Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring Arthur Khoubesserian, designer of The Funk Firm range of unique and innovative turntables and analogue technology.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 040
TRANSCRIPT
S2 EP040 Arthur Khoubesserian, The Funk Firm. Breaking new ground in analogue technology.
Manufacturers have assured us for decades that their arms are stiff
>> Andrew Hutchison: Stupidly. Ah, I probably. I don’t. Yeah, you know what? I never thought about it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Why is it stupid? What does my video say at the beginning? Manufacturers have assured us for decades that their arms are stiff, they’re rigid, they’re well behaved. So you’ve taken it on board. You believe a manufacturer because that’s who you’re giving your money to. Yeah, I guess I believe you’re going to give me something that goes around in a circle. Oh, it does. look at it. It does. Oh, well, my arm’s stiff as well. Okay. Your arm stiff, because there’s no real way that you can easily challenge that.
Stereo Net Melbourne 2025 hi Fi show interview with Arthur Khoubesserian
>> Andrew Hutchison: And we are back. Not an Audiophile podcast episode 40 we made it season two hey, today we have interviewed a force of nature, Arthur Khoubesserian, co founder of Pink Triangle Turntables and and of course founder of a funk firm, maker of all sorts of interesting turntable add ons. Arthur has very firm opinions on how things should be in relation to turntables. Not everyone agrees with him. I’d have a listen. But before we do, I’d like to thank everybody who has subscribed to us on our YouTube channel on an audiophile podcast and followed us on Spotify and Apple and whatever your favorite podcast, podcast listening app is. All platform. Thank you. And for those that are about to thank you as well, the upcoming episodes, you might be wondering, surely there was more interviews from the Melbourne hi Fi show. There absolutely was. We’re just editing them at the moment. So Stereo Net Melbourne 2025 hi Fi show interviews coming up in the following, episodes, every two weeks, as you know. And I’d also like to mention in regard to today’s interview with Arthur that he mentions alludes to a bunch of videos that he’s in the process of recording now. We spoke to him a few weeks ago, and he was in the middle of doing that. They’re now mostly up on YouTube so check out his YouTube channel as well, details of which are on our website at. Not an audiophilepodcast.com Once again, thanks everybody for listening. Really appreciate it. For the discerning audio enthusiast. Performance and precision matter. That’s why March Audio employs purify technology to engineer award ah winning loudspeakers and amplifiers. They deliver sound that truly transcends expectations. All available at an entirely modest cost. Go now to marchaudio.com and check out more of Alan March’s engineering feats, including a Sale price on the 501amplifier March audio for the discerning or audio enthusiast.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, everyone calls it Khoubesserian
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, that’s what I was going to say Khoubesserian. But, it depends on how you work the KH or something.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But anyhow, if you want to be Armenian. But I mean, no, nobody does that, especially in England. I mean they, they don’t understand that that’s the natural side of it. So it’s just Khoubesserian. Easy.
Arthur Khoubesserian from Funk Firm chats with us about tonearms
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, we are here today with Arthur Khoubesserian from Funk Firm these days. And, and thank you, Arthur, for, chatting to not an audiophile.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You’re most welcome.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Thank you so much. Looking forward to this with, Yeah, well, it’s taken a bit of backwards and forwards, but here we are. And even at the last hurrah there was an issue, but, I, at my end we have it sorted and now look, you’ve just released a video that perhaps is intended to condense some of your key ideas about the way I think, particularly tonearms work. And, we will absolutely touch, on that video and the ideas within it, during this conversation, if that’s all right by you. It’s clearly all fresh in your head, as you were just telling me that you’ve been dealing with some of the comments, on the YouTube video.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah. You have to be very thick skin.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. You’re not meant to read the comments, actually, I think.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, aren’t you? Oh, sorry, is that where I got it wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: If you put stuff up on YouTube, you’re meant to just leave it alone and let it, Let it soak in.
Experimenting with turntables when he was 12
Hey, historically, I mean, you have probably been messing about with turntables for longer than most. I’m going to guess that you started when you were 12. Is that what happened?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, it must have been around that age. Yes, very much so.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And what. And what sort of turntable was that back then? And I’m going to guess that you didn’t like it much so you thought you could build a better one. Is that the gist of it?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, gosh, that’s a good angle. I think I was happy with the world. It was, but, you know, as a youngster, just looking forward to the potential of the future, you don’t know what it holds.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Sure.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: The thing was, my math master at school actually owned his own record label and he went and made his own recordings radio and he was bloody good at it and did. He was a superb recording engineer. he drew you into this world.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I’m sorry, he drew you into this world.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Absolutely, yeah. and so I had this very, very cheap, simple system that you know, was nothing to anyone, but it was just. It played the music that I wanted, that was fine. And then he’d show me this and he’d show me that. He’d introduce me to all the different ideas and then I started to his system and my m. Jaw just kept dropping. And the example I’ve given in the video is that on one, his listing was at the top of four story townhouse.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And he played me a recording of a train coming out of a tunnel.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It was so lifelike that all I could think was what’s the train doing up in the air? And then the brain kicked in and went, don’t be so stupid. You know, it’s a recording. You’re up, you know, you’re in the house. And I got hooked. The sound could be that good. I wanted it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I think it’s a bit like that for all of us. and I think, I think maybe even more so back in the day when a, A really genuinely great realistic sounding stereo system was pretty rare, I suppose because it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes, exactly. The sound quality was so. Was very, very poor. The typical sound quality was. Whereas now the lowest common denominator starts with cd. and it’s a very, very good standard of performance indeed. Everyone’s is used to good sound. Rel sound.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yeah, yeah. Full range and fairly clean. Whereas back then it was highly unlikely that you would hear that you know, everywhere because most people had a horrid little radiogram as we call them in this country. You know, some little wooden cabinet with a Garrard, stacking changer in it or something and a pair of full range speakers and 8 watts of tube power or germanium transistor power or something depending which decade. And it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be terribly good. So it was. Do you remember, remember what this, this system consisted of that indoctrinated you to the world of high end audio or high, high quality audio as we used to call it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, he’d already set up the system for my school, which was a connoisseur BD1 with a decker arm and cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Connoisseur BD1 Belt Drive turntable with a rubber mat. I mean it looked, it did look. Pants. I’m sorry, it was utilitarian. And you know, you sor. Devouring all these hi Fi magazines with all these lovely glory You’ve got Transcripts as hydraulic reference. You’ve got the Gale, acrylic turntable. You’ve got Thoren’s TD125s. And it was the day of the. The Linn Sondek deck. And the magazines were going balmy over that turntable. I mean, it had destroyed everything before it. And I do mean destroyed as in Fonz or Dunlop and so on and so forth.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: it just swept everything away. And the magazines were saying just how great it was. How great it was. Anyway, the problem was that John was my maths master’s name. He would turn around and do these fantastic recordings, turn them into records. And when I said, what about the records? He’d just go, oh, well, they’re just groove grinders. But John, this is what we listen to. It’s all we have to listen to. I mean, at the end of the day, some of the comments on that video that you alluded to, people saying, oh, well, tape is better.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Best.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, tape damn well is best. Yes. I’ve got no. Well, one. That’s what. That’s my first mantra. Yes, tape is best and a reference. And we’ll get on to that. But the point is, it’s also damned inconvenient. You can’t just select a track. It’s, very expensive. A good quality tape is £500.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What? Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, would you like a collection of music? You know, how many, how many records do you have in your collection? Oh, 3,000. Yeah, right. Let’s put 3,000 times.
When we compare records to the tape, they did sound poor
You know, you’re talking stupid money. So although tape is good, it has its limitations. So if records are what’s available, my job then became. When we compare the records to the tape, they did sound poor.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah, yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And, nobody had any answers as to why they sounded poor. Was it because nobody knew how to press a record? Was it the technology
of the day? Where was it going wrong? And there was no answer whatsoever. There was no books on it. The magazines didn’t discuss. They just talked about Linn they really did. Every single magazine.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They were stuck on Linn
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, you don’t. You want to buy Linn
>> Andrew Hutchison: There must have been. Was there a decade of that, approximately, of just Linn Linn
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, it really was. I’m. This is all my time at school, so of course I wanted an LP12 myself and I went out and I bought one.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the magazines told me that it would be the best thing since sliced bread and. Except I had this damned master tape comparison.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah, yes, yes. Which I guess not everyone has Such things. And I remember the first time I. First time I heard actually not even a master tape, but a multi track, recording that we were doing sort of a live mix, on. That was the most mind expanding moment of my early sort of. I mean I was already well into audio, but to hear a 24 track tape, 2 inch tape, it blows your mind back in those days. I mean it does, doesn’t it? Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I wanted that sound.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Well, we all did.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes, absolutely. I had a transcript as Hydraulic reference, had a PL12D. And I had also now bought this LP12 that had been set up to the nth degree of perfection by one one of Lindsay’s appointed dealers. So it was, it was perfection personified.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Except.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Except. And then we also had John’s BD1 with his wretched decor arm, you know, this thing in, in homemade plywood and what have you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Which I’m going to guess sounded surprisingly good though, right?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Which you guessed right. It did, it beat the lot.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s a, it’s a scary machine. Connoisseur. Yeah, it’s all that with a 10 inch platter. It’s Or, or was this.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, you know, it. Well, well done.
