Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? So? I alluded to
Speaker 1: this in the prologue to last week's rerun. Listener Ron
Speaker 1: McCallie reached out to the show on Twitter. Remember the
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W
Speaker 1: and asked that I do an episode about San Sui,
Speaker 1: which is great because it's time for me to make
Speaker 1: a confession. I don't believe I had ever heard of
Speaker 1: this company. Now. I just felt all the audio files
Speaker 1: out there switching off this show immediately, although who am
Speaker 1: I kidding? Most of them probably can't stand the low
Speaker 1: fidelity of the podcast medium. So I'm having a little
Speaker 1: fun at the expense of audio files here. I'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about audio files throughout this and it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like um all sligging off on audio files.
Speaker 1: I think that they take it very seriously, this idea
Speaker 1: of creating as perfect a sound playback system as they
Speaker 1: possibly can. But there's a lot that goes into that,
Speaker 1: and I might touch on that a little bit in
Speaker 1: this podcast anyway. San Sui was past tense and electronics
Speaker 1: company that has become particularly well known for audio and
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, video system components. Now, if you
Speaker 1: do a search for san Sui, by the way, that's
Speaker 1: spelled s A N s u I, you will find
Speaker 1: numerous articles and videos that mentioned San Sui in the
Speaker 1: company of other big name companies like Pioneer and Sony.
Speaker 1: You all so be on the precipice of a huge
Speaker 1: drop into the sometimes crazy world of hi fi or
Speaker 1: high fidelity, and just know that if you do slip
Speaker 1: over the edge, there's a chance that you will never
Speaker 1: come back. Hi fi is one of those pursuits that
Speaker 1: can consume you and more to the point your bank account.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that today too. And just know I'm
Speaker 1: being a little flip in about all this, But what
Speaker 1: I mean is that there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there who they are obsessed with finding that perfect
Speaker 1: high fidelity experience, to the point that some of them
Speaker 1: are are spending tens of thousands of dollars in the
Speaker 1: pursuit of it. Uh and they may never achieve it.
Speaker 1: So our story begins in the nineteen forties in Japan.
Speaker 1: They're a man named Kosaku Kikuchi was employed in a
Speaker 1: company that was a radio parts distributor. And you know,
Speaker 1: the word district reader is one that I think isn't
Speaker 1: clear for everyone. So let's get ready for our first
Speaker 1: little buddy trail. Uh. And first let's start with the
Speaker 1: idea of a supply chain. And let's say it's the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and you want a new sound system so
Speaker 1: you can listen to the transgressive glam rock sounds of
Speaker 1: artists like David Bowie, Lou Reid and the New York Dolls.
Speaker 1: Or heck, maybe it's you know, just a year or
Speaker 1: two later in the decade, and you want a rocking
Speaker 1: system so that you can listen to punk bands like
Speaker 1: the Ramons, the void Oid's and the Heartbreakers. Or maybe
Speaker 1: it's the late seventies and disco is king, so you
Speaker 1: want to groove out to the b Gs or Casey
Speaker 1: in the Sunshine Band or earth Wind and Fire. I'm
Speaker 1: getting a bit of a nostalgic kick here, can you tell? Anyway?
Speaker 1: You want to buy a stereo system, So you go
Speaker 1: to your local electronics store and you take a look
Speaker 1: at what's on display. Every single product you're looking at
Speaker 1: can trace its history back through a chain of production.
Speaker 1: So there are certain companies that mine the raw materials
Speaker 1: that ultimately find their way into our tech. Some of
Speaker 1: them might also process those raw materials and refine them,
Speaker 1: or maybe they send the raw materials onto refineries that
Speaker 1: are dedicated just to doing that. And then you've got
Speaker 1: fabricators that take raw or processed materials and then build
Speaker 1: components with them. And then you've got factories that take
Speaker 1: these components that are made by the various fabricators out
Speaker 1: there and assemble them into larger products. And then you've
Speaker 1: got distributors that take these finished products, which could be
Speaker 1: just a component for an even more complicated product down
Speaker 1: the line, and the distributors are in charge of getting
Speaker 1: that finished thing, typically to a wholesaler, and wholesalers then
Speaker 1: sell large lots of finished things to retailers, and then
Speaker 1: the retailer sells it to you, the final customer, who
Speaker 1: wants to buy the best stereos them. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons we see such challenges in
Speaker 1: supply these days, because COVID really messed up the links
Speaker 1: in the supply chain, and if just one link falls, well,
Speaker 1: then everything that goes behind that that link has a delay,
Speaker 1: and things get worse and worse as it goes along.
Speaker 1: So a distributor, like I said, is a link between
Speaker 1: manufacturers who might fabricate or simply a symbol stuff and
Speaker 1: then the rest of the supply chain. And distributors sometimes
Speaker 1: act as vendors as well, or they might supply products
Speaker 1: to wholesalers and directly to retailers. Anyway, just in case
Speaker 1: you ever want to know what a distributor was in
Speaker 1: the sense of the supply chain, there you go. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also means something totally different, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: car engines. Those are different distributors, but that's another podcast.
