hillplasmatronics.com
Posted on July 22, 2015 by emmaco
The Flame Still
Burns
“Then the music started and I was
again startled by the clearest, most life-like reproduction of recorded music I’d ever heard. The recording being demoed was a solo A
Capella contra-basso male voice. The image
produced could have fooled me into believing the invisible man was singing in
the room. When they functioned, they
played better than anything I’ve ever
heard.” Steven Kastner
“We suspect, though, that most
audiophiles will find these speakers to provide the most mind-blowing listening
experience they have ever known.” J. Gordon Holt, Stereophile
“The Single Best System Commercially
Available.” J. Peter Moncrieff, International Audio
Review
Ever seen these types of comments regarding a speaker
before? You haven’t,
because this speaker is truly unique. Here’s
a few more from respected reviewers…
“We just stood there, dumbfounded,
with our jaw hanging open.”
“So much closer to live music than
anything else.”
“Our standards for being able to tell
live from reproduced music have been forever changed.”
Imagine a speaker with no moving parts. No mass, no cones, no ribbons, no diaphragms, no
enclosure, no Doppler shift, no resonances- just the ability to modulate
the air directly.
Now imagine a perfect audio point source (the ideal
pulsating sphere) radiating uniformly with constant phase.
This has been the dream of physicists for at least a century.
There has been only one speaker that has ever come even
remotely close to those lofty goals- the Hill Plasmatronics 1A, built in New
Mexico by one of the world’s preeminent laser physicists.
Chances are you’ve never heard
a Plasmatronics speaker. Not surprising, as only 52
pairs (we’re aware of Serial Number 70 though) were made thirty plus years
ago. You had to be a dedicated hi-fi enthusiast
to have heard them even back then.
The Hill Plasmatronics 1A was expensive- no doubt you
could purchase a home in some parts of the country for the same price. It was complicated- vacuum tubes, helium tanks,
an electronic crossover, multi-amplification, and even a rock inside each
speaker.
Yet it was remarkably simple to explain its key virtue-
if you played back a recording of a telephone ringing, someone in the house
would come in the room and pick up the telephone.
The Plasmatronics 1A did not require an extended listening session to prove its
inherent superiority.
Lynn Olson once compared Alan Hill’s speaker as an
SR-71 Blackbird lurking in a world of Boeing 737’s, a claim many
owners would agree with wholeheartedly.
This site is dedicated to the
enjoyment and preservation of this technological masterpiece.
Experienced
audio insiders will stare at the two graphs above in bewilderment. This measurement (made by member JP) details the
plasma units phase and frequency responses from 1 kHz
to 20 kHz.
Suffice
to say this is likely the best speaker measurement you
will see during your lifetime. The linearity of both is staggeringly
impressive.
Emotionally
the Plasamatronic 1A is an interesting experience. After such an initial build up, one’s first reaction is it sounds just like any other
speaker other than the sound is coming from a
flame.
Ten
minutes in you “get over” the technology and start to seriously listen to the
speaker. The experience is
someone detractive in the sense that nothing sounds wrong. There is no exaggeration of anything, nor nothing
lacking.
Twenty
minutes in you start to understand what makes this speaker so special. Every instrument sounds just right.
We’ve become so used to the flaws in other speakers we tend to listen
around them and ultimately make excuses for them.
No
crossover points in the middle of the speech articulation bandwidth. No constrained volume. No
thin bass. No phase discontinuities in the high
end.
You
just sit there in a stunned rapture, realizing you’re
one giant step closer to audio nirvana, with a high frequency response that
exceeds both your ears and the majority of audio
instrumentation. The Hills are an ideal way to evaluate higher
resolution digital audio tracks with greater than CD resolution (16 bit, 44.1 kHz sampling). We have
listened to a variety ranging up to 24 bit/192 k
resolution and they sound stunning.
I’ve
never driven a well sorted Ferrari at speed on the Autostrada, nor drank a thousand dollar glass of champagne. But I have had the
love of a beautiful woman and listened to the Hill Plasmatronics 1A. That’s more than
enough.
Contrary to popular
belief, Alan never worked for Los Alamos. He was working at the Air
Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque (presumably part of the current Directed Energy Directorate)
when he formed Plasmatronics.
He was working on his PhD at
UM Ann Arbor and working at Lear Sigler on a CO2 laser to be
used for piercing of all things baby bottle nipples. He discovered the
reason that CO2 lasers of that day could not put out much meaningful power,
when the govt seized his notes and classified them.
