Edgar Villchur

Edgar Villchur died on Monday, October 17, 2011 of natural causes at his Woodstock, New York home, his daughter, Miriam Villchur said. He was 94.

Edgar Villchur has written three books and over one hundred and fifty articles on high fidelity, sound reproduction, audio engineering, and hearing aid technology in both peer-reviewed scientific journals and popular magazines, including two articles written when he was ninety years old. At the 1995 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America he received the Life Achievement Award from the American Auditory Society.

By 1973, he had come up with a concept based on the early work of Steinberg and Gardner on loudness recruitment, proposing multi-channel compression to make up for the variable loss of loudness compression (recruitment). Each patient's audiogram, combined with individual testing, would determine a custom gain-map program keyed to the individual person. The multi-channel system was adapted to an individual's hearing losses in specific frequency ranges, providing amplification where needed. Equally important, one band would not "pump" another. For example, the bass would not control the gain in the mid and high frequency bands. More importantly, he used "wide dynamic range compression" (WDRC). Unlike the previous "compression limiting" circuits, which limited loud sounds to a certain level but did nothing to increase the gain for quiet sounds, Villchur's WDRC amplifiers increased gain for softer sounds without excessively amplifying louder sounds.

In 1967, Villchur sold AR to Teledyne, and signed an agreement not to go into business in the field of sound reproduction equipment. Teledyne kept the AR name, and continued to produce stereo equipment. Although it was Villchur's plan for the company to produce a complete set of sound reproduction components, he sold the company before the amplifier and receiver became part of the line.

Acoustic Research continued to expand its loudspeaker line, producing the smaller "bookshelf" speaker, the AR-4, which was popular among college students and younger families. In 1966, Stereo Review's yearly summary of the high-fidelity equipment showed that AR's loudspeaker sales represented almost one-third of the entire market, a share that had never been achieved by any hi-fi company before that, and which has never been equalled since.

In 1961, Villchur designed a turntable (record player), and published an article explaining its several innovations. The tone arm and turntable platen were mounted together and suspended independently from the body of the turntable, so that a shock to the body of the turntable would have little effect on the playing of the record. Indeed, Villchur was fond of demonstrating this independent suspension by hitting the wooden base of the turntable with a mallet while the record played on flawlessly. The mechanical isolation of the tone-arm-platen assembly from the base had a further advantage. It eliminated the "muddy" bass sound that often resulted when vibrations from the loudspeaker were conducted through the floor and caused feedback through the pickup into the amplifier.

Villchur built a prototype of his new speaker out of a plywood box. The dimensions of the face of the box were taken from a picture frame that Villchur had hanging in his house. His wife, Rosemary, who had been a draftswoman during the war, sewed the pattern for the flexible surround out of mattress ticking. Unable to afford the full services of a patent attorney, he found a patent lawyer who was willing to explain the patent process briefly, and Villchur applied for a patent himself. In 1956, he received U.S. Patent 2,775,309 for the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker. He tried to sell the idea to several loudspeaker manufacturers, but his idea was rejected as impossible.

Villchur's speaker systems provided improved bass response while reducing the speaker's cabinet size. Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR), of which he was president from 1954 to 1967, manufactured high-fidelity loudspeakers, turntables, and other stereo components of his design, and demonstrated their quality through "live vs. recorded" concerts. The company's market share grew to 32 percent by 1966. After leaving AR, Villchur researched hearing aid technology, developing the multichannel compression hearing aid, which became the industry standard for hearing aids.

One of his students at NYU, Henry Kloss, listened to Villchur's explanation of acoustic suspension and agreed that a speaker built on this principle would be a major improvement in hi-fi sound reproduction. Villchur decided that since the established manufacturers were not interested in the invention, the only way to make it available to the public was to go into business producing the new speaker. Kloss had a loft in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was making loudspeaker cabinets, and the two men became business partners in Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR) in 1954. The partnership lasted until 1957, when Kloss left to form KLH, manufacturing loudspeakers using Villchur's acoustic suspension principle, under license from AR.

The first acoustic-suspension loudspeaker, the AR-1, was introduced at the New York Audio Show in 1954, and was an instant success. Villchur continued to improve loudspeakers, coming out with new models roughly every two years. The AR-2, produced in 1956, was a no-frills version of the speaker at a lower price. The independent testing agency Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, did a report on loudspeakers that year. The AR-2 was one of only four speakers that received the Check Rating for highest quality, regardless of price. Of the four speakers that received the check rating, two were made by AR, and two were made by KLH under license from AR. After the CU rating, sales tripled.

As president of AR, Villchur was known for progressive employment practices and innovative advertising techniques. AR used equal opportunity employment practices, and employees received health insurance and profit sharing—benefits which were highly unusual in any but the largest firms in the 1950s and 1960s. The company was also known for its liberal repair policies, fixing most products for free no matter how old they were, and in general providing excellent customer service.

Edgar Marion Villchur (28 May 1917 – 17 October 2011) was an American inventor, educator, and writer widely known for his 1954 invention of the acoustic suspension loudspeaker which revolutionized the field of high-fidelity equipment. A speaker Villchur developed, the AR-3, is exhibited at The Smithsonian Institution's Information Age Exhibit in Washington, DC.