>> Andrew Hutchison: M. There’s one in the room almost, I think. But yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And you can imagine how disappointed that was, how deflated I was. And John’s deck beat all the others.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But it still sounded lousy against the tape. And that’s my problem.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yep.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So it was either a case of grew up and become a farmer or grow up and tackle this problem. And I decided to tackle the problem.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Which I guess within the next, I don’t know, five, six, seven years leads to your own turntable. Is that approximately.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Or I’d have been 14. I think the. Well, pink triangle started in 79 which brought me out. It was about 28, I suppose.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: yeah, well, whenever. It doesn’t really matter, so.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So some years. Yeah. And. But you obviously experimented and developed ideas. I believe you were working with someone.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Started with the suspension.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. The suspension. All right. Yep.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: turntables had to be isolated because of all the junk that’s going around in the world. Fine. Okay. And then, then I met my first partner, Neil. And he was a music lover first and foremost. And I was the physicist.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So we had this sort of odd blend where I liked music, but he loved music, whereas I was interested in the, the mechanics of it and he wasn’t.
>> Andrew Hutchison: that’s a good match really, isn’t it?
You have no idea what you’re doing when designing your turntable
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It wasn’t too bad. and one night we were talking, I was banging on about how unhappy I was with the state of things I was reading in the press. And he just turned around to me as it, as is the way he would do, and he said, well, if you think you can do better, why don’t you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, right here.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: and like an idiot, I walked straight into it. Okay, I will.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And then you suddenly realize what you’ve just said.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You haven’t got the first clue what the hell you’re gonna do because you’ve just set yourself the bar that you’re going to beat every turntable that’s on the market. And ah, you’ve got no starting point.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, no, but that’s, but that’s a good thing though, isn’t it? You have a clean sheet of paper and you can address. You can. Did you start studying what you felt were the weaknesses of the other designs? Was that sort of. Exactly.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You go into your own mind.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You go into your own head and you start thinking, right, all the turntables of the day, they all used a felt mat, they used an AC motor, they did this, they did that, did the other. And they all sounded rubbish. I’m not, I can’t copy them because I’ll just, I’ll just be doing the same thing all over again.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Where is it going wrong? Well, and then the penny dropped. Where does the music come from? Apart from the record? It comes from the stylus. Okay, so what’s going wrong at, the stylus?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Energy.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: What Energy? Energy that’s reflecting from the bottom of the record.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And that was it. So the felt mat and the rubber mats, but the felt mat, because that was the one everyone talked about. That’s one I’d obviously with the LP12. That’s, that’s clearly not working. So I came up with the acrylic platter.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And is this my first patent? Okay. And is that from the point of view that you, you’re suggesting that the record is, is vibrating vertically up and down effectively, pumping the stylus up and down in that way. Is that kind of what you’re alluding to or, or what’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: What I mean now gives. It’s basically, ah, a road worker with a jackhammer.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Into the road.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s kind of what I mean. Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, yeah. It spreads out like sonar.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And as long as the record is thick, I mean if it was a 2 inch record, the energy would just keep traveling. But record isn’t 2 inches, it’s only 2 millimeters thickness. And the energy hasn’t had time to dissipate. So it reflects off the bottom.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the stars doesn’t know and doesn’t care if it sees vibration, it’ll read it. So you’re modulating the energy it’s picking up from the groove and you’ve added to it the reflection and that adds to the signal before it’s even got to the cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So the point of your, your. Well, you made it. You, you painted an acrylic platter. You’re saying, you’re saying. But you’re, but you’re, you’ve mention mat a few times and we’ve actually got one here at the moment. If, assuming they come out in orange at some point.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, wow.
>> Andrew Hutchison: There’s one here on a, on a customer’s turntable. And, I mean, it’s an interesting material. I, I don’t know how old that mat is, but do you guess the.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Achromat in a minute? Because the achromat is not the platter.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, no, no, you did, you did say platter, but for some reason earlier you mentioned Matt and I had Matt in my head.
12:17:79
But, you mentioned felt. That’s right. Felt and rubber, which my, my question really is. So felt and allows the record to move up and down. Is that the gist of it? Which you’re.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, it’s like sonar. It doesn’t matter whether it moves up and down. You don’t want the energy to bounce back. just read the signal and stop at that point.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So, you know, it’s, with sonar, you, you send a pulse out, it hits a rock and it bounces back and the detector picks up the reflection.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, the stylus is both the transmitter and the, the receiver at the same time. And so you’ve got to stop the receiver from receiving any energy.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So. And acrylic was 6% difference to that of record, whereas felt, glass, rubber, and all the rest of it are between 500 and 5,000% different.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And for, for, until we had it built and we had no money, Neil was on the dole. I, you know, whatever. And I was sitting here scratching my head, trying to design a turntable and he kept saying, is it going to work? Is it going to work? And I’m going, I don’t know. The theory tells me well, but I really don’t know. So we built this turntable and with these two sheepish young lads, we don’t know anyone. We don’t know anything. Yeah, so we, there’s this shop around the corner, called hi Fi Connections. And we sort of shuffled in there one Saturday afternoon and we said, we’re us. You don’t know us from Adam. We’ve just designed this turntable and we really need a reference turntable to compare it to. Can we borrow your deck for the weekend?
>> Andrew Hutchison: How’d that go? Are you familiar with Edgar Kramer? Well, you should be. He’s Australia’s most renowned hi Fi reviewer. And his website, soundstage Australia.com is, well, quite amazing. Incredibly detailed, well written reviews
on all sorts of interesting hi Fi components, interviews with industry luminaries, factory tours, and of course, news. Don’t forget, Soundstage Australia is part of Soundstage Global network. So when you’re finished with this podcast, go to soundstageaustralia.com and check it out.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And they went, yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, wow. Okay. what did they loan you?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It was an, Ariston. It was a top ariston model, which was basically an LP12. The Aristons and the LP12s were very, very, very similar designs of the day.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Nice turntable.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Some, some say the Ariston is, is possibly better than the lid, you know, Some, some say.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But well, they don’t exist. It’s. It becomes a moot point now. But, it was there. It was. So we took it home and our jaw just dropped because clearly the differences were there.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: so we, I’d done it step one. And then we had to start trying to market it. And our first show was at the Swiss Cottage in the January. The business began 12-17-79.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the show was like six weeks later or something like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And Neil was very good at m. At, pr. He was studying how the Nazis had actually succeeded in getting a whole nation to follow them. And he’d realized it was all to do with pr, I guess. So, yeah, Neil’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever come across.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: He, he was, he was well cute on things like that. So he started to apply some pretty left field advertising techniques in the magazines. We took out quarter page ads. Has anyone seen the pink triangles? Any. Everyone heard the pink triangle. We were taking images from cartoon, magazines and things and people were just, they didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. that’s all there was. Has anyone seen the pink triangle? What’s a pink triangle?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And then we did the show.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It was, it was, it was, it stuck out because it was a little edgy.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Odd.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Neil was very good at that. At the show, the queue for our room went round the corner and down the stairs. Wow.
You say you had zero business acumen and zero money
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay, so you’d created some noise. we.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And it just continued from there. We became a cult thing as the years went by. Unfortunately we had zero business acumen, we had zero money, but all the negatives going against us. And we had of course the competition who didn’t like us.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, I guess not.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Did you weren’t happy with us?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Did you, did you speak to Ivor in those days? Did he visit you to have a listen?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Was there a,
>> Andrew Hutchison: Was there a.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You must be joking. No. Way down in the south. But no, no, Ivan would never recognize us. Even he wouldn’t recognize anyone. He was the best. This was the thing. So, And we were two. Insecure in ourselves. Anyway, I do know that at one show at Bristol, How the hell did he get in after hours? Yeah, we found out that I’ve had come to our room.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And had passed slightly less than flattering comments about the design of the deck. Calling it over engineered and stuff. Well, look, it’s what I would have expected. It’s no big deal. but in the meantime I was busy analyzing the Design of the LP12 or suspended turntables in general.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because the original motor on the pink triangle was at the back of the deck, not even on the left hand side. It was like at 12 o’. Clock.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I was looking to improve the performance of the turntable even from day one and realized the motor was in the wrong position.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: and once it was in the wrong position for me, it was also in the wrong position for the LP12, the Thorance TD150, the 160 and the 166 because they were all in the top left hand position. So And with the amount of angst we were receiving from the competition, I took on myself to bring out a modification kit. there was so much strength noise going on around Upgrade this, upgrade that and upgrade the other. I thought I’ll do it properly. I brought out the pink link and that caused all manner of grief.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes, yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You, you say you didn’t have a lot of business acumen, but then at the same time you, you took on, you know, a force that was Lynn in the turntable business and obviously had a fair bit of success as far as actually selling a decent amount of turntables though, right?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes, yes. It was genuinely Difficult. It really was. Every day was a trial. There was very little joy in it. You’d get these moments of total excitement, but you then have these long periods of despair. And it was despair. we were also in the middle of the Falklands War. We’d gone to the bank to borrow money again. Here’s an example. Yeah. We needed money. The government had a small guaranteed loan scheme which would allow you to borrow whatever it was. 150,000. £200,000.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We only asked for 15,000.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, thinking you made the classic error.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Exactly. We under capitalized, underfunded. And we said, we’re going to need to spend £10 on this, so we’ll borrow £10.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Not thinking that anything could ever go wrong. Well, the Falklands came along.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the money never arrived.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: For three months, the money was gone before the money had hit the bank.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Just paying the rent, so to speak.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, exactly. So we got no money. We were still underfunded. We were still struggling. As I said it was. There’s just a lot of despair in those days. but, And we lived. We lived off thin air. Constantly.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We really did not, you know, we. It was a. A ridiculous situation. We built a factory of 17 people, trying to do everything in house. We did it all wrong. if you want to make money, what would you do?
