Ken Fritz - Audiophile Documentary

[Deleted member 21114]

The price tag probably includes adding the room onto his house and some things tried and discarded along the way.

There is no way a journalist wouldn't find some way of getting it up to a million. I doubt Ken would have tortured himself keeping a running total of the cost.

 

[DSJR]

A good room can make almost any old tat sound half decent at least - been there and done just that in a well pro-treated room, which benefitted cheap UK-popular speakers incredibly well.

I had a friend of forty years who'd amassed a 'museum' of gear that he never sold. Half a dozen Revox tape machines of various models, at least that many Nakamichi's, racks of Naims of various models and so on all under polythene dust sheets too (oh, forty odd vintage bikes in a spare bedroom, another pile of gear all boxed up and very little used and several Sony & B&O tellies all working that nobody wanted). A lot of the gear suffered through not being used (switches and pots) and you had to snake your way through the living room, the dining table almost full of baskets of CD's. His wife put up with it (and him) for decades but after he passed, she had the 'sale of the century' via dealers who took it all away and within a year, the house was unrecognisable, redecorated top to bottom, left more sparse and with just a modest sound system left I gather!

 

[Digby]

I am puzzled at the repeated insistence by a couple of folks in this thread, one in particular, that the article is "biased" or following some kind of leftwing cultural agenda.I think the article paints a contradictory, very human picture of what was probably a contradictory, very human man and family. Complexity is not negativity, and including skeptical, sad, angry, or critical comments from people involved in Fritz's life does not equal "hatchet job" - not even close. It's called good reporting.

I don't think you'd get an article like this in say the 60s or 70s, saying how the man had neglected his family (true or not) to pursue his dream. I don't want to get into the politics, but although it is never mentioned by name, I wonder if what the article is suggesting is that Ken Fritz had some kind of toxic masculinity (whatever that might be).

I think the article is very much of its time, in that it does seem like it is trying to 'take him down a peg', but seeing as he is now dead and gone, to what end?

I don't think I'd want all this unpleasantness about my family aired in public, even if true. I'm interested to know who was the main contact for Washington Post, was it the estranged son or his daughter, who seemed to have a much better relationship with her father. If the son wanted to get his own back, and was the main contact, then that would surely colour things somewhat.

 

[Dialectic]

The Washington Post article was written by an audiophile who is a regular on the Steve Hoffman forums.

 

[mhardy6647]

There is only one right way to do it so different cartridges are no more than different EQ curves for different music. YMMV.

Unless one If happens to have an interest in real (vintage) mono LPs - cut with no vertical modulation and played back with true mono cartridges with zero vertical compliance -- or 78s [EDIT], it makes sense to have multiple arms/cartridges, albeit slightly esoteric ones. Usually the cool kids'll set up multiple turntables for such... umm... hobbies.
EDIT: oops, @Ron Texas, I misinterpreted your post! Sorry about that. I'll leave this up, but strike the word "Unless" since you weren't arguing for swapping cartridges per se.

That said, I am perplexed and slightly disgusted by Ken Fritz' story and legacy, truth be told. A sad situation of obsessive behavior.
I know some pretty serious hifi nuts, but they're not nuts.

 

[Deleted member 21114]

I didn't realise ALS = Motor Neutron Disease. Thank goodness he finished it before he succumbed. A small comfort but I'm sure it meant the world to him.

 

[OldHvyMec]

Oh, that many Krell amps would cost well over this I imagine.

What do you think gear vs room vs return would be? I owned a few Krells in my life and never paid 1/2 what they cost new. The reason I quit using
Krell was very simple, I got the same quality for 1/2 the price with SST. They would push 1/2 ohm loads, I knew James B. personally and they
ran 50% cooler than any Krell I've ever owned. I had a pallet (over a ton) of their amps you couldn't/can't get boards for. KSA50-150 and a few others.
They weren't even good boat anchors. Not very fun to fix even if you have the parts.

I'm sure you're right if he bought new and I don't know how many he used. The planar/ribbon section is pretty easy to push and most
arrays I've seen are wired at 8-16 ohms for valves. I did 4 24" Strathearns mids and 84" of ribbons. 200 watts was over 115 db. 10 and 12 ohms static.

