to the Then, designer Marty Jones.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: And Marty, was kind enough to to hand over my details to the recruiting, HR manager.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: And they, gave me a call for an interview and went in for the interview and you know, a few weeks, later, you know, another interview and then another interview and.
Philip Vafiadis: Is that right?
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah. So it took a few.
Andrew Hutchison: Making a quick decision.
Nick Ataliotis: No, it took a little bit of time because they were interviewing a few. A few people.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Some already in the industry.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: And eventually they rang me up and said, okay, let’s go for coffee and have a chat.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: and I thought, ah, all my Christmases came at once, mate. So I, I was so humbled by it and I feel so lucky to this day to get. Get a job doing what I love doing, that I’ve pretty much dropped everything else I’ve been doing up until now, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: Business, going in the background. Still there. Managed by family, mainly.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: So I can do what I love doing.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah. And so you. Are you there five days a week or what’s.
Nick Ataliotis: I mean, I’m there full time at the moment.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Nick Ataliotis: But I’m obviously, you know, sometimes I have to take, you know, a little bit of time out. Out to address other, you know, other interests and, business ventures. But.
Andrew Hutchison: And I guess it’s not like they’re designing well, you know. Well, I’m the listener to the podcast, probably doesn’t realize actually how long, even in a relatively small loudspeaker manufacturing enterprise such as vaf, how long you might actually spend developing a model. I mean, there’s an enormous amount of effort that goes into it.
Andrew Hutchison: Because really you can’t. There’s no shortcuts because, your competition is spending an enormous amount of it. That’s right. You’re probably going to have to do the same. That’s right. you know, so is there.
I, mean, could you illuminate us a little bit as to how long you might spend from discussion of a concept for a new model to the research of how you’re going to go about doing it and then ultimately the design, and the fine tuning, etc.
Nick Ataliotis: I certainly can do that. I can give you an insight. I haven’t actually designed anything from scratch yet.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, because you’ve kind of been taking there and, and, Improving it.
Nick Ataliotis: Refining it. Improving it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: latest iteration, the i93 Mark V. I sort of got thrown in the deep end.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: You know, because, they hired me and, I guess they probably didn’t really know what I could do.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: So they were a little bit careful with what they wanted me to give you.
Andrew Hutchison: Something to attack something supposedly easy. Yeah, initially. Yep. Yep.
Nick Ataliotis: So, over the Christmas, New Year’s break, which is around about the time I started.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: I didn’t have a whole lot to do, so I wanted to do, a little bit of tweaking, you know, because, you know, starting in a loudspeaker, you know, company, you, you want to start, you know, designing something and.
Andrew Hutchison: You know, get your teeth into it.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah, that’s right. And every designer knows it’s. How exciting it is. So, I, I, thought I’d try and improve one of the current models, the i91 SE, which, I, did some measurements, did some listening and thought maybe we can try something with that.
Philip Vafiadis: Sure.
Nick Ataliotis: you know, did the simulations, the, testing and, and, and worked out that, hey, you know what, There’s a little bit of room for improvement here. Let’s have a go, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Doesn’t have to be accepted as a design, but I’m not going to sit around and do nothing, so. No, no, let’s, let’s, let’s have a crack at doing what I’m here to do.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: And, it turns out that the change that I made was, was, was well accepted.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: They liked it, so we, we implemented it.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: And, and then it’s like, okay, well, let’s, you know, do the latest iteration of the R93 because we’re in the middle of a, model change
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Nick Ataliotis: due to the fact that we couldn’t get the same drivers anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Philip Vafiadis: And that.
Andrew Hutchison: And that I, I guess people, I mean, many people listening, realize. But that’s kind of how it works is that, the reality is that if you can’t get some of your parts anymore. Yeah. It could be any kind of part.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: then that is the driver perhaps for a revision or, you know, a Mark III or a five or whatever. Yeah. It’s. That’s the realities. And, And, And so. Yeah. So. So the 93 is the, is the super tall one, right?
Nick Ataliotis: The 93 is the big boy.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: and what originally started as. Okay, well, let’s, you know, try and integrate things, these new bass drivers in the design and tweak the crossover. And then I thought, okay, well, let’s change the baffle a little bit because I don’t like, you know, this aspect or that aspect of it, beings. We’re going to go to a new iteration. Why don’t we make a few more changes? And so we’ve.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So you go down a rabbit hole.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Andrew Hutchison: Where do you stop?