In the UK, if you’ve made a mistake, they punish you
I’d say I’d write a book on how not to run a business. I’d be a millionaire overnight because I’ve made so many mistakes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, actually, you know, you joke about that, but that’s actually. I guess the thing with being in business for a lifetime is that you pretty much know every single thing that you can do exactly as a mistake. The thing is, no one’s interested. They want to make those mistakes for themselves.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You got that right. Now, what’s interesting is in the uk, if you’ve made a mistake, they. They punish you. In America, they praise you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: There’s a bit of that, isn’t there, with the, their, sort of the way they just, you know, just, this business isn’t working, let’s shut it down and try something else within, like, a year or three. Whereas I think it’s in the UK and I think here as well, we, we battle on for a decade or two and see if we can make it work. So,
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, there is very much that. But with the Americans, if you failed, they say, well, right, if once, and you want to. You want to earn some money, you’re not going to make the same mistake again now. Well, that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, that’s kind of true, isn’t it? I mean.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, at least it’s absolutely true. Why do you think I’m succeeding with Funk at the moment?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I’m bringing to bear all the mistakes that I made at Pink. I’m ducking and diving like crazy, and I’m having a whale of a time.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, let’s move forward. Indeed. to Funk. So. So Pink went on for.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So the good few years, the acrylic platter failed because I won’t mention his name. But a good friend of mine, another turntable manufacturer, very well loved, very well liked, sadly no longer with us, copied the acrylic platter.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I rung him up, and I said, just give me. I didn’t know how to handle a patent. I said, just give me anything.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Just recognize that you’ve ripped me off, at least admitted. See you in court. I was destroyed with that comment. And at that point. Is that right?
>> Andrew Hutchison: So. So you were offered zero? Not even an honorable mention?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No.
>> Andrew Hutchison: well, that’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And he was a very liked person. I was. I was stunned with that one. Okay, so that was the end of the platter. this is important because you were going to discuss the mats. It was on the back of that that the mat then begins.
Pink went out of business in 1998 for various reasons
Okay, so Pink goes. Pink went. For various reasons. Well, I left pink in 98 for personal reasons. Neil, in the meantime, had cancer.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And my parents and what have you. Well, it was a. It was not a good time at
all.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: there was Neil in hospital having cancer treatment on the one hand. And the factory got burgled.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, God. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: my parents. My. My mother had died, and 30 days later, my father died.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, crikey. Bloody hell.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Arthur. Oh, yeah, this. This. This. This is. This is life, really laying on with a trowel. I even knew who. Who burgled us as kids.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, God.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I went to the police station. I said, I know who’s. Who’s broken into us. I’m sorry. The crime desk is closed till Monday.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, right here. So what would they take? Tools or something? Or. I mean. Well, they did.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: They took a pair. They took, two pairs of loudspeakers. We got the SVM loudspeakers. and I can’t remember, but they did. They did leave most of the stuff behind. They could only take so much. Well, yeah, but it’s gone anyway.
>> Andrew Hutchison: On their push box.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That was it. So we. We moved on. but I’d left the industry and I was never, ever, ever coming back again. In the meantime, we’d handed the business over to two people who were working for us and, they made a complete mess of it and they closed the business in 2003. So Pink went.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Neil wasn’t very well. I was left on my own. and a good friend of mine said, arthur, you’ll be back. I said, no, never, never, never. You will. You’re that sort of person.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I mean, after that, it would be no surprise if you did go sideways into a different industry, I guess. But, because you clearly put your heart and soul into all of that.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I can’t remember what the process was, but basically I came up with the achromats.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. So that was, that was the first thing in the funk era. is. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because I’m. If I’m going to get back into the industry, what is my unique selling point?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, gotta have one.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Exactly. And so I thought, let’s better the 6% difference of the, of the acrylic.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay. Let’s go all the way.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. All right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I then developed, the, the concept of achromatic, which is now 100 matched to the record, and then goes further with this. If you’ve got the map there, you. And you feel the edge of it. It’s rough.
I’m interested in materials and, um, I wondered what the material was
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, I did because I, I wondered what the material was. I’m sort of interested in materials and, I, I really. I don’t quite know what it is and you’re probably not going to tell me, but it’s, it’s very light, it’s very stiff. or is it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It matches the record. It really does. This is it. It’s an extension of the record.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But the thing is, it’s like when they developed the Concorde, they used various design techniques to make the, the airflow feel like it’s going slower to give the aircraft an edge so it could go faster.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Same thing with the material, is designed to fool the pressure waves to think they’re going through a thicker material than they really are. And that’s done, by the bubbles. As the pressure wave goes through, it flexes on the walls of those millions of bubbles losing. Introduce heat.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. That makes sense. And that’s, I guess it’s, Well, at. The bubbles of the bubbles are the key then. So that material you actually get that may. That’s not an off the shelf material.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Right here.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So, and what was. What was Crazy was that. Let’s go back to the acrylic hi Fi Choice had done measurements.
>> Andrew Hutchison: All right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: when the, when the pink first came out, they were busy measuring everything under the sun. They could, motor speed stability, reflections and damping off records and of arm tube resonances and stuff like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And they measured the rubber and felt matte and our acrylic platter.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And we destroyed felt and rubber. And you’d have thought if the industry was interested in moving forward in terms of performance, if we had a reference like tape with which to compare.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Our achievements.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: They’d go, oh, we need to improve our standards. But no, felt and rubber have remained to this day, which makes no sense at all. Why. Well, why did they exist? Well, because felt and rubber, of course, are, virtually 100 perfect in a production sense. They cost pennies.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Ah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: There are no rejects and they look good every single time. A material like Achromat is a nightmare. It scratches so easily.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: To sell something new.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: the reject rate is phenomenal. It’s about 40. Reject rate.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: The slightest tick on it and you can’t really send it out. No.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And that’s kind of, I mean, that’s the secret of manufacturing isn’t. Is that people don’t talk about much. But we’re talking about it here now, is that some things that are industry standards are really not used because. At all. Because they’re the best solution. They’re just the easy solution and they’re the durable. They present well, you know.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, exactly. It’s not only a case of being easy. I mean, I can, I can genuinely see it. The pub, we, we do everything with our eyes. We eat with our eyes. You know, this tastes good. Yeah. But it looks disgusting.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, it’s, it’s an absolute truth. I mean, that becomes. We’ve, we’ve talked about this in other podcast episodes about perception. You know, if it looks good, it must be good. Right. And I think it’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, that’s. That goes a long way.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Ugly looking hi fi doesn’t. Ugly looking hi fi may well sound amazing in a blind test, but you.
The aesthetic of a turntable is perhaps most important for some people
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Remember, you Remember John’s utilitarian BD1 with the decker?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, that’s. There you have it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, that’s exactly right. And, and that’s right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I had my Transcriptus hydraulic reference. That looked fantastic.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. it’s, it’s look and look. I, I don’t have a problem with people who like the look of pretty Things, I mean, it’s a bit like Italian cars. I mean, you know, they, they are the most gorgeous looking cars on the planet, almost without exception. But, I mean, think we sort of know how they’re made. I mean they’re not, they’re not built like a Lexus, so. But you know, so what? Maybe you want it to look, you know, the, the aesthetic is perhaps the most important for some people. But in your case, you, you are genuinely trying to improve the performance of a turntable.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I don’t think, I don’t think it’s a case of being the most important. I think it’s the case. You’ve got to have that as, taken as read.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You’ve got to have a presentable product. There are limits beyond which you, you will notably fail.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You can’t possibly think you’re going to sell that. That’s not gonna, that just won’t fly.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And. But this, it’s not so much that it’s beautiful, it’s just got to be interesting aesthetically, I think. I mean, you could, I mean, you know, a Land Rover Defenders, probably not beautiful, but, but it’s it’s functional looking and people.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, it’s not as much as a job, you know.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Hey, so this. So the mat works on any kind of platter material. Is that, is that. Of course. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So that, I mean that’s a, that’s a better solution then if that works better than making a platter out of acrylic.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because now you’re getting there, you see. So suddenly somebody up there decided to shine a light on me and say, I’m gonna give you a second chance.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Don’t screw it up this time.