Speaker 1: So it's the nineteen forties and Kikuchi is working for
Speaker 1: this company, which obviously became a critical entity during World
Speaker 1: War Two. Radio parts were, if you pardon the pun,
Speaker 1: instrumental in the war effort. Cakuchie founded a radio part
Speaker 1: manufacturing plant that he named the san Sui Electrical Plant
Speaker 1: in nineteen four And a quick word about that name.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, san Sui is not a
Speaker 1: Japanese term. Rather, it actually comes from China, and it's
Speaker 1: a style of painting, and in China it's called shan
Speaker 1: Shui and it has the style has two key components
Speaker 1: to it. Artists use brushes and ink instead of brushes
Speaker 1: and paint, and they paint landscapes that those are the
Speaker 1: two things that that identify Shanshui paintings. Shanshui translated literally
Speaker 1: means mountain water and a lot of the landscapes that
Speaker 1: are painted feature images of waterfalls and mountain streams and such.
Speaker 1: So San Sui the company its first products were transformers,
Speaker 1: and again not the kind that are more than meets
Speaker 1: the eye. We're talking about an electrical component that can
Speaker 1: both transfer electric energy from one circuit to another, as
Speaker 1: well as changed the voltage of the current running through
Speaker 1: the second circuit or to increase it or decrease it.
Speaker 1: So audio transformers also get a bit more complicated because
Speaker 1: they could be designed to do other stuff like split
Speaker 1: audio signals apart or join them together, as well as
Speaker 1: to block radio frequency interference, among other things. But this
Speaker 1: gets super technical, and if I dive into that, we
Speaker 1: won't have a chance to talk about San Sue at all,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna save all that for some other episode.
Speaker 1: So in Kikuchi was ready to launch a company that
Speaker 1: would go beyond just manufacturing transformers. This would be the
Speaker 1: sen Sui Electric Company, and his initial starting capital, like
Speaker 1: the amount of money that was in the company was
Speaker 1: on eight thousand yen. Now, I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: you what that was worth today, but the inflation calculators
Speaker 1: I found only dated back to the nineteen fifties. Uh.
Speaker 1: I do know that in nineteen forty six, the occupation
Speaker 1: forces that were in Japan after World War Two had
Speaker 1: set the yen to dollar exchange rate at fifty yen
Speaker 1: to a dollar. So using that conversion rate, thousand yen
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty seven would be equal to about three thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred bucks again in nineteen forty seven dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: if we adjusted that in the US for US inflation,
Speaker 1: you would get about forty five thousand dollars, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty modest initial capital for a company. But I
Speaker 1: also have to point out that you know, inflation and
Speaker 1: exchange rates change so much over time that you can't
Speaker 1: just say, like, oh, it had forty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in capital back then, because that it's too simplistic of
Speaker 1: you to be able to say that appreciation of one
Speaker 1: currency against another changes things dramatically, and appreciation of currencies
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily reflect in let's say, inflation or deflation within
Speaker 1: a country. So yeah, I just know that it was
Speaker 1: a fairly modest starting capital for this company. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't have very much information on what the company was
Speaker 1: doing in its first few years. In fact, documentation about
Speaker 1: San Suey in general is sparse. I looked at a
Speaker 1: lot of different sites, many of them run by audio files,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the information I have is
Speaker 1: second hand or third hand information, and I don't usually
Speaker 1: like running with that, but I kind of didn't have
Speaker 1: many other options for this particular episode. But the next
Speaker 1: point of data that I could find on San Suey
Speaker 1: actually comes in at nineteen fifty two, So this is
Speaker 1: several years after the founding. The founding was in nine seven,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fifty two, and sue was producing voltage
Speaker 1: stabilizers and a few dozen different kinds of transformers, and
Speaker 1: at that point the company employed fifty two people. In
Speaker 1: nine four, San Sui introduced the HPR one hundred and
Speaker 1: electronic tube amplifier. Now, last week, again I reran an
Speaker 1: episode that talked about how speakers and amplifiers work, so
Speaker 1: we're not gonna go into deep detail again here, but
Speaker 1: you should know an amplifier's job is to take a
Speaker 1: weak incoming signal as an input and then send out
Speaker 1: a much stronger, but otherwise identical outgoing signal to other components,
Speaker 1: typically things like speakers, and reproducing the quality of the
Speaker 1: input signal is absolutely key with an amplifier. It's not
Speaker 1: just enough to boost the signal. You want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you are as true to that incoming signal
Speaker 1: as you possibly can be. Otherwise the amplifier can become
Speaker 1: an element that decreases the quality of that signal, and
Speaker 1: it can introduce noise into the output, and that's a
Speaker 1: big problem. So with audio gear, we're talking about actual noise, right,
Speaker 1: like stuff that's coming out of the speakers that was
Speaker 1: not part of the original recording. You do not want that.
Speaker 1: In general, audio files absolutely do not want that. They
Speaker 1: want to create a listening experience that is as faithful
Speaker 1: to the original recording experience as is possible, So you
Speaker 1: do not want to introduce noise. However, I should say
Speaker 1: that noise also just means like unwanted signal, and it
Speaker 1: applies across all of technology, not just in the audio world.
Speaker 1: But you know, you don't want to introduce unwanted signal
Speaker 1: because that means you're gonna get errors in whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're doing. So amplifiers in general, you want to
Speaker 1: be able to of good output, a strong outgoing signal
Speaker 1: without introducing unwanted components, unwanted noise, and that is a
Speaker 1: real challenge. Like that's why San Sui ended up getting
Speaker 1: such a great reputation in the sixties and early seventies
Speaker 1: because their products were known to produce a pretty powerful
Speaker 1: output without introducing noise. So that was a great thing
Speaker 1: for audio files. Uh Now, I might also add that
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about noise, I am not making a
Speaker 1: commentary on the quality of the music that someone might
Speaker 1: be listening to. I mean, I personally think a lot
Speaker 1: of so called music is noise, but that's because I'm
Speaker 1: an rapidly aging glam punk rock new wave music lover.