His adviser, Peter Franken,
told him to go to work for the government as it would be the only way to
continue his work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_Energy_Directorate#Directed_Energy_Directorate
Nearly
all the journalistic criticism of the speakers involve
the low end of the speaker, much of it incorrect.
Below
a switch selectable 700 Hz or 1 kHz crossover point, the Plasmatronics 1A used
a conventional 14.1″ French built Son-Audax woofer and a
6.5″ midbass driver in two separate sealed enclosures.
The
midbass enclosure included a medium size rock to break up potential standing
waves within the small space. Rumor has it that
these rocks were hand selected by Dr. Hill from the New Mexico desert.
The
user had the option of using the internal passive crossover between the bass
and midbass driver or using an external crossover and triamplifying the system
via a rear panel connector. The passive
crossover was housed within the low frequency
enclosure.
Nominally
this would require a 200 watt per channel stereo
amplifier at a minimum to augment the system. Triamplification required
an additional electronic stereo crossover and an additional stereo
amplifier for the mid bass.
(Per
member Tonehack) “Alan
did build a lower range driver in the 80’s. It was downward firing because the
helium had to be kept near all the little nozzles.
His
eldest son, Larry, helped build it (he was home from college for the summer). It was a round, approximately 5″
diameter array of hypodermic needles embedded in the same blue epoxy that holds
the commercial driver.
This
array sat inside a kind of bell. Helium was fed through the needles
and they were all electrically driven just like the commercial electrodes are.
The sound output was measured with a microphone below
the bell. I cannot remember the low-end cutoff, but it must have been around
200Hz.
The
power required to make sound doubles for every octave lower i.e., the current
driver uses many hundreds of watts to get to about
700Hz and 175Hz would require four times that power. It also needs a lot more Helium. This is one of the reasons why Alan did
not really push this further. He was always keen to find a way to do it all
without Helium. He even tried Hydrogen once, and did get a farily decent
response, but the Hydrogen makes water and that made a lot of
noise as it attacked the cathodes in the discharge. It didn’t
work well.”
Other attempts to enhance the plasma tweeter have been made as well. One member has mated his Plasmatronics equipment to an Apogee ribbon based low end, augmented with a pair of Eminent Technology TRW-17 subwoofer systems, which may be the ultimate in high fidelity technology when integrated. The combined bandwidth of the components alone should exceed that of every other speaker system ever built.
http://www.sonicflare.com/archives/eminent-tech-trw-17-the-most-powerful-subwoofer-in-the-world.php
P.S. Is that a lava light in the middle of the picture?
Plasmatronics
listening is a little more complicated than with conventional speakers.
First and foremost, we recommend wearing polarized
sunglasses while listening to protect your eyes. However
beguiling, try not to stare at the plasma cells while they are operating.
Second,
you’ll need to make sure the two internal helium tanks
are filled up. If you haven’t filled yours
in a few years, each tank runs around $200 each for industrial grade helium
(with a tank exchange) here in Southern California in March
2015. I haven’t tried balloon grade helium
which is substantially less expensive. Helium prices have risen 5x in the last fifteen years.
You’ll have to adjust the gas flow and current bias
meters after startup.
Recently
we bypassed the internal passive crossover and decided upon triamplification
mode using an electronic crossover, which raises the obvious question:
What
are the appropriate settings for the crossover?
Our
initial starting point was with an 800 Hz, Butterworth, -12 dB octave setting
for the midbass to plasma driver and a 200 Hz, Butterworth, -12 dB/octave for
the bass to midbass driver.
The
acoustic polarities all match now, and am trying to
figure out how to set the relative delay settings, which is not the easiest of
issues.
The
speed of sound is based on three variables: the adiabatic constant of
gas, the molecular mass of gas, and the temperature.
Using a
handheld IR thermometer to measure the temperature, the
majority of measurements were around 460 degrees F at the center of the
plasma after warming up.
When
striking it’s around 250 degrees F and I did get a few
edge readings of the plasma at 650 degrees F. Room
temperature was 75 degrees F.
In
a pure helium environment, this calculates out to 4,316 ft/second. A bit different than the 1,132 ft/second of
air. Obviously
the gas in the chamber is not pure helium either.
My
next step is to make some impulse measurements (ETC)
of the system and observe the differences in arrival time between the three
drivers.
Dr.
Hill working in the lab.
Download
the Service Manual: Plasmatronic Service Manual
Keeping
a pair of 35 year old Plasmatronic 1A system running is clearly not the easiest task in the world.
It involves learning about gas distribution, vacuum tube power
amplifiers, control systems, and some strong lifting
abilities.