>> Andrew Hutchison: All right?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I’ve been suffering ever since.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So the Funk firm, as the company is called, started with the mat, but you’ve now got a range of products. And I’m m gonna say that I didn’t really realize until I started started post chatting to you at Munich this year. Started looking more closely at what you were doing now rather than what you’d done in the past and didn’t realize you had a phono stage. and we don’t want to talk about that just yet. But you have got the tone arms, you have turntables. You, have the phono stage. You, have various headshell tweaking things which you could perhaps tell us about. But what’s the I mean the bit that’s missing, I guess is the cartridge. But is there Is there a reason for that? You like to leave that to the specialists. Or, what’s the. What’s the.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Most people have cartridges
built for them.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: There aren’t that many companies who make their own cartridges. They brand them, they label them. I could do. I just haven’t done it. I see my potential. Elsw. And we’ll get to Houdini in a second.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: so it’s the phono stage in quotes, is the cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah, that’s that. Yeah.
Akutrak
Maybe we should talk about the phono stage because what you’ve done there, from what I can understand from reading about it, is that it’s. It’s got some kind of variable EQ or RIAA curve.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Not riaa. This is the important thing. It is absolutely not riaa.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. It doesn’t. Yes. It doesn’t conform to the exact response that it’s meant to. It conforms to what the cartridge needs to sound linear. Is that the gist of it?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s. That is totally correct. The RIAA is a necessary function of any phono stage because the recording has been laid down with predefined eqs built in.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: To maximize, time on. On the record.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: and to reduce noise at the hf where all the ticks and pops live.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So that’s. That’s basically what Ria is. There various standards, but it’s now been standardized to one. So you’ve got to have that in there. And we do not muck around with it because then you are going to start mucking around with the entire recording.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s stupid. But the exact. And I’ve just said the magic word, the recording, it is a singular item. And if you had a perfect system, your record would sound identical to the recording. Okay. I’ve, given you a perfect turntable, but I’ve shoved the cartridge in it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Now, the turntable is not affecting the sound. So why is it not sounding like the recording? Because the cartridge is not perfect.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: what’s not perfect about the cartridge? It’s not linear.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No. no.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And what Akutrak does. And it only works on moving magnets. Oddly, we’ve tried really hard for moving cores. It doesn’t work with moving cores.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay. Because they work in a different way. it actually reads the entire load of the coil of the cartridge and the cables. It takes everything into account. And then you can adjust using your ears or with a scope. Your ears are really very, very good indeed. Anyway, and you linearize it and Then you put it up against the tape and you go. That’s actually pretty close.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Certainly close to the new one. Yeah, yeah. So that’s what sets Accu Track apart from any other phono stage on the planet. There’s no other like it. There are one or two that do things close to, but they don’t affect it the way we do. ours is quite, quite unique.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So you’re, you’re adjusting a. I’ve got a picture of it in front of me. I’ve kind of forgotten there is a control on the front, but that’s, that’s right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s just that one single control on the front.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So it’s a little bit like moving magnets move. Magnets are fairly linear, but they suck out in the, mid band. Is it you, you tend.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Is it. It’s not like a quad tilt control. A little bit. I mean, a little bit, right? Not. Okay. Not at all.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, quad tilt control again, it’s fixed. This isn’t fixed. This is reading the load and adjusting with what it’s actually reading.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So the. So okay. And this is what I was trying to eke out. So the, the effect the knob has varies with the cartridge. It’s not just a tone control. The phono stage is understanding what the cartridge is doing and changing the parameters of that control to suit each cartridge exactly.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So you can use a Decker or you can use a Grader or can use an Audio Technica or you can use an Ortofon and so on. they all operate in the same way. They’ve all got this characteristic, and it will balance it all out. And the thing with moving course is they tend to have. They’re very, very flat and then they suddenly go, peaky.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Moving mags have got a brilliance to the sound
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And so moving causes have got a brilliance to the sound. A lot of the times they can sound quite impressive. You can’t compensate for that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No. All right. Well, certainly not using the technique you’ve developed to make it work with the moving mag.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, the guy who designed it is very, very clever. I’m sure if he could have done.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Done, would have been done. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
StereoNet
All right, we’re going to take a quick break. Arthur. Hey. Now, hi Fi wowed music lovers at the recent Stereonet hi Fi and AV show. The Fisher and Fisher loudspeakers, the dome and turntable, the beautiful sounding airtight tube amplifiers from Japan. Now, all of this gear, along with Jeff’s other rooms that he had fantastic equipment in is all back at the store. Ready for you to listen in store or talk to Jeff about an in home demo. Jeff, hey now. Hi Fi. Ring him today. Or email, sms, maybe smoke signals. Pigeons. We’re back, we’re back with.
Arthur from Funkfirm discusses vibrational behavior in turntable design
Back with Arthur from Funkfirm. he’s, he’s setting us straight.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: He’s ranting off on another topic.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, coming, coming at, coming at turntable design from definitely a different angle, but from a very thoughtful angle. And are you, as you say, and I don’t know if we mentioned in part one, but you are a physicist. A physicist. And your job is to understand. Well, physics, I guess. The clue is in the title and and what the hell is going on. And so vibrational behavior, resonant behavior, that’s one of your key concerns in this, in the turntable system. And the tone arm, is, is in fact, where a lot of your concerns seem to lie. Is that, is that, is that right on just about.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, we’ve discovered, we’ve discussed the music comes from the stylus, goes into the record, bounces back. Problem one. But then the evoke, it’s action and reaction from Newton. You’ve then got energy going up, into the cantilever and into the cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the mistake that I’m discovering people are still making is they believe 100% of that energy is turned into electricity for us to listen to, and it isn’t. And the analogy I’ve given is that of an incandescent light bulb where you put loads of energy into the filament. And we do get light, we do get sound, but we also get heat, we get vibration, same thing. This is lost energy. There’s nothing we can do about it. We then have to cope with it. But people seem to think that I’m talking rubbish, snake oil, that they want all the energy to be turned into electricity. Well, we all do. Well, and it’s understanding the relative, routes that follows.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think part of the problem with the analogy is excellent. The incandescent, incandescent light bubble, where everyone knows certainly of a certain age that they get stinking hot. Clearly when you go to change a fresh one that’s failed, ah, you’re reminded quite rapidly that it’s warm. And But the other thing, as you mentioned, noise, I mean filaments do hum or vibrate or resonate with, usually just before they fail. But the thing is there’s a lot of energy, you know, 40 watt bulb, 60 watt bulb. And I think some people have trouble grasping that the same thing is happening in a turntable system because the amount of energy is so small. At least. At least it appears to be.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s the one. It appears to be. So we’ve just, We’ve just got to keep readjusting our scale of view.
>> Andrew Hutchison: M. Interesting.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: we can’t use our thick fingers to try and read a record. We use a tiny stylus.
Some people are misunderstanding the principles that are at play with stylus
Okay. So now let’s get down to the stylus, world. And there, when you, when you use Google AI, it says that the stylus is accelerating in the groove 26,000g. Well, it’s not. In fact, it’s actually over 60,000g. That’s an awful lot of energy that is being pumped into the record and into the cantilever. And that is not tracing it, it’s literally bashing it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That number’s thrown around. But I think, I guess my simple understanding of that is that the stylus is moving very fast and yet weighs nothing. is that the gist of how you calculate such a high G situation?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Exactly.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, exactly. So, and you multiply the two together and you’ll get your energy output.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And it’s still enough to play music, but it’s also enough, people think, because there’s a rubber bung that is the compliance of the cartridge that then isolates the stylist from the outside world.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We mentioned that. I got this video, which only got, ah, uploaded yesterday. I’ve been reading the comments and people are misunderstanding the principles that are at play. Yeah, the. Another. I tried to go through it as logically and as steadily as I could. it all starts with the measurements.
For example, people say, oh, it doesn’t have you. All the energy goes into. Into music. No problem with that at all. I’ve got no argument. Then how do they explain the arm tubes vibrate when they’re measured by, in hi fi choice.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Also, how is it that when you’re playing a record and you change the arm, the sound changes and change the arm back, the sound changes back to what the other arm sounded like. Clearly the action of the stylus is influencing the arm.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, the, the other. Absolutely. But the other thing that the simplest, analogy I immediately occurs, to me is that you can hear just putting your ear up to the cartridge as it’s playing with the. With the amplifier turned off. Right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s not the cartridge you’re listening to. It’s actually the arm tube. We call it needle.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know what I’m listening. But that’s what I was going to.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Ask because that’s that. Yeah, it’s the arm, tube ringing.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Is that what it is, that noise? I mean we know it’s the music, right? We can maybe.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Absolutely.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Some people listening perhaps are. Can’t. I mean this is much more obvious back in the days of ceramic cartridges and what have you and maybe really crappy arms. I don’t know. You could. It was quite loud. Right. But certainly even a magnetic cartridge. yeah, you can, you can hear it singing.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Moving coil.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So Audio Technic 80s 760 has got a, ah, compliance of 40 CU. Whereas a Koetsu So wait for it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Five. See you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s massively stiff. That will pump so much energy into the arm beam and if that arm, beam goes off, it’s going to affect the cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So that’s just. Well, I mean you’re saying that’s what you’re hearing when you’re hearing your amplifiers turn off and you can hear your record playing. You’re hearing arm, arm, tube ringing. That’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep, yep. Okay.