Speaker 1: So that's just you know, my prejudice and biases in
Speaker 1: that regard. But another quick note about amplifiers. When we're
Speaker 1: talking about boosting an electrical signal that represents sound, we
Speaker 1: have to remember that sound ranges across a pretty broad
Speaker 1: range of frequencies. Sound when you boil it down is vibration,
Speaker 1: and we can measure it in one way we can
Speaker 1: measure it is how frequently is the stuff vibrating. The
Speaker 1: faster it vibrates, the higher the pitch that we experience
Speaker 1: in listening to it. Human hearing typically ranges from twenty
Speaker 1: hurts or twenty vibrations or cycles per second on the
Speaker 1: low end, those are the deepest pitches that we can
Speaker 1: perceive with our with hearing, like you can feel lower frequencies,
Speaker 1: but you can't hear them, and then it goes up
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand hurts or twenty killer hurts on the
Speaker 1: high end, so vibrating twenty thousand cycles per second. Those
Speaker 1: are the highest pitches we can typically perceive, and that
Speaker 1: that range decreases as we get older. Typically we we
Speaker 1: start to lose those higher pitches first, So as an adult,
Speaker 1: you may not be able to hear stuff that's up
Speaker 1: in that twenty thousand hurts range. It may be much lower.
Speaker 1: This is also played into when various places like convenience
Speaker 1: stores will play out sounds at higher pitches that young
Speaker 1: people can hear, but older people can't. In order to
Speaker 1: uh discourage young people from loitering fun times anyway, amplifiers
Speaker 1: typically have a sweet spot and uh in a range
Speaker 1: of frequencies that they can really boost effectively. So this
Speaker 1: would be a range of electrical signals at which the
Speaker 1: amplifier is most effective. That is the amplifiers bandwidth. That's
Speaker 1: one of the things that affects an amplifiers quality. If
Speaker 1: the bandwidth is really narrow, well, the amplifier might be
Speaker 1: work great for a certain range of frequencies, but anything
Speaker 1: outside that, you're not gonna get the same umph, which
Speaker 1: means that you're listening experience is going to be ideal, right,
Speaker 1: because those those signals aren't going to be amplified, You're
Speaker 1: going to lose out on some of the range of
Speaker 1: the sound as it's being played back. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some other stuff to chat about in a minute,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, I need to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, before the break, I was talking
Speaker 1: about the kind of sound that most people are capable
Speaker 1: of hearing um and how that plays into amplifiers, and
Speaker 1: that certain amplifiers might have a particular range that they're
Speaker 1: very good at reproducing and others that they aren't. Often
Speaker 1: with amplifiers, you'll have multiple amplification components, each with a
Speaker 1: different sort of sweet spot range to try and reproduce
Speaker 1: the whole of a recorded or broadcast audio signals quality,
Speaker 1: because again, otherwise you would lose parts of it when
Speaker 1: you were sending that signal along to the speakers. And
Speaker 1: there's other stuff we could talk about. For example, the
Speaker 1: way we contextualize how an amplifier can increase the amplitude
Speaker 1: or volume of a signal. That's called gain. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard people talk about needing to adjust the
Speaker 1: gain on their microphones or their amplifiers, that's what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. And I'll have to do a full episode
Speaker 1: about gain and clipping and stuff like that in the
Speaker 1: future because if I stick to it here, it will
Speaker 1: take up the rest of this episode. But gain is
Speaker 1: super important. Whether it's because you want to make sure
Speaker 1: your voice sounds nice on a podcast well any clipping,
Speaker 1: or maybe you want to purposefully introduce certain effects like
Speaker 1: clipping or distortion in your output, like that's part of
Speaker 1: your artistic expression. You might want to do that. Um, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is important, but it goes beyond this episode. Well,
Speaker 1: then we also have to talk about pre amplifiers, because
Speaker 1: that's something that San Suey was getting into in this
Speaker 1: time period. So pre amplifiers or pre amps are amplifiers
Speaker 1: that take very weak signals, like say from a microphone,
Speaker 1: which produces a very weak electrical signal, and then boosts
Speaker 1: that into a stronger signal, but not super strong, like
Speaker 1: not strong enough to drive speakers. So pre amps signal
Speaker 1: would then feed into an actual amplifier, and that would
Speaker 1: take the pre amps boosted signal and then boosted even further.
Speaker 1: But then you might wonder, well, why would you use
Speaker 1: a preamp at all? I mean, couldn't an amplifier just
Speaker 1: do the whole thing by itself. Well, pre amplifiers are
Speaker 1: necessary to cut back on that noise thing I was
Speaker 1: just talking about, and to cut back on interference. The
Speaker 1: pre amp typically boosts voltage gain, but not current gain. Remember,
Speaker 1: voltage and current are two different things. Voltage is kind
Speaker 1: of like the pressure in electrical system. Current is like
Speaker 1: the amount of electricity that's passing through a system. So
Speaker 1: you're increasing the pressure with a pre amp, but not
Speaker 1: the current um and this will then boost the gain
Speaker 1: to what is called line level. That is, a signal
Speaker 1: that's strong enough to send onto a power amplifier, which
Speaker 1: will then boost the signal further, ideally without introducing noise
Speaker 1: into it. And a power amplifier will boost voltage and current,
Speaker 1: not just one or the other, and it will send
Speaker 1: this boosted signal out to power speakers and monitors and stuff.
