I was struck (motivated by the thread on the Assoluta speakers) how names have changed in audio. In the old days, just about all equipment had the manufacturer's name and then a number. I remember starting out in hifi with my AR5 speakers. There were KLH Model 6, Quad 57 and 63 (for the years they were introduced), and my strangely numbered Magnepan 2167F (IIRC) which were followed by the Magnepan Model II's. Acoustic Research preamps included some upgrades by adding letters to the numbers, thus I had an ARC 6B preamp.
Not sure where it started, but certainly today, much equipment, particularly speakers and cables, have exotic names, usually with some aspirational reference in their names - the Vienna Acoustics Speakers have Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn and even a Schoenberg series with Berg and Webern. They stay with the Vienna theme with Klimt, although not a composer. However there is no speaker named for that great Viennese composer Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf!
I guess what struck me was that the names try to suggest that the product is related to the name in some psychological way. The Assoluta speakers to me are the extreme example. In music I think of assoluta in the context of ballet - the prima ballerina assoluta - the rarest of titles, having been given to the very very best ballerinas of the past century or more - only a dozen or so in the world. A prima ballerina assoluta comes along once a decade or so. I was lucky enough to see two of them - Margot Fonteyn dancing with the Royal Ballet (with Nureyev) and Maya Plisetskaya dancing with Bolshoi. This implies that the speaker named Assoluta has these same qualities.
Cables have also gone to be given names - Nordost and Audioquest are two that come to mind - with their series lineup in order of price also ordered by some relative rank of name (like snakes or Norse gods).
Any suggestions to manufacturers for names for their products? I'll start with one - the Pavarotti speaker - great tone and volume, but very heavy.
Larry
Not sure where it started, but certainly today, much equipment, particularly speakers and cables, have exotic names, usually with some aspirational reference in their names - the Vienna Acoustics Speakers have Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Haydn and even a Schoenberg series with Berg and Webern. They stay with the Vienna theme with Klimt, although not a composer. However there is no speaker named for that great Viennese composer Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf!
I guess what struck me was that the names try to suggest that the product is related to the name in some psychological way. The Assoluta speakers to me are the extreme example. In music I think of assoluta in the context of ballet - the prima ballerina assoluta - the rarest of titles, having been given to the very very best ballerinas of the past century or more - only a dozen or so in the world. A prima ballerina assoluta comes along once a decade or so. I was lucky enough to see two of them - Margot Fonteyn dancing with the Royal Ballet (with Nureyev) and Maya Plisetskaya dancing with Bolshoi. This implies that the speaker named Assoluta has these same qualities.
Cables have also gone to be given names - Nordost and Audioquest are two that come to mind - with their series lineup in order of price also ordered by some relative rank of name (like snakes or Norse gods).
Any suggestions to manufacturers for names for their products? I'll start with one - the Pavarotti speaker - great tone and volume, but very heavy.
Larry