You believe a manufacturer because that’s who you’re giving your money to
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: All right.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’ve learned something. I’ve never really thought about what it was, to be honest. And I didn’t really. I guess stupidly, I probably. I didn’t. Yeah. You know what? I never thought about it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Why is it stupid? What does my video say at the beginning? Manufacturers have assured us for decades that their arms are stiff, they’re rigid, they’re well behaved. So you’ve taken it on board. You believe a manufacturer because that’s who you’re giving your money to. Yeah, I believe you’re going to give me something that goes around in a circle. Oh, it does. look at it. It does. Oh, well, my arm’s stiff as well. Okay. Your arm’s. Because there’s no real way that you can easily challenge that. It takes me to come along and start rocking the boat and then of course I’m getting the flack, which I’m finding I’m loving it. The naysayers, they’re great fun. Go for it. You know, Bring it on. M. Another. A totally different analogy, but it’s like a drunk youngster being picked up by the police who want to arrest them and they, they try every trick in the book to kick off against the police.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I’m sure the police sit back and yawn and go, here we go again. Because you think you’re the first person ever to do this.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You’re the 20th one this weekend.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because this is our job. We’ve been doing it the same thing with me. Me, I’ve spent years thinking about it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I want the best for myself. The only thing is I’m trying to take that and offering it to other people, but ultimately it’s a very selfish act. You can’t give me the best sound. He can’t give me the best sound. He can’t. Fine. I’ll make it myself. I then put my, standards up against the others and go, I’m happy with the results I achieved. Would you like to, be offered it as well? Or I could keep it to myself. I don’t care.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s, it’s, it’s self indulgent, I suppose, by some measure to.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Of course.
>> Andrew Hutchison: and to make it less self indulgent, you should, you should sell some, I guess.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, I mean, what do chefs do? They enjoy the food that they create.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, absolutely. That’s right. Right. Yeah. And they enjoy experimenting.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: An artist does it for themselves.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And other people appreciate it. Everything we do is selfish. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: In fact, it’s the. Because we are the greatest critic.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And therefore we’ve done m. The best job that we can.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. So you.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s funny that people are so disingenuous to appreciate that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: there’s, I think if any of us could work out. Well, the first thing is I think you can’t work. There’s no one person you can work out because there’s like eight different personality types or something. And they all make totally. They’ll make buying decisions for different reasons. But I think the core of those eight different types make them one particular way. And I guess I, In a different way to you have spent a lifetime trying to understand what those buying decisions might be caused by. Just so I can sell more hi Fi to them. But, it is. It is hard to work out. And I guess the best brands in the world have largely worked it out. I guess I’m thinking of outside of hi Fi, such as maybe Apple or something as an example, Samsung these days, I guess. But, it’s not necessarily the best product though.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Right.
>> Andrew Hutchison: With the best performance. So, so you.
You use Formula one in your paper on the bubble. The uh, you do mention Formula one quite a bit
So what? There’s other products you’ve got that I want to. I want to talk to you about.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But just.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Just to go sideways for a second. What, what is there a product out there for getting hi Fi for a second that you feel is. Is. Is largely what you’re trying to do and has broken through and succeeded like in another industry maybe. I mean, is there something that you sort of base some of your ideas around as far as, you know, your. Are they a motivating force for you to continue you.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, no, to be honest, not really. I’m too, I’m too inward looking.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. You use Formula one in your, in your paper on the bubble. Yeah. Is it the isolation bubble?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yep.
>> Andrew Hutchison: The you do mention Formula one quite a bit. You seem to have a little bit of a love for that kind of performance orientated engineering that’s measured.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, it’s, it’s. No, it’s the achievement, it’s the attainment of the results.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because the hi fi industry has for 40 years been distorted through a corporate need for profits.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: and in the previous video to the armchair video, I cite the example and it’s fantastic because somebody’s done it for me. There is a video on YouTube of a Tech Task Zero, which is 350 kilos of 500, 000 pounds worth of turntable and they put up against an an ARX which you can pick up on eBay for 200 quid.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And according to every hi fi metric that is foisted on us, the zero should absolutely destroy it. At the end of the day, Formula One certainly beats a Model T4. today’s OLED TVs beat the old CRTS and so on and so forth.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And yet what’s fantastic about this video is that it’s a blind test that is open to the audio files. It’s got no dealers, it’s got no manufacturers and it’s got no reviewers involved in it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: They’re downloadable files that you can actually evaluate for yourself between sound A and sound B.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And then you give your result and then you’re told the identity. And in a 60 40, finding the AR beat the zero.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Which doesn’t surprise me because I’ve said felt matte. If felt mats really are bad, why are they still around? If rubber mats are still bad, why are they still around? If arm tubes resonate, why are they still. Oh, crikey, you’re now starting to pick through and go. If we want good sound, there are some very, very simple, obvious, easy to solve problems, but not necessarily easy to solve because I’ve done it. To me it’s easy, but getting there was a, a real brain ache. Houdini being the classic one on that one. Two years to solve One problem. but once solved, it pushes the whole standard of performance in the direction it really ought to go. Closer to the original recording.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely. That’s the goal.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I think Formula one only does it through science.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I think the Formula one analogy for me works where the, the team that wins, can’t they win because of
engineering and performance and driver skill? They don’t win because of marketing. I think that’s,
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Absolutely. Exactly. It’s a results based system.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that’s, that’s the disappointing thing perhaps for you is that that hi Fi. Exists in a, you know, in a, in a, you know, in a marketing world. We’re trying to move a product. We’re not trying to win a, race. It’s not about the best sound because.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I don’t even mind moving the product. It’s the way it’s couched, it’s the way it’s sold.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Everything is better. I mean, if read. Read the reviews of certain brands and their models every year. this new model is better than last year’s model is better than last year’s. But fine. And what’s different about it? It’s got the same felt mat, it’s got the same arm, it’s got the same feet. But something’s changed and therefore it’s been transformed.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, that trope is, Is done. There’s no doubt about it that the, that that is becoming. Well, at least for you and I. More you than I, perhaps. But I mean, that is. It gets ridiculous after decades, doesn’t it? And it, and it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, this is it.
latest model and the sound changes, but you’ve got no idea
thank you. Exactly. After.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I mean, when are we.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Actually going to stop? Now? If I didn’t appear, this formula would keep on going and you’d still be asked, well, buy the SEO’s latest model and the sound changes, but you’ve got no idea if it’s changed for better or for worse. It’s different. You take it home, you go, oh, my goodness, I can hear this, that and the other. Forgetting that you can’t hear the other stuff. Yeah, yeah, well, it’s become quite.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I mean, and that’s, that’s one of my pet things. And it’s, it’s partly why the pod, the podcast is called not an audio file. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a bit of a vague notion, but I mean, one of the things is it’s, it’s a bit of a reality check. Reality check. It’s. At least it’s insinuating. And that. Insinuating that in the sense that different should not be confused with better or worse or the other way around. And, and that’s. It’s. It’s one of the bugbears of this whole business. But, I mean, you know, it’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I mean, if you like something pretty bite. I’ve got no problem with that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But do not tell me it’s better.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, no. That would be what I would say. So we’re on that. We’re on the same page 100 there. It’s kind of annoying.
Arthur loves the Bang and Olufsen 4000 mark 1
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: my favorite turntable of all time is the bang and Olufsen 4000 mark 1.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, I know someone will be very pleased.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Sorry, it’s not the greatest sounding deck.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And one of my models has been converted to take a Decker cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay, okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But I admire it in so many ways. The engineering expertise that brought everything to bear in one hit.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: When it was launched. And the styling. I love the styling, but I accept the fact that it’s not the best sounding deck.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Know.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So, you know, my brain can separate the two. I love it. I would never lose my. My 4,000. And I still sort of handcraft. Yet another transcript as reference. it’s the things that we do. It’s out. It’s the collector mentality.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But when you say, arthur, what is the best sound? I say, well, in quotes, the connoisseur. BD1. Decker. You know, I don’t care what it looks like. There’s the sound.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I’ve now introduced my innovations and things, and I hope that people like them. If they don’t, that’s up to them. You know, I can’t. I can drag them to that pond, but they don’t want to drink. They don’t have to. No, I’m not forcing them. And, you know, it’s fun finding the people who don’t like what I say. And you sit there and you wonder what is going through your head to say these things. It really is quite fascinating.
>> Andrew Hutchison: In some ways, I find it amusing that they are willing to spend so much time arguing, about these relatively. I mean, these are important improvements or differences, but can you just, you know, go and listen to some music and calm down? It sort of seems.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, yeah, I mean. I mean, this guy, he’s got Formula 4 and he. He’s. He’s adamant. It’s got no resonances, but he loves it. He loves his music. I said, well, you’ve. You’ve hit the nail on the head. Never mind what I say. Go and listen to your records, because that’s what this is actually all about. Enjoy your music.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. The.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And the last thing I want is to change your mind and make you unhappy. That would be the. That would be the ultimate failure for me.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah, that’s right. And, But nonetheless, that’s. That’s the slightly unfortunate thing about the whole audio file thing is the fact that a lot of them would prefer to argue on the Internet than go and listen to some music, on, no doubt, a pretty decent stereo system.