Speaker 1: And by monitors I mean a type of speaker, not
Speaker 1: a display, you know, not a not a not a
Speaker 1: computer monitor in other words, and amplifiers do this by
Speaker 1: having power directed to them from outside sources. Now, I
Speaker 1: say this because I do not want to give you
Speaker 1: the impression that somehow amplifiers magically create energy, because we
Speaker 1: know from the law of conservation you cannot do that. Instead,
Speaker 1: amplifiers are taking an incoming signal and then boosting that
Speaker 1: by taking advantage of electrical power from another source, like
Speaker 1: say a wall outlet, and then pushes out this stronger
Speaker 1: outgoing signal that's otherwise identical to the incoming one. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason I even went into this is that preampts
Speaker 1: and amplifier tubes would sort of open up the possibility
Speaker 1: of a high fidelity industry, which is where San Sui
Speaker 1: would have its biggest impact, So it's good to have
Speaker 1: a basic understanding of that technology. Now. Nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: was also a year when a company called Harmon Cardon
Speaker 1: became the first to introduce a receiver. So you need
Speaker 1: to know what a receiver is and consider for a
Speaker 1: moment the various components you might need. If you really
Speaker 1: loved audio in the nineteen fifties, well, you would need
Speaker 1: a radio typically that would consist of at least, you know,
Speaker 1: one antenna and a tuner that lets you tune into
Speaker 1: specific radio frequencies. You would also need an amplifier or
Speaker 1: more likely a couple of amplifiers, that would take the
Speaker 1: incoming electrical signal from the radio broadcast and boost it
Speaker 1: so that it can drive the radio's speakers. And then
Speaker 1: you would also need speakers. Uh. The radio's way back
Speaker 1: in the day were pretty big. They were reliant on
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes to serve as amplifiers, so the old radios
Speaker 1: were essentially pieces of furniture. By the nineteen fifties, they
Speaker 1: were slightly smaller than they had been in the thirties
Speaker 1: and forties, but it wouldn't really be until the adoption
Speaker 1: of the transistor that we would see them shrink down.
Speaker 1: But as an audio file, you wouldn't just stop with
Speaker 1: the radio. You would also need a record player, a
Speaker 1: turntable or phonograph really in those days. Uh. This consists
Speaker 1: of the turntable itself, and if the turntable is not
Speaker 1: an all in one unit with its own speaker, you
Speaker 1: would also need a separate amplifier and separate speakers so
Speaker 1: that the weak electric signal that was coming from the
Speaker 1: record player could be boosted enough to drive the speakers.
Speaker 1: All in one units had all the components built into them. Uh.
Speaker 1: But those components are still all right there, and it's
Speaker 1: possible you might have some other audio sources as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you would again need the amplifiers and speakers for
Speaker 1: each of them. So your home is gonna get really
Speaker 1: crammed with gear because you might want something that can
Speaker 1: play back tape. For example, now in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: we would be talking about real to real tape. A
Speaker 1: lot of the tape players had their own speakers incorporated
Speaker 1: into them in this form factor, but you would so
Speaker 1: you could have a standalone player that would have everything,
Speaker 1: But you could also have one that just have the
Speaker 1: tape deck itself and would still need to go through
Speaker 1: an amplifier and speakers before you could actually listen to it.
Speaker 1: So you have all these independent components, each of their
Speaker 1: own dedicated speaker systems and amplifiers, just so you can
Speaker 1: enjoy your tunes. That ends up being way too much
Speaker 1: for most people. So then enter the receiver, and a
Speaker 1: receiver collects a lot of these components into a single
Speaker 1: piece of equipment that you can then use to switch
Speaker 1: between different incoming audio signals. Nearly all receivers have a
Speaker 1: radio tuner built into them. Some might not, but we
Speaker 1: typically would call those amplifiers rather than receivers, so they've
Speaker 1: got the radio tuner. They also typically have a full
Speaker 1: amplifier inside them. Some might just have a preamp that
Speaker 1: you then have to send out to an amplifier, but
Speaker 1: a lot of receivers have the amplifier built into them
Speaker 1: as well, and they can accept multiple audio inputs. The
Speaker 1: number and type depends upon the receiver, but it was
Speaker 1: pretty common for them to accept incoming signals from a
Speaker 1: phonograph typically labeled phono on most receivers, as well as
Speaker 1: tape decks. So now you can connect multiple audio devices
Speaker 1: like a turntable, a tape deck. You've got your radio
Speaker 1: tuner built in right there, all through this one device
Speaker 1: and use a switch to go between them to feed
Speaker 1: out to your speakers, so you don't need speakers for everything.
Speaker 1: You've got one says speakers, and these all get directed
Speaker 1: through the receiver which then sends that signal onto the speakers,
Speaker 1: and you use dials, buttons, or switches to switch between
Speaker 1: the different inputs. You also typically have controls to set
Speaker 1: things like ranges of frequencies that you would prefer to emphasize. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you may want the base notes to come
Speaker 1: through more clearly, so you use a little knob that's
Speaker 1: labeled base. That essentially means that the base signals will
Speaker 1: get a bit more ooth when sent to the speakers
Speaker 1: than other frequencies are. Um, you have the balance, which
Speaker 1: can affect which speakers get more signal than the others.
Speaker 1: So maybe you have left and right speakers, but the
Speaker 1: left speakers are further away from you than the right speakers.
