Flat Earth

[howardc1951]

Im not sure when the first Audiolabs came on the scene

1985 if I remember correctly

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

They were two guys Derek Scotland and Phillip Swift who worked as a partnership and formed a company called Audiolab in 1983. That company got into trouble and was liquidated and restarted as Tag Maclaren in 1997, as Maclaren had lots of money they didn't want to give to the taxman. Then when Maclaren no longer needed the tax loss they closed it fed up of it losing money. The name and designs were bought by IAG (China) in 2004.

Phillip Swift is now managing director of Spendor.

[applemarc]

I remember buying my Exposure XI/XII pre at Sound Org in London, demmed against my VI/VII pre/Super VIII power, and a Naim set-up. I preferred the Exposure by a country mile (I think they were played through ARC speakers). I don't remember getting any pressure to change to Naim, indeed, they spoke very highly of Exposure.

I think when the sound org changed hands the new owner started selling Exposure Amps and became an Absolute sounds dealer as well. I also remember the guys had a problem with Linn when they started selling the Roksan and SME turntables no real surprise there though.

[Lindsayt]

You haven't mentioned the retailers...

Retailers?
I see 1 big difference between the UK hi-fi press and dealers. Every UK hi-fi magazine of the late 70's and 1980's was Flat Earth. Not every dealer was Flat Earth.
Trouble is, the press did steer punters towards the Flat Earth dealers.

There must have been some dealers that sold mid-range to top of the range Japanese kit in the UK? But these seem to have been few and far between. They must have faced an uphill struggle as I'm not sure how many customers had the conviction to trust their own ears in those days. One would think that all that a non flat earth dealer had to do was get an LP12 and a Naim 32.5/250 and Briks to demo against their non-ulta-budget Japanese kit to make an easy sale. Trouble is, we're dealing with psychology when so many customers would be sold on the flat earth kit before they stepped foot in any dealers, and they were just looking for confirmation than Linn Naim was the way to go.

As for all those dealers that did rigged demos, or that made incorrect claims such as "the LP12 is THE best turntable in the world", "those (non Naim) amps can't play in tune" etc etc - well all of that was despicable mis-selling.

I can understand why so many dealers jumped on the Flat Earth bandwagon. Easy way to sell a lot of kit with high mark-ups. And a sales model with no discounts ever given - apart from the odd bit of free cable thrown in. And to be fair, the best flat earth kit didn't sound crap. It sounded enjoyable enough. But not as enjoyable as the hype made it out to be - when compared to decent opposition.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

For clever people the Japanese manufacturers didn't play the UK hi-fi market very well. They went for distributors and picked the ones that guaranteed the highest turnover. So knowing they would lose the agencies if they didn't do that turnover they then supplied the box shifters, the discounters like Comet, Lasky's and the Tottenham Ct Rd and Edgware Rd crowd. Poor service poor staff poor understanding meant the lowest common denominator, so for example when the excellent Pioneer PL71 was available the market they pushed was the PL12D - cheap prices - shift boxes - they laid themselves open to not doing any high end business, and to be honest I don't think they cared. They have very little respect for us and we were just to make money from, the excellence was for prestige in their home market and maybe the US.

You have to understand both Chinese and Japanese motivation, it is what is known as "face" and is next to impossible to translate into western behaviour.

EDIT:- this tries to explain it but falls short with losing some of the nuance. I understand face because of my Chinese Tai-Chi master sadly now dead, who never explained it to me *he gave it to me*. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(soci ... l_concept)

[Gromit]

His first amp was a 70 watt 4 box creation with the power supply in the large box with the preamp and two power amps in matching smaller boxes which sat on top of the power supply and I think was coloured beige.

I remember that one - heard it at a show many years ago and the system was definitely one of the few havens of enjoyment on the day.

Never really been a fan of the 8000A in any incarnation. Always made me puzzle at how, seeing that A'lab allegedly based the amp on the A&R A60 blueprint, they managed to cock up what was previously a lovely amp.

[jammy395]

Hi Gromit, As previously stated i did like the first Audiolabs - (young n daft) - But the A&R A60 was a lot nicer as you say...Ran one years ago with a wobbly Thorens TT.
Nice amp...........
On the subject of early integrated amps....Has any one out there any experience with Musical Fidelity A1000...An old mate -sadly no longer with us - had one and used to speak highly of it....Now if i remember i think the buggers used to run very very hot.................mmmhhh

[Firebug1]

Being a younger generation hifi nut, this was nice hifi-history tour to the dark side of FE. I have tried Naim my self, had nait xs, cd5x, flatcap2, stageline and headline+napcs about a year. I liked how it sounded, but when I change to current Heed kit, I realized that it was that midbass humb, what made it so fun to listen. Used to think all the time to what upgrade next, but the prices, even s/h, are so high that I thought not gonna spend rest of my life and money to on and on going naim upgrade circle.

[kimangelis]

Not sure if I succumbed to the Flat Earth ethos, which perhaps implies I was completely hoodwinked and just never realised, and further implies how successful the movement was. I certainly re-built a Thorens TD166 with a heavier base-board (a la Ken Kessler) then grafted on a lovely Audio Technica arm I found in a 2nd-hand shop. There weren't many 'upper-level' hi-fi shops in East Lancashire so we (my friends and I) all scoured the mags for 2nd-hand deals.
When I did visit the classier dealers in central and south Manchester (circa 1980), I and a friend were treated very shabbily. We questioned why a given item cost what it did, and were derided for questioning the apparent status quo. I thought the NAD 3020 was thrown together, preferring Creek and early Rotel. After I crossed the great divide, I found a small store in Huddersfield which specialized in what he described as 'exploiting fools with too much money'. He could put together a decent system of 2nd-hand units that were matched pretty well. Almost all had Pioneer or Rotel turntables, as he argued Linn and the like were simply too fiddly and unreliable, and certainly not worth the money. He asked what we listened to.... So my friend got a monster of a Trio receiver at 120wpc, and me a Sansui AU217. I had some medium-sized KEF speakers, and my friend some whopping great Wharfedales (he was a reggae fan).
I suppose I'm saying I agree with what has been written so far, but that it's not that difficult to go your own way. I treated hi-fi main dealers then with the same disdain and mistrust as I give to motor main dealers today. I would never buy any hi-fi from a main dealer, nor would I buy a car from a motor main dealer, preferring small specialist dealers with a more personal touch, and who will listen to what you really want, then apply their experience and expertise. I think then we were all moving and upgrading toward the ethos of Linn/Naim/Linn but were fortunate to come across small retailers who poo-poo'd this way of thinking and set us on a righteous path.
I think what really blew it for me was that after recommending HT speaker cables only available from the (then) Electricity Generating Board, a Jimmy Somebody started advocating thin speaker cable with 75ohm aerial lead as the 'best ever'. Oh and Peter Belt's small pieces of paper strategically placed in ones listening room.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

As far as I am concerned the flat earth was about Linn and Naim as joined and then separated marketing entities, and their dealers, and their reviewers, and their magazine editors (yes they owned them in reality). There were companies on the fringe and grudgingly accepted, but only if they didn't compete with any Linn - Naim products and were approved by IvorT (like the NAD 3020). Some dealers towed the line exactly, some took other product in because they felt they had to give the customer some choice, but they tried not to sell them by making them sound worse on dem, or by persuasion using the flat earth brainwash bullshit.