Arthur has developed an isolating turntable called Houdini
So let’s touch on as a bit of a roundup of your current range. the headshell business, as I call it. You’ve got a couple of things going on there. What’s that all about? Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Right. So I’ve got an arm that’s very, very rigid. I’ve got the mats. The feet are. The feet are universal. But you do need an isolated deck. That’s just a simple formula. That’s okay, but fine. Change your arm. Change your mat. I can’t change the arm. it’s fixed on my turntable. And of course, the usual, advice is change the deck. Well, either I don’t have the money, or for whatever reason. Reason I don’t want to change the deck.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And there are some very good 70s turntables with fixed arms on them. Yeah, worse than that. They’re fixed both. You can’t remove them, nor can you adjust the vta. And yet the motor unit is very, very good indeed.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Do you have a particular. Particular turntable in mind there, Arthur? that you.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I can’t remember when I was going through them, I’ve, you know, customers ask me about a certain trio or this or that go, oh, crike or a Denon or something. You go, crumbs. You can’t adjust the arm m on it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, it’s one of those.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We’re going back 40 years. I’m having to use photographs and go, oh, yeah, that’s that model then. Oh, it doesn’t do anything. So they’ve got the deck.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: What are we going to do with. They can’t change the arm. They can’t put an FX3 or a Copernicus or something onto it. So I developed Houdini, and Houdini does. The, Goes towards stopping the energy from the cartridge from matching up to the arm.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s a cartridge isolator. And again, a m. Lot of people misunderstand it. And the next video. Next Week, I think it’s going to be launched shows about Houdini and how to fit it. Because again, people are scared. People are scared both of Houdini and of changing the arm, on any turntable because they’ve been advised so to do again by the market crafting team. Because they don’t want you to go around experimenting for yourself. They want to sell you a sealed system. Yeah, I guess so lock you in. So Houdini, it’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: People can look on the website. But the gist of the. It is the Houdini is a little, A little piece, of equipment, tiny piece of equipment that you. That fits under your head shell between the cartridge. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Two screws go into the cartridge, two screws go into the head shelter. And Houdini’s made in five parts. Six parts. Okay. Two, three, four, five, six, seven parts, whatever it is. and one moves relative to the other. It is basically a, miniature isolating sub chassis for your cartridge. It’s like an isolating turntable.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yep, yep.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay. And so it’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What’s the. What would you describe.
Classic Japanese turntables with fixed arm are difficult to adjust
Jumping ahead, what would you describe as the taking One of those classic 80s Japanese turntables, perhaps, with a fixed, arm. And you, you know, we should probably choose an example, but we can’t. The point is, what, what, what is. What is it that you hear when you, when you suddenly. The arm isn’t ringing like it used to? What’s. What’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, my God. It is literally, it is more natural.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s the only word to describe it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You’re suddenly going, I’m listening to hi Fi. Oh, my goodness. That sounds more natural.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s as simple as that. You think it’s more believable. It doesn’t irritate, but it just is just more natural. It’s just lovely. And then you just listen to the feedback from customers one after the other. That’s what they find. But the difficulty, of course, is you fit Houdini, which is 6 millimeters thick, onto a fixed arm, sudden your VTA’s gone wrong. Okay, so now what are we going to
do?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, what are we going to do?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s where the head shell comes in.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Tell us a bit. Okay. And that’s. Yeah, you’ve got this offset sort of head shell, that I’ve seen where it steps up out of. Is it a standard sort of SME.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s an SME fit. So, you know, you take any PL12D, a Technics SL 1200 anything like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And you pop it in. But where on a PL12D, the arm is fixed. Well, why should VTA be adjusted from the rear of the arm? You’re only trying to keep the cartridge parallel.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So adjust it at the headshell.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So Cobra not only has got this bent bit to accept the 6 millimeters, it’s got an adjustment that allows the height to go up and down. So if you’re using a particularly deep or particularly shallow cartridge or different mat, you can adjust for it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: If only Rigas had SME, headshell fitments. Because, I mean, people do go on about the fact that you can’t adjust the VTA on them. so that sounds like a, you know, when you, when you describe it like that, these two products sound like the most obvious thing in the world to make and yet you are the only manufacturer of such items that I am aware of. Is that right?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Correct.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s weird, isn’t it?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s called, it’s called, I’m a sad git.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s a technical description.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: The hi Fi shop is the home of quality hi Fi experience. The best of everything from affordable turntables to not so affordable high end loudspeakers. Let Alex curate a complete system for you or have him, using his technical background, assist with your next upgrade. Visit in person or check the website hifishop.com au for easy information on all of your favorite brands. Go straight to the top. Speak to Alex at hi Fi Shop. But it is, but it is. You want to adjust the vta. I mean, you have got the trap that you’ve got to have a removable headshell, but you then simply put one on that goes up at an angle, you know, straight up past. The people will have a look at the website, which I think is just FunkFirm. Is it funkfirm.co.uk that is right, yes. And and it’s, it’s so kind of obvious. And and my memory is that it’s not a particularly expensive piece of equipment, is it?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I, I don’t think it’s 120 quid for the head shell and £300 for the Houdini. Yeah, I’ve got a lovely example of the Houdini. So I send it to a distributor in Europe thinking this, this, this is ideal for this guy. Yeah, he’ll like it, he’ll, he’ll sell it. and I waited two or three or four weeks, whatever it was, and I contacted him, I said, so I’ve not heard back from you? have you played with it? Oh, I handed it to my top salesman.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh God. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh yeah. What’s he got? He’s got a Goldmund He’s got a 7,000 pound cartridge and some ridiculous army. okay, so in other words, I mean now Goldman’s will go from about 16 grand to 125 grand or something like that. So I took it at worst case. So his front end will have cost him about £40,000.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And ah, okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: He’d have honed it to the best of his ability. Could not squeeze one more iota of information out of it or enjoyment out.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Of it in theory.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So he comes back and I said, what do you think of it? He thinks it’s too expensive.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay, fair enough. So what did he, what did he make? Yes, but that, what did he make of the sound? Oh, he thought the bass was better.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Houdini is what I call the record cutter in reverse
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I thought the bass looked better. Yeah, he thought the instruments were better positioned.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Right, right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: This, this, this. So enormous improvements and it’s. And you’re thinking you just spent £40,000 minimum.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh dear. Oh dear.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I’m thinking, where’s the logic in this?
>> Andrew Hutchison: that, that’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And this is what, and this is what customers are finding. They’re going, I’ve got customers who own four of them.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: One for each cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I was going to say one for each cartridge.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Houdini really works. And in the, in the grand scheme of things, I mean it took me two years to solve just one problem on Houdini. that’s. And that’s why I’ve got a patent on it. I describe it as the record cutter in reverse. A record cutter moves left and right and up and down as it cuts the, the groove. As it moves across the, the, the, the lacquer.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Houdini moves left and right, up and down. It does not move forward or backwards.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And when the record cutter in reverse, it took a lot, a lot of lateral thinking and late nights and sitting in the bath twisting your toes. And then you suddenly went, ah, ah. That’s how to do it. It’s funny that, you know, design is a strange animal. You don’t know how it’s going to come out. no.
>> Andrew Hutchison: A eureka moment, basically.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay, well that’s ah, that. Now that’s a great explanation of both of those products that seems incredibly straightforward as far as I’m concerned. The one that I’m, I think might be maybe it’s not more Complex, but, and it looks cool as hell is.
Copernicus was one of the coolest things I saw at Munich
And I don’t know which tone arm. you did say the name before, but the one with the swiveling head shell.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Copernicus.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That is one of the coolest things I saw at Munich this year. It, it, well, it just is right now. I, I guess it wasn’t brand new at Munich this year. You may have had it for some years.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I, I, it’s the, there was a prior variant, called the AK1 in 2017.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: and then it went into the biscuit barrel of. Forget about it, while the rest of the world catches up with yourself and you start getting on. Well, the main focus was isolation bubble. That’s the whole concept of this. Best sound comes from protecting the cartridge from the junk that’s getting into it. And I can’t do both expensive arms and turntables and isolation bubbles and everything else. There’s only so much time I have in my life every day and so on and so forth.