Speaker 1: You might want to tweak the balance a bit so
Speaker 1: that the left beakers get a little more umph, so
Speaker 1: that you get a balanced output based upon where you're
Speaker 1: actually experiencing the music and so on, and of course volume,
Speaker 1: right the amplitude, how loud do you want the stuff
Speaker 1: to be. So the Harmon Cardon receiver in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four cost a hundred eighty nine dollars and fifty cents, which,
Speaker 1: if we were to adjust for inflation, would be just
Speaker 1: under two thousand dollars today, And it wouldn't be long
Speaker 1: before other companies, including san Sui, would get involved in
Speaker 1: manufacturing receivers. But San sue wouldn't produce receivers right away.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen fifties it started producing tube pre
Speaker 1: amplifier and amplifiers. Now I can't get too specific with
Speaker 1: years here because the various sources I find have conflicting
Speaker 1: information about that, but certainly before the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, San Suey was producing tube receivers, pre amplifiers,
Speaker 1: and amplifiers. So in some cases these amplifiers were full
Speaker 1: units that you would buy, you would bring home, and
Speaker 1: you would connect to your sound system. They just wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a radio built into them, but they had all
Speaker 1: the other amplification elements as part of them. And Kikuchi
Speaker 1: also began to explore the possibility of exporting his products
Speaker 1: to overseas markets, and by nineteen fifty nine the company
Speaker 1: had grown to five seven employees. It was nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one when san Sui would be listed on the Tokyo
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange, and that's also the year that the company
Speaker 1: registered its name in the United States. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the company released its first receiver. This was the SACKS
Speaker 1: one D the s A X one. This was a
Speaker 1: stereo receiver with FM and A M radio tuners, and
Speaker 1: it had vacuum tubes for everything but the preamp. The
Speaker 1: preample solid state, but everything else was vacuum tubes. There
Speaker 1: were knobs to adjust the trouble and base referring to
Speaker 1: the higher and lower sound frequencies respectively. There was an
Speaker 1: for the balance again the comparative signal strength for the
Speaker 1: left versus the right speakers, and there was a volume
Speaker 1: knob as well, plus some other switches and dials to
Speaker 1: select things like input signal and mode of operation. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess we should remind ourselves that stereo is referencing
Speaker 1: the fact that you could send different audio signals to
Speaker 1: two different speakers or sets of speakers if you preferred
Speaker 1: so that you would have a left channel and a
Speaker 1: right channel. This opened up a lot of new ways
Speaker 1: to experiment with sound. Mono, by comparison, sends the same
Speaker 1: audio signal out to every speaker, so with mono output,
Speaker 1: you get the exact same sounds at the same volume
Speaker 1: on the left and right speakers unless you change the balance,
Speaker 1: in which case you would still get the same signal,
Speaker 1: but one speaker would get more a stronger signal than
Speaker 1: the other, so you would have more volume coming from
Speaker 1: one side versus the other side. Stereo change and change
Speaker 1: that entirely. Though it would take a while for stereo
Speaker 1: to really take off, not everyone embraced it. There's a
Speaker 1: pretty famous anecdote that the Beatles band that was really
Speaker 1: an international for phenomenon by they were really hands on
Speaker 1: during the album mixing phase, but only for the mono
Speaker 1: releases of their albums, so they really wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that their vocals, their instrumentation, any effects that they
Speaker 1: were adding, we're all mixed just right for the mono
Speaker 1: release of their albums. When it came to their stereo releases,
Speaker 1: they just left that to the audio engineers. You might
Speaker 1: wonder why why wouldn't they take the same care well,
Speaker 1: their fan base consisted mostly of young people who had
Speaker 1: record players with a mono speaker on them, so they
Speaker 1: were just concerned with crafting music that was going to
Speaker 1: sound good to the majority of the people who were
Speaker 1: buying their albums. Stereo was not that right most of
Speaker 1: their most of their audience didn't have stereo systems. However,
Speaker 1: stereo was the way of the future. In nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: San Suey established a corporate presence here in the United States,
Speaker 1: founding the San Sui Electronics Company, Limited here in the States,
Speaker 1: and the following year ninety seven was when the company
Speaker 1: would release a solid state pre amplifier called the a
Speaker 1: U seven seven seven using transistors. So I've talked about
Speaker 1: transistors a lot in other episodes, but the transistor is
Speaker 1: an electronic component that can operate either as a switch,
Speaker 1: so in other words, that can allow current to flow
Speaker 1: through or prevent it from passing, or it can also
Speaker 1: work as an amplifier, and transistors would have a massive
Speaker 1: impact on the audio landscape as a transistor could potentially
Speaker 1: replace a vacuum tube. This was important because vacuum tubes
Speaker 1: are relatively large they are fragile, they're made out of glass,
Speaker 1: and they can they do heat up when an operation
Speaker 1: like they can get really hot. Uh. They can also
Speaker 1: so eventually burn out, which means you eventually will have
Speaker 1: to replace vacuum tubes. It might take decades, but you
Speaker 1: will eventually have to do it. Transistors would also allow
Speaker 1: for mentorization. In fact, the development of the transistor is
Speaker 1: why we're able to have things like smartphones and modern computers.
Speaker 1: But in the audio world, there's a pretty deep divide
Speaker 1: over whether tube based amplifiers produce a better result or
Speaker 1: if solid state or transistor based amplifiers are the best.
Speaker 1: And you'll hear audio files swap terms like warmth or
Speaker 1: brittle or a round. These are descriptors that don't immediately
Speaker 1: seem to apply to sound, right like, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about sounds something you're hearing, it's kind of odd to
Speaker 1: think of calling it warm or brittle or round like.
