A Tribute to Roy F.
Allison
(1927-2016)
Acoustics researcher, writer, loudspeaker designer
and good friend of BLUZ BROZ ENTERTAINMENT... Roy Allison, age 88, died March 1 in
Manchester, New Hampshire after enduring a long illness.
Allison was born in Milford, Connecticut on May
6,1927. He was the oldest in family of 12 children. Upon graduation
from high school, Allison enlisted in the US Navy Reserve and served
from 1944-1946; he spent his first year of duty in intensive electronics
training and for the remaining year and a half, he was a
radar-electronics instructor.
Following his service, he attended the University of
Connecticut from 1946-1949, majoring in electrical engineering, leaving
one year shy of a degree in order to support his wife and new baby. He
was subsequently recalled to the Navy in 1951 to serve for eight months
during the Korean conflict.
Allison was born in Milford, Connecticut on May
6, 1927. He was the oldest in family of 12 children. Upon graduation
from high school, Allison enlisted in the US Navy Reserve and served
from 1944-1946; he spent his first year of duty in intensive electronics
training and for the remaining year and a half, he was a
radar-electronics instructor.
Following his service, he attended the University of
Connecticut from 1946-1949, majoring in electrical engineering, leaving
one year shy of a degree in order to support his wife and new baby. He
was subsequently recalled to the Navy in 1951 to serve for eight months
during the Korean conflict.
In 1949, Allison became a draftsman and staff writer
for Radio Communications (Radiocom, Inc.) and was named editor
in 1951. Radiocom changed to "Audiocom, Inc" and began publishing High
Fidelity magazine in 1953. He became a contributing editor to High
Fidelity while continuing to be editor to other trade publications,
including TV and Radio Engineering, and Communications
Engineering, and beginning in 1955, Audiocraft magazine. By
1954, Allison had become associate editor of High Fidelity and
audio editor in 1957. By 1959, however, High Fidelity magazine
moved on to new owners and was sold to Billboard Publishing, but Allison
had elected to stay with his original publishing company, Audiocom, Inc.
Allison's writing clarity and electronics knowledge
led to a meeting with Acoustic Research co-founder and president,
Edgar Villchur; in March, 1959, Allison joined AR as "assistant to
the president." This position was to be as public-relations assistant
to Villchur, but soon after working in AR's repair department,
customer service and production engineering, he solved several large
production/shipping issues that developed with the AR-2 speaker, and he
became chief engineer in 1961. After plant manager Harry Rubenstein
left AR to return to teaching in the fall of 1964, Allison assumed this
position. Abe Hoffman, former AR president and Allison
Acoustics Vice President, commented in 1962 that Roy Allison and
Gerald Landau (sales and marketing) were brought into Acoustic
Research as understudies who could step into management at the
appropriate time, and this proved to be forward thinking on the part of
Edgar Villchur.
In 1967, at the time of AR's acquisition by
Teledyne, Inc., Allison was made vice president of engineering and
manufacturing, a position he held until he resigned from the company in
1972. During these years, Allison established AR's renowned
quality-control program, warranty policies and designed (or managed
the development of) the AR-3a, AR-4, AR-4x, AR-2x, AR-2ax, AR-5,
AR-6, AR-7 and AR-LST loudspeakers in addition to the line of
electronics products, including the AR Amplifier, FM Tuner and Receiver
and the hugely successful AR-XA Turntable.
In late 1972, Allison left Acoustic Research and
spent approximately a year studying the interaction of loudspeakers and
rooms. With newfound knowledge of the effects of room boundaries on
loudspeakers—now well-known as the Allison Effect "boundary dip"—he felt
that he could use this knowledge in the design of a new line of
loudspeakers that would address these issues, and co-founded—and became
president of—Allison Acoustics, Inc. in March, 1974. He subsequently
filed for a patent on his design, US Patent 3,983,333 and published
disclosure articles on his research and findings. During this time,
Allison also designed a new midrange and tweeter unit with exceptionally
wide dispersion, and a patent was applied for this design as
well. Allison was responsible for the development and production of
Allison Acoustics loudspeakers that were considered to be among the
highest-quality products available at that time, including such models
as the Allison: One, Two, Three and Four, and subsequent models of that
range. Leading high-fidelity publications, as well as consumer-testing
organizations such as Consumer Guide and Consumer Reports,
consistently rated Allison speakers at or near the top in performance
and quality. In the late 1980s, Allison's new flagship model, the IC20,
received France's Dispason d'Or top award for
excellence. Allison Acoustics closed in 1990.
Roy Allison continued with speaker design into the
early 1990s, forming RDL (Room-Designed Loudspeakers) and subsequently
RAL (Roy Allison Labs), a mail-order organization. By 1993, Allison
retired from the day-to-day grind of loudspeaker engineering and
production, and he began outside consulting work in the loudspeaker
industry with clients such as JBL, Cambridge Acoustics and
BIC AMERICA.
Allison was intelligent, clear-thinking and largely
self-taught in acoustics and mathematics. He was an excellent and
precise writer, and during his career, he authored over 100 articles in
audio trade magazines and papers in peer-reviewed audio and engineering
journals, such as the Journal of Audio Engineering Society (JAES)
and the Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA). In
1962, he wrote a fine book, High Fidelity Systems: A User's Guide,
first published by Acoustic Research and later reprinted by Dover
Publications in 1965. In 1973, Allison was elected a life Fellow of the
Audio Engineering Society for his contributions to the understanding of
interaction of loudspeakers and room acoustics. As well, Allison was an
IEEE member.
Acoustic Research
Acoustic Research, Inc. ("AR"), co-founded by
Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss in the summer of 1954, became
one of the great pioneering hi-fi speaker companies in the history of
audio. Not unlike Hewlett-Packard's genesis of California's
silicon-valley electronics businesses in the late-1930s, Acoustic
Research, on a smaller scale, spawned many of the great loudspeaker
companies in the Boston area of New England during the 1950s and 1960s,
such as KLH, Advent and later, Boston Acoustics.
From AR's start in 1954 came the AR-1, the first
acoustic-suspension loudspeaker, followed by the smaller AR-2; in the
late 1950s, AR introduced the AR-3, a speaker incorporating the hi-fi
industry’s very first dome tweeters, an engineering innovation that has
since become standard practice, even to this day.
By the early 1960s, these relatively small AR
speakers—capable of reproducing powerful deep-bass response and
wide-dispersion, low-distortion treble response—replaced many of the
huge refrigerator-sized Bozak, Klipschorn, E-V, JBL and Altec Lansing
speakers to became the new standards of sound reproduction in the home.
The timing of the new small AR speakers was perfect, as it coincided
with the 1958 introduction of two-channel stereo, which necessitated the
placement of two reasonably-sized speakers in the living room. The world
of high-fidelity sound reproduction changed forever.
During Roy Allison's 13-year career at AR, he made
many important contributions to the U.S. speaker market, introducing
many new "industry-standard" AR speakers such as the AR-3a and the AR-LST.
After Allison left AR he started his own company, Allison Acoustics in
the 1970’s, and continued making excellent loudspeakers, many of which
became "standards" in their own right.
Roy's last design assignment was initiated by Ms.
Heidi Bottum of BIC AMERICA.
Roy Allison - Missed but NOT Forgotten
Through the years, Mr. Allison was highly regarded in
his industry and characterized by a kind, soft-spoken and self-effacing
demeanor... Always thoughtful and always generous. He put the
customer first, always, and he will be missed in the high-fidelity
loudspeaker industry as one of the premiere designers of the formative
audio years. |