>> Andrew Hutchison: and that Copernicus looks like an incredibly complex building of design.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It is a bit of fun and games to build actually. And of course it’s not impossible, but it’s not, it doesn’t fall off the shelf. I think it is fair to say it does use some watchmaker skills in, inside that, Enterprise esque disc, at the front.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I was thinking some kind of incredibly precise bearing arrangement in there.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s right. Because you’ve got to maintain rigidity at that point whilst allowing for the rotational aspect to twist the cartridge so that the basic elements of Copernicus are the same as fz. FZ is the, is the cheaper brother with zero resonance. Which again on the forums, it’s just, it’s on the video, it was just so funny, you know, it’s gotta have resonance. Well, yes, it does have a resonance, but I’ve stated it clearly. It’s in the noise floor. When you measure it, you can’t really see it. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. It does, but when it’s so low the ear can’t detect it. That’s all I’m trying to achieve. It’s an engineering solution. Yeah, yeah, but fine, so both the arms have got that and then we add the, the element of, zero tracking error. And with Copernicus have come up with a very elegant solution. You’ve got, you’ve got other manufacturers who’ve got their own, own design, theories on how to do it. Some, a little bit extreme, some of them are not that easy to implement. this one, you just treat it like an ordinary arm. I think put the cartridge on and use it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think one of our videos that we shot at Munich does have it in action. And I’m. I mean just go to our YouTube channel and, and trawl through all of. Well, I think there was three. Three Munich videos. And it’s in action. But, but you’ll see it in action. But you, I guess, Arthur, have a video of it on your own YouTube channel, do you? Or.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, not yet. Roughly one a week.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: M. So you’ve got it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I should mention that you have a bunch of new videos coming out. I think you said five or six or something.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, there’s five or six theory ones, practical ah, ones how to fit the arms. And then we’ll be pulling SL 1002 hundreds apart start.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And then we’re gonna have a whole series of download ones. Because in order for me to develop isolation bubble and its components, I had to know what the competition was doing.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So of course I’m going to get the competition components in and I’m going to do my own abs.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: All I’m doing in the videos is digitizing those self. Same experiments for other people
to hear as the fx3 sound again. A, B or C. How does A, B or Cs A or B sound against itself? Only because people make claims. And that’s what got me. When people make a claim about so and so being better than so and so.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No reviewer ever proves it. No one challenges it. No. that’s what stops progress. And I keep coming back to it. That’s all I’m interested in.
>> Andrew Hutchison: In.
M. Kepler: Design goal is sound quality above all else
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I mean, I’ll be dead soon. I’m in 70 right now, for goodness sakes. I’m not going to live forever. So my job now, my legacy is to say this is what I want for the industry, for the music lover. A fair deal.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah. And, and, and none of this has to cost $1 million, does it really? I mean when you, when you’ve worked out the engineering solution.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, it does. I mean the, the Houdini is expensive, don’t forget that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Give me a break.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Although your, your tone arm with the swiveling headshell is.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s my statements. M. Come on.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s a statement product. It’s, it’s, it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s my statement product, as is Kepler. You know, it’s. They’re going to be made to order when they eventually get Released out and what have you. it’s a bit of fun for me, but it’s not my focus.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It was it 30 or 40k or something like that.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I think 60k.
>> Andrew Hutchison: 60K for the whole system? yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because I’m not going to be doing them. M. I’m, I’m not. How many people are going to enjoy that? Just the people who just. Well, well oiled and No, my interest is in the average man in the streets. Yeah, that really is where we’re at. Well, clearly you can see it. It’s not. Not just me fluffing it. You can just see it from the profile products.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No Affordable mats, affordable feet, affordable Houdini, affordable headshell. And the sound. Review after review, people go, my goodness, I’ve never heard anything like it. Thank you. This is the sound that we should. Well, if you go to a, TV store, there might be a best one there. But typically you look across 20 of them, they’re all pretty damn good.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: How is it that the sound that I make is so different to everyone else’s?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, if you were asking me that question, I would say the likely answer is that you’re designing with the goal of sound quality as your number one design goal above all else. And, I think the reality is that a lot of products clearly, and like we’ve already stated, we don’t really care if your design goal was pretty, then that’s not a problem. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a good design goal.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, but you’ve got the third one where the design goal is, let’s see how much money we can squeeze out of you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that wouldn’t happen. What? No.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Oh, sorry if I got that wrong. Oh, wash my mouth out with them. well, I think there’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I feel like there’s a delicate and, and very elegant balancing act to be done there in, in, in. In making a, an. A larger than normal margin out of a product that sells well. But, but the thing is, your design goal is sound quality. Like, that’s, that’s your number one thing and that. So that’s, that’s different to most manufacturers, I think we can all agree is that.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That’s, that’s right. I don’t see why. Well, because what gets me. Well, Well, I do know. I actually, I can give you the answer, sadly. It’s because if I were to achieve my goal properly as a turntable audio manufacturer, in large part it would come to an end. Because people would stop spending money. They go, I’m happy with the sound that I’ve got.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think you’ve just nailed it on the head. That’s right, that’s that.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And what I say to customers is, I want you to buy my 3,000 pound upgrade with the FX3 arm, the Houdini, whatever. If you want to spend the FZ or whatever, that’s fine. But if we say that’s it and then I never want to hear from you again in the nicest possible way because you’re happy, you’re busy listening, buying and listening to records, you don’t need to come back to me and I won’t mind because there’s so many others waiting for the products that I make. So I’m happy as well. So it’s a win, win situation.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s not how the world of business works though, is it? Because if, if, if a, LCD TV like lasted for 100 years, clearly Samsung would be out of business. So it’s, it’s you got to keep selling more, I guess.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: But don’t forget, as I said, I’m an old man. This is why I don’t particularly care. I’m doing the best I can.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
Your videos are going to be translated into 15 different languages
And I guess, I guess at a certain age you do take a different, a slightly different outlook, do you think.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Or have you always.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I mean, I feel like you’ve always had.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah. Performance. This is me, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, this is me. one way or another. yeah, of course you’re going to find little ripples along the way, but they’re little ripples. Not. He’s changed. He’s done an about turn. He was this capitalist whatever and he’s not that now. No, it is, it’s my call. I believe, I believe in the. I believe in man rather than materials and money. I think the world’s got all sorts of issues. paid is what it is. I just did my little bit.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It always has and it’s, it’s certainly no better just at the moment. What, what, where do you see yourself? Sort of. What, what’s, what’s the next couple of years? You’ve got these videos that you’re making, which, which is one thing, but what, I mean, you’ve, you’ve got a great lineup of products already. Are, you, is there something you’re working on at the moment? I think is what I’m getting at that, we need to know about. There is, yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: The, the electronics are frightening. If you think Akutrak Good.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: There’s worse to come.
>> Andrew Hutchison: There’s worse to come. Okay, well, are you in a position to, eliminate.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, I can’t. But there one’s a power amplifier. That is what. And there’s a moving coil stage with which is so linear it’s crazy. Now I, you know, people say, oh, he’s a manufacturer, he can say that. Let’s go back to pink triangle. We released the pit preamp. It was the world’s first transconductance preamp. Fire. and it was reviewed in Japan against I think 15 or 20 other preamps and came up top.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I’ve got a, I’ve got a history of not bullying or conning the, the people that I talk to. If I, if I can’t do it, I don’t say it. If I can’t deliver it, it won’t happen. and that’s what we’re working on at the moment. But it’s just literally find time. Now these videos are going to take a fair bit of time to roll out.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: In addition to the English videos, there’s going to be. They’re all going to be translated into 15 different languages.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Because so many people around the world do not speak English.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, indeed. That’s right. Yeah. I mean, I, I guess, I mean most of the world doesn’t speak English once you. As far as their native languages.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: So the first one will be German and that could be out on Friday or early next week, but straight after that they’re going to go into nine other languages all told. and then some more afterwards. And all the videos are going to be translated and there’s a cutesy trick. They’re all done by avatar.
People are going to want it. What do you think the upshot is going to be
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: All right. And when you see the avatars, you go, that’s not an avatar, that’s a person.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, God. Is it like that? Is it okay?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s that it’s every single person. I said, look, you’re gonna come and see it. And they come out and say, you weren’t expecting to see that, were you? And they go, no, I wasn’t. It’s better, isn’t it? Damn site better. I mean, yeah, I know. I told you it was going to be that good. They are brilliant. They really are very, very good. And then we’ve got. So you asked me for the next two years that I’m mentioning this.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Purely because it’s going to take so long to roll all this out and then assume what I have said is reasonable. Fair. And accessible. What do you think the upshot is going to be? People are going to want it. We’re going to then be busy.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Trying to service the demand.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What, for the foreseeable these days. You mentioned in a past life with Pink that, you had quite a few staff at one point. What happens these days? Now, clearly, you’re not sitting at home in your back room making all of this stuff. You’ve got many helpers, one presumes, either in the form of subcontractor staff or otherwise. How does it all work? What’s the Dan.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Where’s that screwdriver gone? I’ve just dropped it. I’m sorry, you were saying? M. Yes, exactly. you know, I’ve reached that point now. Delegate. Work smarter, not harder.
>> Andrew
Hutchison: Well, it allows you to work on these other projects, obviously. So,
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, yeah.