Speaker 1: These are descriptors that we would use for other stuff
Speaker 1: that we sense through other ways. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: the language that the audio world has adopted, and it's
Speaker 1: difficult to to contextualize or to understand unless you actually
Speaker 1: experience what people mean when they say that. When you
Speaker 1: hear it and you say, oh, that's what warm means
Speaker 1: or that's what round means, you kind of get it,
Speaker 1: but it's very hard to to conceptualize without that experience. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a whole discussion we could have on solid state
Speaker 1: versus two amplifiers and whether one is superior to another.
Speaker 1: There are some people who say the solid state ones
Speaker 1: create a much more faithful reproduction of sound. There are
Speaker 1: others who say that, you know, the vacuum tubes create
Speaker 1: a lot more character and depth of sound, which is
Speaker 1: more satisfying to listen to. There are camps on either
Speaker 1: side that are passionate about their perspective. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave it there for now. Us again, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Sun Sue or at least I'm trying to. In fact,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and I will refocus on
Speaker 1: Sound Sue when we return. Okay, before the break, we
Speaker 1: were getting into the late sixties. I do need to
Speaker 1: backtrack a little bit because in n Sun Suey had
Speaker 1: introduced the AU one one one amplifier. This was a
Speaker 1: piece of audio equipment that to this day is highly
Speaker 1: revered and sought after. And it looks awesome. Uh. It
Speaker 1: is an amplifier and all in one amplifier, so it's
Speaker 1: not a receiver. It doesn't have a radio tuner in it,
Speaker 1: but otherwise behaves the way a receiver would and that
Speaker 1: you feed your different audio components into this. It amplifies
Speaker 1: the incoming signal and then puts that out to speakers
Speaker 1: or headphones or whatever. It has a black front panel
Speaker 1: on this set top type device, and the panel has
Speaker 1: these silver and black controls on it, so you've got
Speaker 1: knobs and dials that are all silver and then a
Speaker 1: few switches and buttons that are in black. So black
Speaker 1: on black it's very spinal tap. Uh. This was a
Speaker 1: stereo system amplifier, so again part of a high end
Speaker 1: audio system. And I've read a lot of reviews about
Speaker 1: the a U one eleven from various audio files, and
Speaker 1: it it almost comes across like the recruiting literature used
Speaker 1: by cult members. No offense audio files, We y'all could
Speaker 1: come on a little strong anyway, The a U one
Speaker 1: eleven to this day remains a coveted piece of gear.
Speaker 1: Typically you're looking at spending a couple of thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and that's on one that needs you know, some some
Speaker 1: tender love and care, some tweaks and some uh, some
Speaker 1: maintenance to make it work at the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for one that's in really like like
Speaker 1: good performance condition, you're talking maybe four grand, sometimes maybe more,
Speaker 1: depends on really the market you're looking at um. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta keep in mind there's a limited
Speaker 1: number of these. They're not making new ones, the ones
Speaker 1: that exist, that's it. But they are highly valued, largely
Speaker 1: because they are known to have an excellent ability to
Speaker 1: boost the signal to a pretty strong one while still
Speaker 1: maintaining a very low noise ceiling, and has the added
Speaker 1: benefit of all these different controls that you can tweak
Speaker 1: and work your specific audio set up so that you
Speaker 1: can produce the most accurate replication of sound or the
Speaker 1: best experience of sound that you can possibly manage. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, San Sui got into the speaker business.
Speaker 1: It released the spe SP two models of speakers. Now
Speaker 1: audio files seem to mostly dismiss Sue's speakers, so the
Speaker 1: company was really well known for the quality of its
Speaker 1: receivers and its amplifiers, but as for other stuff, it produced,
Speaker 1: such as speakers and turntables and much later things like
Speaker 1: CD players. Most of those get a resounding me from
Speaker 1: the audio loving crowd out there. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: that's when we got the a U seven seven seven.
Speaker 1: That again was the first solid state integrated amplifier. So
Speaker 1: again a U one eleven used vacuum tubes, the a
Speaker 1: U seven seven seven used transistors. Following the seven seven seven,
Speaker 1: we got the a U five five and the a
Speaker 1: U n and then a whole bunch of different amplifier
Speaker 1: and receiver variants up. To go into all of them
Speaker 1: would kind of be pointless. UH. They're all different amplifiers
Speaker 1: and receivers with different UH specs to them, and the
Speaker 1: specs start to get meaningless unless you're looking for a
Speaker 1: particular piece of equipment in your vintage audio set up.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to go into all of that.
Speaker 1: It really wouldn't be any benefit to anyone. It would
Speaker 1: be like I was reciting numbers and figures out of
Speaker 1: a catalog. But in the early nine seventies, San Sui
Speaker 1: began to produce quadraphonic sound amplifiers, so stereo sound sends
Speaker 1: separate channels to the left and right speakers, you have
Speaker 1: two channels. Stereo Quadraphonic, as the name suggests, was meant
Speaker 1: to do a very similar thing, except now you're talking
Speaker 1: about four channels of audio, so four separate speakers left front,
Speaker 1: right front, left rear, and right rear. So you could
Speaker 1: argue really that this was an approach to surround sound.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what it was. Now. To achieve that,
Speaker 1: you had to follow special processes and use special electronics
Speaker 1: to generate records, word and handle or play back the
Speaker 1: signals in order to get this sort of effect right.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just plug and play like you had to
Speaker 1: specifically engineer all this in order to take advantage of it,
Speaker 1: just as you had to do with stereo. So the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies saw a whole lot of experimentation in this realm.
