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Kloss Industies...Baruch-Lang loudspeaker


Guest Droog

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Just found one of these.....a corner speaker with 4 drivers, 21" wide x 13" high. Label reads 'Baruch-Lang corner loudspeaker system, Kloss Industries, 10 Arrow st. Cambridge Mass." This must be one of Henry's first speakers....any history or details welcome.

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Guest Droog

Since posting, I found the following info; The speaker was designed in 1951 or 52 at the MIT Acoustics Lab by Jordan Baruch, a professor and Henry Lang, a graduate student. Henry Kloss built these speakers in his Cambridge loft under the name Kloss Industries and sold them direct and later through dealers. I think it's safe to say this is the first Kloss loudspeaker and the birth of the "Boston sound". The AR chapter started shortly after this.

Baruch - Lang is mentioned in a recent Edgar Villchur interview by David Lander www.stereophile.com

......It's nice to see Egar is still going strong at age 87 !

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>Since posting, I found the following info; The speaker was

>designed in 1951 or 52 at the MIT Acoustics Lab by Jordan

>Baruch, a professor and Henry Lang, a graduate student. Henry

>Kloss built these speakers in his Cambridge loft under the

>name Kloss Industries and sold them direct and later through

>dealers. I think it's safe to say this is the first Kloss

>loudspeaker and the birth of the "Boston sound". The AR

>chapter started shortly after this.

> Baruch - Lang is mentioned in a recent Edgar Villchur

>interview by David Lander www.stereophile.com

>

>......It's nice to see Egar is still going strong at age 87 !

>

It is true that Henry Kloss was building the Baruch-Lang speakers while a student at MIT. However, it is *not* safe to say that this was a Kloss-designed loudspeaker, of course, as it was only assembled by Kloss and sold to students around the campus. Kloss was a student of Edgar Villchur in a course on high-fidelity reproduction at NYU, and he learned of Villchur's acoustic-suspension design in that class. The AR-1 was the beginning of the "New England Sound," not the Baruch-Lang speaker. It was really not even on the map, and was not considered a seriously accurate reproducer, only an inexpensive speaker sold to MIT students that produced decent sound for the money. At the time of its introduction the AR-1 was one of -- if not the most -- significant contribution to accurate high-fidelity sound reproduction since the invention of the moving-coil loudspeaker.

--Tom Tyson

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Droog's post correctly states that this speaker was designed by Baruch and lang then built by Kloss. Definately no where near the amazing product that the AR-1 was but it seems to be the first production speaker by any Boston based "hi-fi" oriented group. Maybe there was someone before this but I have no knowledge of one

My Father-inlaw was an MIT student, 1948-53 (at the magnet lab for his PhD). In his basement he has several home made speaker enclosures from this era. He tells me that several different students were making up cabinets to make a "better speaker". One of these I have.... about 1.5 cu ft. plywood box, cut out for a 6" driver, has twelve 1/4" holes drilled in front making it a bass reflex type. And a odd baffle inside. Kind of a scary looking thing that never had a driver installed, a prehistoric hi-fi item, circa 1949 !

The Kloss Industries speaker has it's place in history, but as Tom states, was not much of a speaker. The AR-1 turned the audio World upsidedown in 1954 and set the standard for sound reproduction for twenty plus years.

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> My Father-inlaw was an MIT student, 1948-53 (at the magnet

>lab for his PhD). In his basement he has several home made

>speaker enclosures from this era. He tells me that several

>different students were making up cabinets to make a "better

>speaker". One of these I have.... about 1.5 cu ft. plywood

>box, cut out for a 6" driver, has twelve 1/4" holes drilled in

>front making it a bass reflex type. And a odd baffle inside.

>Kind of a scary looking thing that never had a driver

>installed, a prehistoric hi-fi item, circa 1949 !

This was in essence the definition of the Baruch-Lang speaker: an attempt to make a better-sounding loudspeaker. As stated above, many students at MIT and other engineering schools attempted to improve on some of the existing loudspeakers of the day. The Baruch-Lang was undoubtedly an improvement over the generic "build-it-yourself" devices that were prevalent during the post-WWII years, and was most likely properly designed according to the science of the day. During this early hi-fi era, many audiophiles and music-lovers purchased raw drivers from Jensen, Electro-Voice or University or the like, and then stuffed these speakers into large bass-reflex cabinets. These speakers could be expensive and were usually quite heavy and didn't perform particularly well. Lots of coloration and ear strain. Better-heeled audiophiles would sometimes buy the large horn-type speakers (Klipsch, Jensen, University, E-V, JBL, etc) in an attempt to get better bass response. Some infinite-baffle speakers were good, such as the Bozak Concert Grand and so forth, but all these attempts to improve sound resulted in large, heavy and expensive loudspeakers with improved bass and efficiency, but still exhibiting some coloration.

When introduced in October 1954, the Acoustic Research AR-1 brought changes in speaker technology that literally rocked the high-fidelity industry: (1) new standards in deep-bass response; (2) new standards in low-bass harmonic distortion and (3) new standards in flatness of frequency response and acoustic-power response and sonic accuracy. This new accuracy actually resulted in speakers that had a "laid-back," reticent quality that many people later termed "The New England" sound, vs. the more in-your-face, bright-sounding west-coast speakers such as Altec Lansing and JBL, etc. There was a distinct lack of "brightness" in the AR-1 -- and even the later AR-3, AR-2, KLH-4, KLH-6 and other speakers that were subsequently designed and manufactured in the New England area. This lack of "brightness" was actually a form smoothness and accuracy (really more like the real experience) that would later become associated with products from these companies.

--Tom Tyson

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