In the late 1940's and early 1950's a vast majority of sound reproduction systems were either entertainment center consoles or floor-standing radios. These systems were generally expensive with more focus on the wood cabinets than the components.這很妙啊...
當年買得起的人當然手頭上很有，不豪華怎麼可以勒？
其實現在也沒啥差別，這二十年來的HiFi音響也都是在拼外觀，箱身的成本絕對比內容物高啊...
沒辦法，外觀不吸引人就沒人買，你說怎麼辦呢？
那年國府轉進台灣...
Audiophiles could have purchased a McIntosh power amplifier as early as 1949. McIntosh's first product, designed by Frank McIntosh and Gordon Gow was the 50W-1 basic power amplifier.
Many early McIntosh tube amplifiers were made for medical and industrial uses rather than sound reproduction.挺有趣...很多產品/技術往往最初都是專業用途，後來發現消費性市場大得多，就轉戰囉...
Saul Marantz's first product, the $143.50 Audio Consolette, appeared in 1955.1955年的143.5美金？哇啊，該是個驚人的數字...
顯然HiFi向來都沒便宜多少啊...
反倒是如今的Marantz還比較便宜吧？
H.H. Scott entered the audio game in 1947. His first commercial product was "The Dynamic Noise Suppressor." It revolutionized radio because it made it possible, for the first time, to play 78 RPM records over the air without the ticks and pops blowing up radio transmitters.很有趣...我實在記不得小時聽廣播中的音樂會不會有LP的炒豆聲...還是說廣播電台都有這種機器勒？
But under his direction Fisher Radio remained a technology leader right up to 1969, when he sold the company to Sanyo.
原來Fisher賣給了三洋啊...我實在不覺得三洋是個出音響產品的公司...
Wikipedia上說1975賣的，http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_Electronics
Fisher is generally known to be the first company to introduce separate audio components. Originally, hi-fi systems were integrated all into one chassis.
原來"組合音響"的始作俑者就是Fisher啊...
Harman Kardon's first audio products were more high style than high-tech, with easily removable faceplates available in a variety of designer colors as their principal selling point.嗯...我也一直想搞這招...
Although better known today for their speakers, Quad's first commercial product was a power amplifier, the Quad 1. It wasn't until 1956 that Quad unveiled their first speaker, the legendary ESL57 which remained in production for twenty-eight years.這種一賣28年的事，大概只有那個年代有可能...
除非啥都自己做，否則零件供應商不搞了，就只能改囉...
To give you an idea of how quickly the early hi-fi industry was growing, University, who specialized in speaker components rather than fully assembled speakers, expanded their line of drivers from only five offerings in 1950 to over 35 different drivers in 1952.音響出現，終於可以在家聽罐頭音樂，而不必出門去聽live囉～
想來，台灣的中華商場時代應該也是如此吧...
Lowther also made "the Horn Cabinet" which was a corner-loaded cabinet based on a "tractrix" curve in its horn design. At $225 I suspect that most Lowther owners did then what they do today - build their own cabinets.這牌子嘛...老音響迷應該比較熟悉，我哪，只聞其名，完全不知道是啥東西...
Tannoy, was already importing their 12" and 15" "Dual Concentric" into the United States by 1952.算來60年以上囉～老當益壯的牌子。
Acoustic Research, better known by their initials, AR, started with a hand-built prototype acoustic suspension speaker built in Ed and Rosemary Villchur's kitchen. This prototype was pictured in an October 1954 article in Audio titled "Revolutionary Loudspeaker and Enclosure" by Edgar M. Villchur. Villchur is credited "President, Acoustic Research Inc., 23 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge 38, Mass."
And so from tiny acorns, the era of the acoustic suspension speakers began. Acoustic suspension or sealed enclosure design, simply outperformed all the other speaker designs available in the mid-50's and it revolutionized the industry. Because acoustic suspension speakers are far less efficient than Open baffle and horn speakers, they require more power to function properly. Instead of a 5-watt single-ended triode tube amplifier, an acoustic suspension design needs at least a 35-watt ultra linear amplifier, if not something even bigger. But what? The what was transistor amplifiers. Using transistors, electronics manufacturers could economically produce power amplifiers with far higher power output than they could using tubes.
這段有意思，AR出現，導致擴大機大革命！晶體機抬頭！
AR之前的喇叭箱體大致都只能算個障板吧...
Reel-to-reel tape recorders, which had been the primary means for audiophiles to enjoy stereo recordings in the late '50's, faded away during the 60's and 70's as turntables, tonearms, cartridges and FM tuners got better and fewer recordings were offered in the reel-to-reel format.前陣子還聽過盤帶機的聲音哪...
The very first stereo radio broadcasts were in the late 1950's, but they were primarily experiments. For these stereo broadcasts you had to set one channel on an FM station while the other was on an AM station. Scott, made a dual-band tuner, the 330, which was set up so you could get AM in the right channel and FM in the left. The first true stereo FM tuners that used the multiplex system of stereo decoding didn't hit the market until 1962.很妙啊...
Once stereo FM broadcasts became the norm, the market for FM tuners grew exponentially. Also an entirely new product appeared, the receiver It incorporated a tuner, preamp, and power amp in one chassis. Cheaper to build and more home-friendly than separate components, the receiver quickly dominated the market, so by the late 60's only audiophiles and pro sound engineers even considered separate tuners, preamps and power amps.這也很妙，音響拆成各部組件實在沒啥道理，除了喇叭得分成兩隻之外，其他的都裝在一箱就好了，何必搞成那麼多箱勒？
The other important trend in the 60's was brought on by the usurpation of the role of the vacuum tube by the transistor. Japanese hifi firms hadn't seen much success with their tube-based designs in the early 60's.But with the advent of the transistor Pioneer, Yamaha, Sony, Sherwood, Kenwood, and Sansui, all entered the US market with products whose specifications far exceeded those of US-made tube-based components. Of course 20-20 hindsight shows that these specifications used THD or total harmonic distortion figures rather than breaking down the harmonic distortion into 1st, 2nd, 3d, and 4th order harmonics. If they had, audiophiles would have seen how the distortion characteristics of early transistors were much worse at higher odd-order harmonics than tubes. Many audiophiles switched from tube electronics to solid-state electronics and discovered that the sonic results weren't a step up in quality or enjoyment.這段也很妙啊...原來日本機是這麼開始的...
Everyone else I knew had something similar. That's a lot of Garrard turntables, Pickering cartridges, and AR 4x speakers going from apartment to apartment.哈，我也有一隻，現在！
Joe Grado who began Grado Labs, in 1948, was and is first and foremost, an inventor and opera singer and audio designer. He's designed and built phono cartridges, turntable tonearms, headphones, microphones, and propellers.最後一項是？螺旋槳？啊？
Janszen Acoustics was another firm driven by the design genius of one man, Arthur Janszen, who pioneered electrostatic speaker design in the United States.喔，我只知道Janszen的變壓器...
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