"Latest and largest in Krell's current range of power amplifiers, the 600Wpc, $12,500 Full Power Balanced 600 joins the 300Wpc FPB 300 ($9000) and the 200Wpc (originally 150Wpc) FPB 200 ($5900)" This is 1997!

I paid a little over 10K for 4 300 watt amps in 2002 and close the the same for a pair of 600 watt in 2004. Straight from a Krell dealer for the Aspen/Rifle CO area. I sold it all for 18K and bought 6 2000 SSTs for 1,800. usd each. Some people paid as much as 5K a pop if you bought from a dealer. Still 30K for close to 1000 watts per channel was a great deal for a great power amp. I think they were rated at 200 WPC @ 8 ohms and 1000 watts at 2 ohms. They were one of the few amps that would push a Kappa 9 or 8.0 to sound they way they should. A 2000 SST could suck a 15 amp 120vac receptacle DRY if you had the load too.

Pimp Daddy! James B. Pretty good KB player too.

I keep going back to "he did it himself," and his FRIENDS, loved him. Who cares what the peanut gallery has to say. Typical anyway from my experience
Some do, and some talk about what others do. Sad to see him struggle to speak and then mention eating and him struggling. It's not a very kind disease.
The last person I worked with, his wife had ALS. I couldn't stand the guy but to see what it put him through, humbled the crap out of me.

Regards

 

[tmtomh]

I don't think you'd get an article like this in say the 60s or 70s, saying how the man had neglected his family (true or not) to pursue his dream. I don't want to get into the politics, but although it is never mentioned by name, I wonder if what the article is suggesting is that Ken Fritz had some kind of toxic masculinity (whatever that might be).

I think the article is very much of its time, in that it does seem like it is trying to 'take him down a peg', but seeing as he is now dead and gone, to what end?

I don't think I'd want all this unpleasantness about my family aired in public, even if true. I'm interested to know who was the main contact for Washington Post, was it the estranged son or his daughter, who seemed to have a much better relationship with her father. If the son wanted to get his own back, and was the main contact, then that would surely colour things somewhat.

Good points, to be sure. But the 1960s or '70s version of an article like this - the one that would not mention the personal cost of his pursuit of this system - would also be very much an article of its time. So the implication that the 1960s/70s version - or any version - would be some kind of more truthful, objective, or ideologically untainted baseline that we could use as a reference, is IMHO precisely the logical flaw that's behind the comments I was referring to in my last post (comments that, to be clear, I feel are much less thoughtful than your own comment here, which I respect).

 

[Salida]

I don't know how a mainstream paper could have ever written a positive story about Fritz. What he has done make little sense to many of us let alone someone in general public.

For me, the article caused me to reflect on my own life, and hobbies. Is ASR my "$1M" hobby? What if I got ALS tomorrow? What would happen to Klippel NFS? How would my wife or children know what to do with it and rest of the instrumentation? Sell them for pennies on the dollar? Heaven knows I spend an incredible amount of time on this site. How would someone react reading my story?

Fortunately I don't have the family issues he suffered from. I started this site in retirement and my wife is quite fine with what I am doing. And I have not spent huge amount of sums on ASR while starving the rest of the family needs.

I don't know how a mainstream paper could have ever written a positive story about Fritz. What he has done make little sense to many of us let alone someone in general public.

For me, the article caused me to reflect on my own life, and hobbies. Is ASR my "$1M" hobby? What if I got ALS tomorrow? What would happen to Klippel NFS? How would my wife or children know what to do with it and rest of the instrumentation? Sell them for pennies on the dollar? Heaven knows I spend an incredible amount of time on this site. How would someone react reading my story?

Fortunately I don't have the family issues he suffered from. I started this site in retirement and my wife is quite fine with what I am doing. And I have not spent huge amount of sums on ASR while starving the rest of the family needs.

To that end, Fritz's house seems quite modest. I would never think someone with those kind of means spending so much on a home stereo. Did he have a lot of money and just spent it on his stereo/room or didn't have it and still sunk all that money?

Great post. There is a cautionary tale here for all of us. What happens to our stuff when we pass on from this mortal coil?

We owe it to our families to make sure they don’t have to auction all our gear at 10 cents on the dollar or less.

Not so much here but on audio other forums there seems to be a ‘score’ mentality where people get a thrill out of buying gear on the cheap, usually at someone else’s expense. Bad karma. Ahem.