Yet
when you break it all down, it does make sense and will work.
The key is patience.
As
an aside- I was stuck on an ignition problem for months.
After actually reading the manual I was
able to fix the problem in thirty seconds.
Tools
recommended are a strong back, a good table with proper lighting near your
speakers, a pair of thick oven mitts (really handy for
carrying the plasma units), some Caig cleaning products, a gaggle of Q-Tips for
cleaning, and a tolerant support partner.
We
recently resurrected our set (30 L and 30R) after a twenty
year hiatus. I removed both the original cone drivers and replaced
them with a Dynaudio midbass and Audio Concepts AC-12 subwoofer at the
recommendation of a good friend and industry colleague.
You’ll need a good soldering station, pipe tape,
Allen wrench set, adjustable wrench for the gas connection, access to a tube
tester, a roll of trimmable velcro, and a couple of circuits of AC power in the
room. The WT3 woofer impedance program ($99) made short work of the cone
related issues.
As
a non-general rule with the disclaimer (it’s your
house, don’t burn it down)- you can operate the system on a single 20A 120V
circuit. You will need at least two plug strips- one for each speaker- as
two on a strip will trip the internal breaker on the strip.
I
would also recommend using a triamplifier configuration and bypassing the
internal Passover between the woofer and midbass unit.
We
are currently a Yamaha SP2060 is upstream of the Hill
Interface Unit in our system feeding a tri-amplified configuration in our
system and bypassing the internal passive crossover. We
selected the Emotiva 5 channel 200 watt amplifier;
only using four of the channels. It has balanced inputs, good protection
against faults, plenty of current (never approaching clipping) and drives the
mid bass and subwoofers nicely since it is only used up to 700 Hz. Speaker wire is some
Mogami sourced 10 AWG for the subwoofer and 12 AWG for the mid bass, primarily
so as not to confuse which was which.
Currently the
Yamaha crossover has the low end driver is configured with a Thru High Pass
Filter at 20 Hz, and a Low Pass Filter at 100 Hz, -12
dB Butterworth.
The
midbass driver is High Pass Filter at 100 Hz, -12 dB
Butterworth. It is High Pass Filtered at 710 Hz,
– 6 dB. I have electronically inverted the
polarity, but frankly the difference is minimal.
It is delayed 2 mS relative to the bass driver
The
high frequency driver is set at 710 Hz, – 6 dB per octave.
It is delayed 1.5 mS relative to the midbass
driver.
A
good room fan is important. I chose a Vornado
model which is relatively quiet and discretely
placed it out of sight.
My
son chose Pink Floyd’s Wish
You Were Here for first listening, and frankly we were stunned. I’ve listened to that disc since it first came out,
went to the LA concert performance of it in my youth (yes, the infamous Darryl
Gates debacle), and still heard things on it I’ve never heard before today.
I have written over 350 audio articles in my career, and frankly do not
have the words to describe the difference between listening on the Hills and
any other system. I only wish I had the
listening acuity of my youth back.
We
have five audio systems in the house- an all Quad
electrostatic system, two Gale GS401 based systems, and one Sonus Faber
system and they are well loved and appreciated. I regularly go to
CES and the local Hi Fi show and have compared with the best Wilson and Magico have to offer.
All marvelous kit- but…
But
as Lynn Olson once wrote, they are all 737’s parked near a Lockheed SR-71.
Probably like watching the 1927 Yankees play the Red
Sox. Hey, someone had to go 51-103 for the Yankees to win all
those games. The Quads do some things better
than the Gales and vice versa. The Sonus Fabers
also have their strengths. But the audio
quality of the Hills is superior in every aspect.
If
you were to ask me the most common failure issue with these speakers, of all
things it boils down to a silly little resistor.
Symptoms include one of the five electrodes will not light, the front panel
meter gives you silly readings, and the indicator lamp remains lit constantly.
Each
speaker houses five tube amplifiers within based on
the 6MJ6 (also known as a 6JE6-C) Beam Pentode vacuum tube.
This tube was generally used for TV horizontal
deflection amplifier applications back in the day, but it is a seriously robust
tube with thicker glass.
The
anode of each tube feeds a large vertically oriented green ceramic 25 KΩ
100 Watt wirewound resistor. Directly underneath that
big green resistor on the opposite side the
printed circuit board is a 1.75 KΩ 5 Watt
resistor which connects directly to one of the five tubes feeding the
plasma chamber. That’s the
troublemaker. You generally have to unscrew the
P.C. board to access them.