Speaker 1: For home theater use, quadrophonic sound had actually been around
Speaker 1: since the fifties in studios, but for home setups it
Speaker 1: was a new thing in the seventies and we might
Speaker 1: as well address it here. Quadrophonics didn't really succeed, largely
Speaker 1: because there were tons of technical issues that made recording, broadcasting,
Speaker 1: and playing quadrophonic recordings difficult. Plus there were competing formats
Speaker 1: in encoding and decoding quadrophonic signals. Now that's not to
Speaker 1: say that there weren't examples of quadrophonic systems. There were,
Speaker 1: but on the whole, quadrophonic systems only saw modest success,
Speaker 1: And that's typically gonna happen when you have lots of
Speaker 1: different formats. Some hardware might support format number one but
Speaker 1: not format number two. Some media might only be available
Speaker 1: on format number two, not format number one. So you
Speaker 1: could have a quadraphonic system, get a quadraphonic recording and
Speaker 1: find out, oh, these are using two different encoding decoding formats,
Speaker 1: so I can't actually get the quadraphonic experience on my
Speaker 1: system because they aren't compatible. So the lack of a
Speaker 1: universal standard was a real problem, and ultimately the the
Speaker 1: the music industry as a whole moved away from quadraphonic sound. Now,
Speaker 1: one neat thing that San Sui did was create a
Speaker 1: quadraphonic synthesizer which could take a two channel audio source
Speaker 1: a stereo audio source and simulate a four channel signal.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think of this as sort of
Speaker 1: the modern ultra high definition television UH trend we see
Speaker 1: where like ultra high definition like four KSE sets and
Speaker 1: stuff up scales images from lower resolutions so that they
Speaker 1: look better on an ultra high res screen. We're kind
Speaker 1: of talking about the same kind of process back in
Speaker 1: the day with san Sui, except obviously it's a different medium, right,
Speaker 1: We're not talking about visuals like a high resolution screen.
Speaker 1: We're talking about audio. But yeah, it's kind of the
Speaker 1: same idea. We take this stereo input and we produce
Speaker 1: a quadraphonic output that just thinks. I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. I don't know what it sounded like or
Speaker 1: how effective it was because I've never experienced it, but
Speaker 1: I think it's a neat idea. So in nineteen seventy four, Kikuchi,
Speaker 1: the founder of san Sui, retired. Kinzo Fujiwara became the
Speaker 1: new president of the company, and while Kikuchi oversaw san
Speaker 1: Sui during its early days, it's expansion, the development of
Speaker 1: the AU one eleven, and kind of cementing san Sui
Speaker 1: as a go to in high fidelity audio equipment. Fujiwara
Speaker 1: would lead during a tumultuous era in which various audio
Speaker 1: companies were really competing in the high fi space, and
Speaker 1: then things took a dramatic turn for the company. So
Speaker 1: one thing San Suey did was it introduced a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different circuit designs that it patented in the
Speaker 1: late seventies and early eighties, all really in an effort
Speaker 1: to create more powerful and more accurate amplifiers and receivers.
Speaker 1: So the idea was the circuit designs would allow for
Speaker 1: even less noise to come through while you're boosting the signal.
Speaker 1: That really was the goal. So there's no need to
Speaker 1: go into each of those because uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: were all meant to do generally the same thing. They
Speaker 1: just did it in different ways. But one really big
Speaker 1: change that hits San Suey came in nine eight The
Speaker 1: company had been producing its own transformers up to that
Speaker 1: point for the most part, anyway, and many felt that
Speaker 1: the transformers San Sui was making were contributing a great
Speaker 1: deal to the quality of the San Sui audio products,
Speaker 1: the finished you know, amplifiers and receivers. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: San Sui sold off its transformer technology and its transformer
Speaker 1: business to a company called Hashimoto Electric, and a lot
Speaker 1: of prominent San Sui engineers moved from san Sui to Hashimoto.
Speaker 1: So arguably this was a step towards San Sui's a
Speaker 1: ventual failure, although it's ultimate failure, like the complete disappearance
Speaker 1: of San Sui, wouldn't happen until two thousand fourteen, but
Speaker 1: the company itself was kind of a non player well
Speaker 1: before the two thousand's. So let's give a quick rundown
Speaker 1: of how things generally played out, because finding actual details
Speaker 1: at this point became almost impossible. Bowl I found a
Speaker 1: lot of assertions but very little hard data to be
Speaker 1: able to explain exactly what happened with San Sui. But
Speaker 1: I've got a big picture. So one big thing was
Speaker 1: a global economic trend that San Sui was, you know,
Speaker 1: affected by, and that was that the Japanese yen began
Speaker 1: to appreciate in value against other currencies. That made the
Speaker 1: export business in Japan a lot more difficult, particularly for
Speaker 1: like high end luxury stuff like the equipment that San
Speaker 1: Sui was making, because the the cost in Japan for
Speaker 1: building this stuff was largely uh stable, so your cost
Speaker 1: to make something ends up being about the same. However,
Speaker 1: because of the appreciation of the Japanese yen against other currencies,
Speaker 1: it meant that if you were exporting stuff the amount
Speaker 1: of money you were getting back from these exports once
Speaker 1: it converted into Japanese end, it was less because the
Speaker 1: end's value had appreciated. So you're getting less money back
Speaker 1: from your sales once it gets back to you because
Speaker 1: of these these changes in the value of the end
Speaker 1: versus other currencies. So you have you have very few options.
