Quote Originally Posted by Ken Pachkowsky View Post
I heard 3 Westlake designed rooms at that time and did not find any of them harsh....interesting opinion.
I visited hundreds of Hidley's studios during the '70s and the only one to really impress me was the Phonogram complex in Hilversum, The Netherlands.

In fact, it was the nicest studio I have ever seen! No financial constraints - no holds barred. It was in the middle of a large "aspen-like" forest and had a lot of glass walls so the studios seemed to extend into the trees.

Phillips had had their hand in it big time so it wasn't "pure" Hidley - the trademark "rough" red rock and warm wood treatment had been abandoned for a "smooth" fieldstone, cool grey/blue colour scheme - but it was definitely Hidley! Gorgeous.

We were there installing some of my gear in preparation for a Golden Earring session and got to experience the studios in operation over a couple of days.

This was in about '78 and I don't know what version of the monitors were in use but the evolution of Tom's philosophy paid off big time in Holland. I thought it sounded great!

Tom's success was in holding his cards close to his vest, taking a very proprietary, holistic approach to building recording "systems" - keeping the design, construction, installation and certification processes completely "in-house". But the "Hidley approach" cost a lot of money and you couldn't buy it out of a dealer showroom! He didn't license his intellectual properties. Many copied his designs without understanding and failed.

This was about the same time I was planning and developing the Fostex Laboratory Series monitors and it would be accurate to say I felt we could build a monitor that would do as well, or better, but on a distributable and reproducible basis!

We ended up successfully delivering a standardized, but scalable solution which could be retrofitted to a variety of existing facilities and which could be a core component of new designs. Our design provided a new standard, consistent reproducible performance in applications ranging from mobile trucks through the the largest world-class installations.

And I believe we addressed and conquered those specific issues in the "Westlake" design with which I found fault. The Fostex Laboratory Series monitors exhibited extremely well-mannered dispersion and integral time correction/phase alignment. They did not sound "harsh". And I dare say that no-one who heard them would disagree!

IMHO.

BTW, in order to provide a correct low-frequency acoustic load for the monitors, we supplied both half-space 2π steradian soffit mounting kits and vertical versions with plinths for full-space 4π steradian environments.