C. Victor Campos

[tysontom]

C. Victor Campos

C. Victor Campos, 84, from Framingham, Massachusetts, an alumnus of Acoustic Research from 1960 until 1963 and again from 1974 until 1979, died on December 11, 2017 after an extended illness.

Victor briefly worked at AR's Music Room in New York in 1959 and later worked in customer services and assisted Ed Villchur with the production of the Live-vs.-Recorded series in the early 1960s.  In 1963, Victor went to competitor KLH Research and Development Corporation to work in customer service and engineering under Henry Kloss, but he returned to AR in 1974 working with the Advanced Development Division's new speakers.  During these years, Victor produced a superb series of FM broadcasts out of Boston, "Adventures in Sound" and "Shop Talk."  These broadcasts were done with master tapes without compression, usually  challenging a FM listener's high-fidelity equipment; i.e., if you did not possess AR heavyweight loudspeakers in your system, you were likely to sense distortion during playback!  These were superb reel-to-reel tapes done on Ampex AG-440 machines and similar high-end transcription recorders.

In the mid 1970s, Victor produced the excellent Neil Grover (drums)/AR-10π live-vs.-recorded demonstrations that showed the extremely capable and accurate reproduction of the AR-10π, especially reproducing the bass drum at high levels.  This was a very difficult demonstration—in ways more difficult than the Fine Arts or Gustavo Lopez demonstrations—requiring enormous amplifier peak levels of over 800 watts per channel to reproduce the peak acoustic levels.  Steve F on this site attended at least one of those demonstrations and can elaborate on the effectiveness of that demonstration.  Much of the credit for the success was due to Victor Campos' understanding of amplifiers, loudspeakers and tape recorders, and he was able to produce excellent results during these LvR demonstrations.

Before Victor left AR (he was also at Adcom and NAD through the years), he was very instrumental in the development of the AR9 tower loudspeaker.  Initially, Victor wanted the AR9 to be a "powered" speaker complete with built-in amplifiers for woofers, midrange and tweeters, but he was not successful in that quest!  At times, Victor could go overboard: when the AR-10 was being developed, a problem occurred with hinge on the fold-out solid-walnut access door on the front.  It would bind and stick.  Victor wanted to quit "experimenting" and simply cut to the chase: add ball bearings to the hinge!  Of course, this was much too expensive, and a proper hinge was developed which worked well without problems.  His influence was felt!

Victor was an intelligent but sometimes impatient person, yet he accomplished a great deal in the years he was at Acoustic Research and KLH.  He will be greatly missed!

—Tom Tyson  12Dec2017

 

[GD70]

Very nice, informative write up Tom. 

Thank you.

Glenn

[Steve F]

I met Victor on several occasions during my multi-decade stint in the electronics/speaker biz.

I had an e-mail exchange about Victor's death yesterday with a good friend who worked closely with him at KLH in the mid-60's. Victor had been quite compromised from a stroke last year and when my friend told me he'd died, I said this:

"Much too dynamic an individual to live in a compromised, graceless state.

Wherever he is now, he's driving them nuts boasting about his past accomplishments, making wild predictions of success to come and hitting on all the women. 

That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?"

To which my friend replied, "Yup, I don't think you missed a thing."

The amount of "tribal" undocumented knowledge and stories about the hi-fi biz from the 1950's thru the 1970's that will vanish forever as us 'old guard' dies off is truly staggering.

Steve F.

 

[DavidR]

Thanks for the write-up Tom.

It looks like Victor was a BIG thinker and an outside of the box thought.

[JKent]

Victor Campos on the KLH Model Thirty-Three

[EBradMeyer]

As one of the hosts on the Boston WBUR-FM radio show, "Shop Talk," I can attest that Victor had nothing to do with this show apart from occasional appearances as a guest.

 

We did promote his "Adventures In Sound" broadcasts over on WGBH and we all enjoyed them. Thanks for what was otherwise an excellent and accurate tribute. -- E. Brad Meyer

[EBradMeyer]

Oh, yes -- I too attended Victor's live-vs.-recorded demo of the drum kit. He picked a challenging source and conducted the demos in a relatively small room. The percussionist learned to fake his playing so that it really looked like the recorded parts could have been live -- and they sounded live as well. Most people who did not hear the comparison would not credit the accuracy of this reproduction. It was a remarkable feat. -- EBM

[tysontom]

9 hours ago, EBradMeyer said:

As one of the hosts on the Boston WBUR-FM radio show, "Shop Talk," I can attest that Victor had nothing to do with this show apart from occasional appearances as a guest.

 

We did promote his "Adventures In Sound" broadcasts over on WGBH and we all enjoyed them. Thanks for what was otherwise an excellent and accurate tribute. -- E. Brad Meyer

  

Brad, thanks for that clarification on the "Shop Talk" show on WBUR-FM.  I apologize for misstating that detail in my short tribute about Victor Campos; I was actually unsure of his exact participation and relied on something I read from another source.  I was originally aware of  his work on "Adventures in Sound," but I let the two programs run together in my description.

Thanks again,

—Tom Tyson

[DavidR]

He lived in Framingham right around the corner from me.

[Steve Robinson]

Victor may not have created ShopTalk (I did...) but I'm sure he was a terrific guest to have on the program.  

 

Steve R. 

[Dave in 72]

On 12/13/2017 at 10:25 AM, JKent said:

Victor Campos on the KLH Model Thirty-Three

I just now thought I’d look up dear Victor Campos, a.k.a. Veek (as Misha Scheider called him, a.k.a. Vitta Cramps (as he was once called by a telephone operator).  What sad delayed news.  In the 60s and 70s, Victor donated a lot of his weekend time at the Marlboro Music Festival and occasionally donated some equipment, including a pair of KLH33’s.  I met him when I was lucky to be the recording engineer there in cough 72.  Victor was so fun and so knowledgeable and generous.  He made me feel good by saying he liked the way I “control the machines” (a Swiss way of saying calibrating).  Out of the blue he also gave /me/ a pair of KLH33's.  What a sweetheart.  They are my main speakers to this day, and they sound better than ever, thanks to Audyssey calibration.  In my second summer, I spent several days in a glorious lab on the 3rd floor of the Necco building, with windows open to the beautiful Cambridge days that week (KLH, right?).  My task was to solder some honking shielded-pair connectors while watching John Dean testify on TV.  I bet many, maybe all of you, must know the story of the secret project for a new large speaker, which was to be called the BMF, until for some reason it was changed to something else at the last minute.  And, if you never heard his rendition of a short excerpt from a song by Alban Berg, you missed out.  The melody was of course completely atonal, and the lyrics were, "She stepped on my _______. I let out a scream, Ahhhhh!"  I think Victor must have been the translator.  The word he chose was exquisitely at home in the context.  We worked and chatted many a late night in the cool silence of Vermont summer.  It was so quiet we could hear the faint transformer hum of the AKG C12A mic preamp, listening on our KOSS ESP-9s.