Nick Ataliotis: Are you opening a can of worms? And I thought, okay, well, now this is going to need a whole new crossover change because we’ve changed the profile of the front baffle.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: So, you know, all other aspects of the sound are going to change. So we’ve got to redesign the crossover now.
Andrew Hutchison: And when you say redesign, I mean, clearly there’s a tweaking of it. But do you, have you, have you changed the base, the. The kind of. The style of crossover in the sense of it was whatever the slopes were. Have you gone to different slopes or different, different, shaped curves or, you know, or alignments or something?
Nick Ataliotis: Such as. Good question. I designed it from the Ground up. And I just used the slopes that I thought worked best for those drivers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Which are shallow slopes.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: so we’re not using a very aggressive you know, high order crossover in that they’re shallow slopes. it’s kind of like a hybrid between first and second order.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Nick Ataliotis: to get you know, phase matching across frequency. Across the frequency, crossover range and that. And I just did what I thought would work best for magnesium alloy drivers.
Andrew Hutchison: well, yeah, I mean this is how it works, isn’t it?
Nick Ataliotis: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: You look at what your materials are doing and.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes.
Nine months on the crossover. Yeah. So it’s quite a complex crossover
Andrew Hutchison: Breakout modes and things and how you’re going to deal with that. And And so does it end up being in the case of. Because this is a. How many driver. Ah, you’ve got
Nick Ataliotis: Five drive.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I was going to say five. Yeah. So. So it’s a three way, I guess sort of d’ appolido arrangement and with a stepped baffle sort of some sort of quasi time aligned sort of thing.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes. we’ve got time alignment, on all bands. So we’ve got the mid range and the tweeter is set back from the woofers to get the physical time alignment, acoustic centers in the same. And then there’s obviously the phase alignment in the crossover.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. For the timing and shallow slopes. is there much other sort of filtering like as other you know, conjugates and things like that or is it. Yeah. Okay. So it’s quite a complex crossover.
Nick Ataliotis: In the end it’s taken about nine months of developing. Spent just on the crossover.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. To come back to our timeline. So you’ve spent nine months on the crossover.
Nick Ataliotis: Nine months on the crossover. there is a lot of filtering going on. as in there’s. There’s notch filtering in there, there’s conjugates in there, you know, impedance leveling filters to make the the notch filters work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: and being a hard material such as magnesium alloy, you got to be very precise with your, you know, where you apply those filters at the various breakup modes.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Especially in the critical mid range and tweeter. And so it was a redesign because the drivers, you know, are not the same and they also vary from batch to batch.
Andrew Hutchison: So how much. I mean that’s, I mean not a lot say as I thought would be very consistent. But not as consistent as you would like.
Nick Ataliotis: Not, not always as consistent as we, as we would like. Especially when you’re dealing with those those Very sharp breakup modes.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So they move around.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah. A couple of hundred hertz up or down.
Andrew Hutchison: I guess they move around post running in as well. Do they?
Nick Ataliotis: They do, yeah. Yeah, they do.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: you know, suspension needs to run in voice, call and the lot.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: The like need to, loosen up and you know. And break in. Yeah, pretty much.
Andrew Hutchison: And I’ve lost my train of thought.
Nick Ataliotis: That’s okay.
Andrew Hutchison: It doesn’t happen much.
Nick Ataliotis: Happens to me as well.
Andrew Hutchison: It has been a long day. I’ll come back to that point, whatever the hell it was.
Nick Ataliotis: We’re talking about breakups.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, we’ve talked about breakup moments. But prior to that I had a thought that we were talking about. Well, I m. Was going to say what kind of an insect just flew up my nose?
as far as capacitive inductor. I know inductors. You make your own from premium Australian copper. Presumably. but capacitors and resistors. I mean resistors not so much. I mean, although. Do you have a preference in resistors? there’s a certain person on the Internet that seems to think that ceramic resistors, as we call them here, he calls them sand cast.
Nick Ataliotis: no good look,
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Nick Ataliotis: can, be, it can be good if it’s implemented in the right way. I think it’s the synergy of parts that makes the speaker what it is, not always just the material. You can hear a very good speaker with a diamond tweed and it’ll sound terrible. And you can hear a very good. You know, you can hear an average speaker with a silk dom tweet and sounds fantastic.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: So soundcast resistors, they got their place.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
Nick Ataliotis: And applications we like to use non inductive, of course. non inductive resistors. as you know, our inductors are hand wound in house. capacitors. We like to use, the scr. capacitors French made usually. if we can get them otherwise.