We’re going into the DJ market with two new arms
So, of course, the next thing you wanted to know. The next thing I wanted to pull you out. I don’t think I mentioned this to.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You previously, where you go, next thing.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We’Re going into the DJ market.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It, Actually, I think you did allude to something like that. Yeah. No, you didn’t. You. You said back in the day you had been requested to make. Yeah, a better.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: We went to a club. we took our anniversary turntable to a club called Turnmills in London. Yeah, massive, great place, very well appointed. And we played it to him and the guy’s face just dropped like thunder. He went, I’ve just spent 120,000 on this kit and you just blown it all away. Can you make me that sound in a DJ form? Because I’ll. I’ll bite and everyone else will. Well, hey, life got in the way. It never happened. Now it’s going to happen with the isolation bubble. So we’ve. The APM is ideally suited to DJs. We’ve got a DJ version of the Boinks. And I’m now developing two new arms based on FX3, designed to take the Concorde cartridge. And also one’s got Houdini built into it. That second one is genuinely. Again, it’s going to be another Houdini job. I haven’t solved it yet and I’ve been at it for three months so far. Okay. It’s very tricky to incorporate it into.
>> Andrew Hutchison: The tube, I was going to say. So you want to. You want to use the, the. The Ortofon Concord, and you want to fit.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It’s the most popular cartridge.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. And you want to fit the Houdini into. Effectively into the. Into the connector on the end of the tube, effectively, that sort of thing.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes. Because you can’t. There’s no else to put it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And so, Sunny, you’re changing all the. I actually have got two Houdini design, so it’s the second design, but that’s still proving to be quite tricky.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: but I will have. Let me get. Bring the first arm, out, and that’ll be out in two, three weeks time. The prototype, and it’s been trialed by a couple of DJs and what have you. and let’s see how the. The word spreads. But there’s a. There is an. Although the analog side of DJs has crashed.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: For a company the size of funk, it’s quite nice. Thank you. Where the DJs kept analog going when digital, when CDs were running. So I’m now giving my. A bit back to them by saying we can make your sounds an awful lot better. Yeah. And they seem to be appreciating what’s happening.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Cool. To say the least. That’s amazing, actually.
Arthur, people can keep an eye out for videos on your YouTube channel
And I did want to just probe you a little further on the, You did say power amp. now that. Yes, that’s kind of out of your wheelhouse, I guess. but when you see the technology.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: You go, oh, I see why you can’t. They can’t possibly let that go.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay. All right, well. Well, we look forward to that. hey, amazing stories, Arthur. Thank you so much for your time. We’ve, covered a lot, in. In significant detail. People can keep an eye out for the videos on your YouTube channel. Channel. which is probably called Funk. Firm. Something or other. Something or other. What is the YouTube channel? Is it. Is it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I. I just typed in. As I said to you, it just typed in firm arm and came up.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s right. It did come up immediately, yes. Debug. Debugging. Debugging tone. Arm. that’s right. Yes. Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: so, yeah, there’s. There’s lots of fun to be had. I mean, there’s. Yeah, there’s. There’s more we could have gone into, but enough is enough.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, we. We. I mean, I think. Well, I’m. Yeah, we’ve covered a lot.
You went to Munich to show off some of Saffire’s new products
In fact, just one more thing to cover, though, before we say farewell. is, So Vienna next year. Is that a show that you go to. To show off some of these new products? Or is that.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, I won’t be doing that anymore. No, I’m too old. I’m not, I’m not interested. I think the publicity via the, Interweb will, will do us very nicely, thank you. We’ll have a much broader reach anyway. I mean, having come and seen us at, ah, the show, people then go back and do their research as it is.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: It means that unfortunately, and this is. I’m beginning to realize it, I won’t be making, friends, like with you or with other people.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s. It’s.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I mean, that’s the. I guess that’s the real reason to go to a show is to bump into people. But is a lot of people I’ve spoken to feel like they went to Munich because it was the last Munich this year. They. They. I mean, is that partly why you were there? Because you.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I mean, no, I had stopped doing shows completely.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And so why.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Then I got an invite.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Would you come and share our room with us?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah, yes, yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I thought, yeah, why not?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, absolutely.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: That was it. But then suddenly it’s a case of, what am I going to take? I can’t just take a, Houdini. I mean, that’s, that’s pretty boring. So got Saffire up and running and I think we. It sounded really nice. And then, I thought, let’s. Let’s make a statement and brought out Capra and, Copernicus.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, it was a good display, actually. yeah, okay.
No shows at all at the moment, says Wheel
All right, well, sorry to hear you’re not going to be at Vienna, but, but Bristol perhaps.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: you know.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, sorry, no, no, no shows at all.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Any shows at all.
>> Andrew Hutchison: We’re just doing videos.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Well, at the moment. In all seriousness, don’t you think I’ve got enough of my plan?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, you have got. You have got, I would say, way too much on your plate.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, I think it’s going to explode. And we will not cope. This is a fact. Yeah, but it is what it is. I can’t control it. so it seems pointless doing a show. if others within the business want to do the show, go for it. Knock yourselves out, guys. Hey, Wheel, meaning in my wheelchair, but not the moment.
Do you sell direct from your website or do you sell through distributors
>> Andrew Hutchison: how do you buy? Funk firm. Do you sell. Do you sell direct from your website?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Do you have any distribution around the world or do you just tend to sell pieces direct these days?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I think the distributors will start to come on again, but, the market became very fragmented and difficult because of the big boys trying to get it into the dealerships.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Where people say, I’ve already got such and such A brand such and such a range or so many brands. I don’t need another one.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And then there’s the market resistance to some of the products. Houdini, being one of them. Even though. Now let me see, how many cartridges are out there in the. On the planet M. Probably a few.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: The dealers aren’t interested because it stops them from selling the, the sealed box again.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah, yeah. See, that’s a. I guess that’s a thing, isn’t it? I mean, that’s. Yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: They don’t want to do the work. They’re not interested.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: If we’ve got to lift a screwdriver, we don’t know which end of the screwdriver to hold. We’re not interested.
>> Andrew Hutchison: There is, there is a. I don’t know whether it was something I read read, from your website or someone else’s, but I think it might have been yours. Is that there was. You were sort of alluding to the fact, and you are just now, that dealers aren’t really who they were 30 years ago and that, you know, us old geezers always say things were better back in the day. But back in the day, dealers fitted cartridges and tone arms with. With a high degree of care and skill. And it was part of what a specialist hi Fi store did. I don’t think there’s too many stores that fit a tone arm anymore.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And correct the number of dealers, I’ve said, why aren’t you selling our arm? Yeah, customers don’t want them. Well, sell the damn thing to them. No, they won’t do it. They don’t want to.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They don’t want to sell or fit it.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: No, exactly. It’s all sold over the Internet.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Buy a box. Buy a box. And I had a dealer ring me up about eight years ago, very well known, group of dealers. Hi, Arthur. We haven’t spoken for ages. I’ve got this query, this issue. Oh, no, no, you can’t tell me to do that because I’ve got no staff here who know any who understand analog. They’re all digital. That was it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I had.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: If I wanted an answer, I had to make it happen myself. I couldn’t rely on the dealer at all.
>>
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, all right. Yeah. Well then, then direct is the answer for you then.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Yeah, exactly. And, so we give all the support. There’s this, you know, it’s always been full money back refund guarantee. Anyway, if for whatever reason you’re not happy, that gives people confidence. A distributor said, you can’t do that, that shows weakness. And I’m going, how does that work? It shows that I’m confident that I don’t want to give you the money back, that my product will satisfy you. But I’m happy to if you’re not happy.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And so they. The whole mental process was in the wrong direction.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. There’s some pretty successful model business, there’s some successful brands doing that quite well. I mean, the reality is that if the product works, you’ll have a small. I mean, I guess. Do you get like 1% back or something? I don’t know. Would it be a tiny, tiny product?
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: Not even that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah. Well, then why would.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: In the first years, we’d get. We’d get, I think about maybe one or two acromats back a year. In the last two years, we’ve not had one back.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I don’t know why, don’t ask me. But it just. It just is, One guy couldn’t get on with a Houdini. He got a mismatch somewhere that. Which is fine. Again, fine.
Some people say the FX3 sounds flat and dull
there’s a guy on the views who said. Said that the FX3 sounds flat and dull. Well, one thing it doesn’t do is sound flat and done thinking. Well, if it sounded flat and dull, I’d know about it because I tend to keep an eye out for all of these things. So. To me, you’re a troll. it’s really weird because we’re so small and the market’s so big. I can. I’m quite happy wearing my heart on my sleeve. It doesn’t bother me.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You only need so much and. And there’s exactly. Customers. Yeah, that’s right.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I treat the game as clean as I can.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So, well, thank you again.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I hope we end up with happy customers.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You’ve had happy customers for decades, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem. And. But from what. From the sounds of what you’ve got going on at the moment and what I’ve seen, it’s, You’re going to be busy manufacturing more than developing. So, So good luck with that.
Arthur, thanks for coming on the show and telling us about everything
Hey, Arthur, I want to thank you, dearly for coming on the show, and telling us probably more than we bargained for about everything that you do.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: And I’ve got no idea what, how much I’ve put my foot in it, but I don’t care.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You said nothing. Nothing. It was all good. So thank you again. have a great day. Thank you.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: I appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, well, I’ve certainly enjoyed it. It. It’s been, quite, quite the ride. And I’m pretty sure the listeners will have enjoyed it as well. So, thanks again, Arthur, from. From back in the day, Pink Triangle. And of course, these days, Funko. So thank you, Arthur. Talk to you soon.
>> Arthur Khoubessarian: All the best.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Bye bye again.