I have sold off everything I don’t use everyday and made a list of everything else and how much it might actually sell for today.

Makes me feel a little more responsible. Who knows what will actually happen but at least one of my kids wants my stuff, so that’s good news.

 

[egellings]

Isn't that what he was after—concert hall acoustics and live orchestra dynamics?

Yes; those captured in the recording, not generated in the playback room.

 

[egellings]

That is a factual statement except, perhaps, inclusion of “muddy” vs. something not purely negative in connotation.

Which is why big(ger) rooms can be problematic for fidelity in playback, but can sound really fun with PA kit.
Big sound in a big room, though a haphazard route if you ask me, can be an effective inroad to a more “live” sound from studio-recorded music. SOMEtimes.
From a power (or financial investment) requirement standpoint, I think rare will be the instance that room size and playback fidelity scale together positively, past a certain threshold.

Howzabout "de-clarify".

 

[Ron Texas]

I wonder what other hobby obsessions could screw up your life so much. What I first thought of are very dangerous activities. One is technical scuba diving. Lots of people have died trying to dive the Andrea Doria off Long Island or in the Florida caves. The other is mountain climbing. Many have died trying to climb Everest. I don't know if it's possible for "tourists" to try anymore. Gambling doesn't take any stamina and one could run through a million quickly. However, it's considered to be more of an addiction than an obsession.

 

[DonR]

I wonder what other hobby obsessions could screw up your life so much. What I first thought of are very dangerous activities. One is technical scuba diving. Lots of people have died trying to dive the Andrea Doria off Long Island or in the Florida caves. The other is mountain climbing. Many have died trying to climb Everest. I don't know if it's possible for "tourists" to try anymore. Gambling doesn't take any stamina and one could run through a million quickly. However, it's considered to be more of an addiction than an obsession.

"golf widow" is a term for a reason.

 

[mhardy6647]

Great post. There is a cautionary tale here for all of us. What happens to our stuff when we pass on from this mortal coil?

 

[Ron Texas]

"golf widow" is a term for a reason.

I thought about golf. It could chew up all your spare time but not likely a million and it will not kill you. Those golf widows are often out playing cards with their friends.

 

[jooc]

(I'm worried that sharing the story on this forum is like tapping a keg at an AA meeting. You have been warned!)

That's what this site really is though, a continual keg party we keep coming back to

 

[DonR]

I thought about golf. It could chew up all your spare time but not likely a million and it will not kill you. Those golf widows are often out playing cards with their friends.

Depends on your golf course. Membership fees at some clubs could easily top $1m over a lifetime. Lessons from pros, new clubs every year or two, it adds up quickly. Not deadly unless you are the bishop from Caddy Shack.

 

[JustJones]

Depends on your golf course. Membership fees at some clubs could easily top $1m over a lifetime. Lessons from pros, new clubs every year or two, it adds up quickly. Not deadly unless you are the bishop from Caddy Shack.

 

[Axo1989]

Yeh, I can't imagine that many class A amps running simultaneously. It is crazy waste of power to drive those woofers and such.

We can't see all the amps but the front trio look like Krell FPB series probably 700cx (stereo models, the monos had asymmetric heatsinks). Per Krell's sustained plateau bias they won't be idling at full output like standard class A—they'd run 85 watts standby and 430 watts idle specified, while max power consumption is listed at 6 kW, a big difference. The other amps were visibly smaller so I'd assume models down in that range. Certainly significant idle wattage in aggregate but not an absolute furnace in that size room. The final models in the Evolution series that came after did better, with 2 watt standby iirc, which would be my pick of D'Agostino's work at Krell.

 

[Axo1989]

Yes; those captured in the recording, not generated in the playback room.

I was thinking of his goals, not yours or mine. I've only skimmed the video material but he said he duplicated a concert hall in Osaka. For stereo reproduction—of the program material he favoured—with envelopment, we want room reflections (again, not me and classical is not my main thing either). Also he said the system was 7.4 so not limited to stereo, and @Ron Texas mentioned room treatment upthread iirc. So I think your "muddying" comment was an oversimplification, even though large spaces obviously pose different challenges to typical smaller rooms, longer delays can be beneficial depending on one's goals/setup. We mostly see his listening chair/s closer than critical distance for the direct/reflect mix.