Andrew Hutchison: Otherwise equivalent film capacitor.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep, yep.
Nick Ataliotis: Film.
Andrew Hutchison: Pretty consistent, performance M. Yeah. Value. Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Yep.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: Usually they’re around about, range from 1 to 5%.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Nick Ataliotis: is what we use what we can get our hands on. Varies a little bit.
Andrew Hutchison: Do you batch them up? Do you sort of measure everything?
Nick Ataliotis: Yep. We I do believe highly in matching components of that particular set.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Nick Ataliotis: so starts with the, you know, the process starts with measuring the drivers and then, when we’re winding the coils for that particular set of speakers, we make sure. That we match the filters to the particular, breakup modes of those drivers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, so once they’re running, so they’re kind of, they’re very much handcrafted. And the thought that I’d forgotten was that for the poor diy. yeah, the, the thought that you. That, that and we. There’s nothing wrong with DIYs we. You know, that’s where I guess we all started. But, the point is, you’ve spent nine months developing a crossover. No one’s sitting at home. Maybe some people are playing with their crossover for nine months, but it’s not worth it when you’re only building one pair of speakers, surely. I mean, this is, this is where, you know, production, you know, models, clouds, you know, produced by manufacturers in quantity, where they start to make more, More sense financially, don’t they? Because you’re not spending nine months of your time trying to fine tune a crossover, assuming you’ve even got the skills to do that.
Nick Ataliotis: That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, people, People do sometimes imply that these things happen quite quickly. they do not particularly. I guess in a, in your case, this 93 is a very complex design.
Nick Ataliotis: It is a complex design.
Andrew Hutchison: The baffle’s complex. The crossover is complex. So what, redesign on that speaker took more than a year.
Nick Ataliotis: Took more than a year. because we started from scratch. So new drivers in the bass section, new, ah, time alignment because we changed it a little bit due to the new drivers. Acoustic center was in different places. and, I didn’t sort of follow the same, crossover and just do a couple of tweaks. I thought that it would be easier to start from scratch.
Andrew Hutchison: Clean sheet of paper.
Nick Ataliotis: Clean sheet of paper. Instead of trying to, you know, change something that’s, you know, that’s optimized for something else.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: and, and that’s how the story started. And just, you know, months and months of tweaking, listening, tuning, and trying different. A lot of different iterations of the crossover, as you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, you.
Nick Ataliotis: I’m sure.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, the reality is that some things just, they might measure similarly, but they sound different. We’ve lost your mind. And some are more, enjoyable than others.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes. And, what measures good doesn’t always necessarily sound good.
Andrew Hutchison: There is, there is. Loudspeaker design really is a black art. Even though people are trying to say it’s not anymore. It is due to computer power or, you know, simulation, etc. You can simulate till the cows come home. You still don’t know, you’re not simulating how it’s going to sound though. You’re only simulating how it’s going to measure.
Nick Ataliotis: I think it’s very rare to simulate something, on the first go, put it together and listen to it and say, wow, that sounds amazing.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, I think it’s almost always the opposite, isn’t it? Sometimes you go, I had high hopes for this. It’s simulated beautifully.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah, it looks great and it actually.
Andrew Hutchison: Measures very similar to simulation.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah, but it just doesn’t sound right.
Philip Vafiadis: No.
Nick Ataliotis: and that’s when you’re really starting to get stuck into the art of crossover design where you’re playing around with the slopes, you’re playing around with the directivity. you’re playing around with the you know, with the filtering to get a desired phase response or, you know, you know, to make the sound coherent and natural.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. No, it’s
So what, is there any, you know, it’s the first time you’ve worked as a designer in loudspeakers. Is there anything that you thought would be a particular way, but it’s turned out to be not that way. And I don’t know what really I mean by, by that, other than you had expectations, I guess, were they, were they met or was it just. Or is it just. I don’t know, I. For instance, we’ve just talked about how long it took to get a result. Did you, I mean, you obviously designed your own loudspeakers for your own personal purposes, but, I don’t know, did it, did
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it turn out to be more challenging than you expected? Or was it in fact, you know.
Nick Ataliotis: No, I mean, clearly it wasn’t easier, it wasn’t easy. Easy, definitely wasn’t easy. The result didn’t come easily, that’s for sure. No, now I expected it to be tough.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: And, and it was, it was hard. because as well, like the drivers being made out of magnesium alloy, there’s those challenges that come with that material.
