Roger West R.I.P.

[Duke]

Roger West of SoundLab passed away on June 6th. He was a brilliant man and a dear friend. In addition to his widely-respected work at SoundLab which pushed the state of the art in electrostatic loudspeakers, he worked in the aerospace industry. He was instrumental in the design and development of the flight simulator for the General Dynamics F-16, which was so successful that the Air Force cut its acquisition of two-seat F-16 conversion trainers.

When Roger was young he wanted to be a musician. He played the violin and worked very hard at it, but eventually concluded that he would never be a great musician. So he decided that instead of creating beautiful music, he would re-create beautiful music. He went to work for Arthur Janszen and developed the electrostatic cells that were used in numerous Janszen designs (sometimes with a pattern-shaping lens), and which showed up in the original Wilson Audio Modular Monitor (WAMM).

In the late 1970's Roger started up SoundLab and introduced several innovations, resulting in electrostats that have an exceptionally wide and unusually uniform radiation pattern and which produce good bass response (no subwoofers needed). This was long before Floyd Toole's work showed us all that radiation pattern uniformity matters a great deal, but then Roger's PhD was in psychoacoustics.

Around this time he was hit in the eye by a racketball which resulted in a serious infection. His body had an auto-immune response malfunction which damaged his hearing. He lost all hearing in one ear and had greatly diminished hearing in the other for many years, eventually culminating in total hearing loss a couple of years ago. This never slowed him down - his passion was still re-creating beautiful music, though it would be for other people to enjoy. So if you're wondering whether he used measurements, the answer is YES, ABSOLUTELY!

I first crossed paths with Roger after purchasing the first demo pair of Millennium-1 electrostats in 1999, and I liked them so much I left the industry I had been working in for nearly two decades and became an in-home dealer for him. I visited him and his family many times over the years. He and his wife Connie came to my wedding.

On June 6th of 2026 Roger worked a full day then went to bed, and passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was 92. SoundLab lives on under his son Brett, who has been building SoundLab speakers since before I bought my first pair twenty-seven years ago.

Here is a link to The Absolute Sound's article: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/sound-lab-electrostats-remembers-dr-roger-west/

 

[MattHooper]

Wow. Sorry to hear of his passing.

Thank you very much for the write up. That was fascinating. How awful to have had that accident with regards to his hearing, especially given his occupation!
Amazing what some people can overcome.

 

[Duke]

Wow. Sorry to hear of his passing.

Thank you very much for the write up. That was fascinating. How awful to have had that accident with regards to his hearing, especially given his occupation!
Amazing what some people can overcome.

Yes, Beethoven and in particular his magnificent 9th Symphony come to mind.

I never posted about Roger's hearing loss, but now that it's in The Absolute Sound's article, it is public knowledge. I'm not sure how people would have reacted to knowing the speakers they were thinking about were designed by a deaf guy! Although... come to think of it... that might have been a selling point in some circles, as it pretty much guarantees very heavy reliance on measurements!

Roger had a hearing aid for his one partially-functional ear, but he had a hard time carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment (like at an audio show). Because he did not have binaural hearing, he could not locate and therefore concentrate on the sound of one voice among many. If he could see your lips he could follow along fairly well in an audio show setting, but it was still quite difficult and mentally exhausting for him.

I was amazed at what Roger could detect with what little hearing he had. I hope you don't mind a story:

A few years after I became a dealer for Roger, I became a dealer for an amplifier company called Warner Imaging. The designer Emil Rotar also had a day job in aerospace, specifically in radar frequency systems. I remember having a phone conversation with Emil wherein he was telling me how good his amp's phase response was, something like plus or minus two degrees over whatever bandwidth. I pretended like I understood the implications and was duly impressed; the truth was I had no idea whether he was describing something that mattered, much less whether what he was claiming was actually impressive.

Anyway I really liked the combination of SoundLab speakers and Warner Imaging amps, so I was hoping the two companies would team up and do a room together at an audio show. I made an appointment with Roger to bring the amps to his home in Utah for him and his staff and family to listen to. We hooked the amps up to a pair of SoundLabs in his living room and put on a Jennifer Warnes disc. About fifteen seconds into the first song, Roger looks at me and says, "Say, these amps have very good phase response!"

I had to pick my bottom jaw up off the floor. I have no idea what he was hearing through that one greatly-diminished-function ear of his, but he was deriving more relevant information from it that I was through my two good ones.

 

[Duke]

Link to a more in-depth and informative post on another forum, including a photo of Connie, Roger, and Brett.