Speaker 1: You could try to increase the cost the final sales
Speaker 1: price of your of your items and your export business,
Speaker 1: but then you might price yourself out of the market.
Speaker 1: Right if if a two thousand dollars set is now
Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollars set, how many people are actually
Speaker 1: going to go out there and buy it? You know,
Speaker 1: you are already marketing to a pretty limited customer base.
Speaker 1: How do you manage that? So this was a big
Speaker 1: blow to companies like san Sui. Also, there were other
Speaker 1: companies that were competing in the space that We're doing
Speaker 1: really well, companies like Pioneers and Sony. So that was
Speaker 1: a big issue for San Suy was that it was
Speaker 1: facing some pretty stiff competition from other brands. Some of
Speaker 1: these were also dealing with the same issues. Sony in particular,
Speaker 1: dealing with the same issue of the appreciation of the
Speaker 1: end versus other currencies. They responded by trying to reduce
Speaker 1: the cost of production, which meant going with cheaper components,
Speaker 1: and this resulted in San Suy trying to produce what
Speaker 1: some people in the audio file world referred to as
Speaker 1: bpcs or black pieces of crap. In other words, you
Speaker 1: they were putting out these sort of black plastic audio
Speaker 1: components that had cheaper things in them, cheaper pieces in them,
Speaker 1: cheaper transformers, cheaper amplifiers, cheaper transistors, and so the output,
Speaker 1: the actual performance of these components was suffering. Sansu His
Speaker 1: reputation took a hit and people began to kind of
Speaker 1: migrate away from current San Sui products. They would still
Speaker 1: go after the vintage stuff because that was still performing
Speaker 1: really well, but the vintage stuff was that was like
Speaker 1: an aftermarket, right, that was resell market. San Suey wasn't
Speaker 1: making profits off of selling these things because they weren't
Speaker 1: making them anymore. They weren't making those older models anymore,
Speaker 1: so that was a real issue for the company. Eventually,
Speaker 1: it got to a point where the company made the
Speaker 1: decision to cut ties with exports because it just couldn't
Speaker 1: make money in that market. Anymore, and they really focused
Speaker 1: on trying to cater to the Japanese market. However, by
Speaker 1: this point, in the late nineteen eighties and into the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, we were starting to see a shift away
Speaker 1: from high fidelity. People were starting to move off of that.
Speaker 1: They were moving to world of convenience as opposed to fidelity.
Speaker 1: So with the City, you're talking about these big systems
Speaker 1: that have lots of different components, all designed to create
Speaker 1: this ideal listening experience. But convenience is saying, you know,
Speaker 1: listening experience is important, but wouldn't it be nice if
Speaker 1: you could take your music with you? And that was
Speaker 1: where we see the birth of things like cassettes and
Speaker 1: the Sony Walkman, which really revolutionized the audio industry to
Speaker 1: a point where audio files felt it like a stab
Speaker 1: in the back because, yeah, you could now take your
Speaker 1: music with you, which was convenient, you could listen to
Speaker 1: it in ways that you never could before, but it
Speaker 1: was had a much lower quality than what you would
Speaker 1: get with one of these, you know, kitted out audio
Speaker 1: systems that you would have at home. But for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, convenience was more important and also was
Speaker 1: considerably cheaper, and so Because of this shift in values
Speaker 1: of what you know, the music buying public want it.
Speaker 1: You started to see a decrease in interest in the
Speaker 1: high fidelity audio component world, and as a result, San
Speaker 1: Sui Star faded even more. It tried to get into
Speaker 1: things like producing CD players and turntables and stuff, but
Speaker 1: often it was very late to the game and it
Speaker 1: was not marketed very effectively. At some point, and I
Speaker 1: could not find a definitive answer as to win, the
Speaker 1: company ended up selling it's it's brand name to other entities.
Speaker 1: I believe currently a Chinese company owns the right to
Speaker 1: brand stuff as san Sui. The stuff that comes out
Speaker 1: branded as san Sui has no other connection to the
Speaker 1: actual San Sui company that we've been talking about. It
Speaker 1: just is a brand name that has been assigned to
Speaker 1: a product. So there was some point where that happened.
Speaker 1: Exactly when I cannot tell you, because again I could
Speaker 1: not find any definitive documentation, but it happened between the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties and two thousand fourteen. Sometime in that twenty
Speaker 1: years span, it happened, and I don't it's very sad
Speaker 1: for people who were fans of the San Sui brand
Speaker 1: that this happened UH, and a lot of it. I
Speaker 1: would argue, like, I think a lot of people could
Speaker 1: point to Cokuchie resigning like like retiring, as being the turn.
Speaker 1: But honestly, I think that that economic issue, the fact
Speaker 1: that the yen's value appreciated, that was probably one of
Speaker 1: the big big blows, and the other one being this
Speaker 1: shift towards UH preferring convenience over to fidelity. That's a
Speaker 1: shift that we've seen over and over again. By the way,
Speaker 1: like the whole adoption of m P three's audio files
Speaker 1: early in the MP three days, we're not super happy
Speaker 1: about MP thres because the quality of the MP three
Speaker 1: could be much lower than what you would get on
Speaker 1: say a vinyl album that was taken from a really
Speaker 1: pristine master recording. You could say, well, this is far
Speaker 1: superior to what you get with an MP three, but
Speaker 1: again MP three's far more convenient. Anyway. That is the
Speaker 1: rise and Fall of San SUI hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on
Speaker 1: the Twitter handle text stuff h s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.