Andrew Hutchison: And magnesium is a, ah, is that a philosophical choice? At vaff due to some characteristic that.
Nick Ataliotis: They produce, they have been used in VAFF speakers for quite some time. we’ve been using magnesium alloy mid ranges for quite a few years, right down to the very beginning, I think. And then they went with the magnesium alloy tweeter and now, finally the Papercon woofers that were no longer available naturally, we thought instead of changing all the drivers to a completely different material, let’s just make the, you know, get, get the matching bass drive.
Andrew Hutchison: So base units. Now I have to say having heard this loudspeaker and I assumed that I heard it in its current finalized form at At Melbourne last year. If magnesium conjures thought thoughts of a certain kind of sound, but that’s not the way that loudspeaker sounds. And when I say a certain kind of sound, I guess you know what I mean.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Somewhat sort of resonant, metallic, bright, nasty. But it does not sound like it’s.
Nick Ataliotis: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Sweet and lovely, isn’t it?
Nick Ataliotis: Oh thank you Andrew. I really appreciate that.
Andrew Hutchison: Well it is though, isn’t it?
Nick Ataliotis: Really appreciate that.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s got a real sort of space and sort of. It’s just a delight and it’s. I ah, guess it’s quite quite detailed.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: but there’s a realism to it and yeah. I remember being sadly for me as you’re effectively the opposition in some ways been mightily impressed. That’s fantastic. But we’re not really the opposition. I mean I think, I mean everyone’s speakers are slightly different, they appeal to a different audience. But And your price points et cetera are probably, probably somewhat different. And the reality is that we don’t sell a lot of speakers and you sell tons of the things, don’t you?
Nick Ataliotis: I think so.
Andrew Hutchison: We sell enough Australian loudspeaker designed here, made here and it sounds absolutely world class. Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. No, no, it’s a pleasure. I’m just telling the truth. Yeah. That’s what we do here at the Not an audio. Hey. Well, thanks for speaking to us Nick.
Nick Ataliotis: You’re welcome.
Andrew Hutchison: Continue to have a great show. You’re obviously poking around and. Yeah. Checking stuff out.
Nick Ataliotis: Yeah, I’m having a bit of a listen. I love. I have to say I don’t know if you want to put this in or not, but I love the sound of your speakers mate.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, thank you.
Nick Ataliotis: Fantastic.
Andrew Hutchison: I will put that in.
Nick Ataliotis: They do sound absolutely incredible and as I was saying to you before, the sound of that jazz recording you played last time at the Melbourne hi Fi show.
I quite enjoyed and left a memorable impression.
Andrew Hutchison: No thank you.
Nick Ataliotis: For me. And I thought that that was actually.
Andrew Hutchison: On our entry level product, wasn’t it? Yeah.
Nick Ataliotis: For such a modest cabinet it was producing an immense sound stage. Sounded so real depth of field was there just. And, and, and that’s the honest truth. It sounded great.
Andrew Hutchison: Thank you so much. I appreciate your thoughts on that. And actually that, that The seventies Nick’s referring to. And it actually, it actually, it sells okay. And you can sort of buy it as a point, as a kit if you want to, which is incredible. Makes it super cheap.
Nick Ataliotis: Incredible value.
Andrew Hutchison: It is a product we only sell direct because it is kind of a kit and it’s not a fully. Yeah, it’s not a veneered box or.
Nick Ataliotis: Anything, but it’s a grown up sound. Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I enjoy listening to them at home quite often and So thank you. I appreciate your ears.
Nick Ataliotis: no, that’s okay.
Andrew Hutchison: Passing over them, you obviously.
Well, now that we’ve finished the loudspeaker design, Australia speaker designer, self congratulatory club, meeting, we will say goodbye to each other and and we’ll and we will close this episode. Well, not the episode, but this interview off. Thanks.
Nick Ataliotis: You’re welcome. It’s an absolute pleasure.
Nick Ataliotis: Talk to you soon.
Andrew Hutchison: Thank you. Bye. An Australian loudspeaker legend has been born with the stunning new VAF Research i93 Mark V, winner of Stereone Floor Standing Loudspeaker Product of the year and Sound and Image magazine’s Floor Standing speaker of the year. $20,000 to $50,000. VAF’s i93 has redefined what I thought was possible from a loudspeaker in a domestic setting, says Stereonet VAF Research Building Award winning loudspeakers in Australia since 1978.
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