I
have had THREE of these 1.75 KΩ resistors fail (there are ten total, five
per speaker). Originally made by Clarostat
(Model VPR5), they end up overheating and cracking down the middle. You can get NOS replacements online, but I’d suggest an alternative to these little devils.
They overhead, the internal wiring blows, and they crack in the middle. Here’s a photo of two examples…
My suggestion is two-fold. Replace them with a higher rated wattage resistor (10 watt ceramics are easy to find) and keep a few extras in stock. Schematically, the little devils are highlighted in rounded red rectangles below:
The
right plasma started acting up a little bit.
There was an intermittent (once every ten seconds) “chirping” sound which would
make the bias meter oscillate wildly on one the five internal amplifiers.
The
interesting part was the top electrode metal cap came off easily, and
underneath the top of the tube was badly corroded.
Turned
out to be a bad tube. Replacement sorted the
problem out instantly. Always handy to
keep a stock set in hand. They’re up to about $30 apiece for NOS on eBay now.
The
lower segment of the left channel LED display wasn’t
working. Turned out one of the ground traces on the display printed
circuit board wasn’t passing ground.
Soldered in a jumper to bypass the trace, and worked
perfectly once again.
I
would suggest replacing the Interface power cord as well.
The original rubber jacketed version deteriorates with time.
I
want to give credit where credit is due (one of our members forwarded this to
me) but frankly can’t find the original
email. Click on the image to enlarge, save it to your hard drive,
and print it out.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/hill-plasmatronics-type-1-loudspeaker
Hill Plasmatronics
Type 1 loudspeaker
By J. Gordon
Holt • Posted: Jun 9, 2014 • Published: Apr 1,
1980
Dr.
Alan Hill, president of Plasmatronics Inc., was previously employed by the US
Government in laser research. His assignment: To increase the efficiency of
lasers so that they could do something more impressive than produce holograms,
mend leaky retinal blood vessels, and punch pinholes in steel blocks. Dr. Hill
earned his keep, thus advancing laser technology a giant step closer to Star
Wars, and then retired from government service to design. . . a
loudspeaker?!!!?
How
could laser research qualify someone to design a loudspeaker? The connection is
really much more direct than it seems. Twenty-odd
years ago, Dr. Hill envisaged a loudspeaker that would use a field of ionized
air as the transduction element, but didn’t feel
enough was known about plasmas (footnote 1) to perfect such a device.
At
about the same time, a firm called the Dukane Company started producing such a
device anyway: The “Ionovac” tweeter. It was not a huge commercial success,
partly because of its (for those days) outrageous price and partly because
add-on tweeters have never been big sellers. (The Ionovac was subsequently made
by ElectroVoice until phased out in 1963.) Nonetheless, the Ionovac
is still considered by the knowing to be the best
supertweeter ever made, and there are few audiophiles who would sniff at its
2–40kHz (±2dB) response.
While
developing the high-efficiency laser, Dr. Hill found it was necessary to
control the shape of the plasma of ionized gas that does the lasing. And it
occurred to him that shaping might be the key to a high-efficiency, wide-range
“Ionovac.”
His
first efforts, using a relatively low-temperature
plasma (and an absolutely Mickey Mouse mockup), were
disappointing. It produced sound, over a respectable part of the audio
spectrum, but at ridiculously low levels of efficiency.
Using higher ionizing voltage, and a mixture of air and helium as the plasma
medium, he was able to sustain a much larger plasma field (thus significantly
extending the low-end range) and to yield practical efficiency figures. Then it
was necessary to do additional trimming of the system to produce the flattest
possible frequency response across the board.
All Photos Courtesy John & Amelia
Mayberry
In the final production version, flat response is maintained (with 1dB) down to around 700Hz. The upper
limit is claimed to produce “significant acoustical
power” out to beyond 100kHz. It was deemed impractical
to try and carry the low end because of cost and power-supply considerations.
Even in the production version, the required driving amplifiers (built into the
system and all tubed) are rated at 500 Wpc.
The range below 700Hz is handled
by conventional cone drivers: a 5″ midrange and a 12″ woofer, which
must be driven by their own (choice optional) amplifier.
The speakers connect to the main system preamplifier
via a 30′ cable and an “electronic interface”—a
small box housing the system’s electronic crossover circuitry, balancing
controls, and a series of LEDs that display the system’s output level at any
given instant. The interface unit is located at the main preamp end of the
interconnecting cable.
Gas Beside the plasma
driving amplifier and the transduction device, each speaker enclosure also
houses a large bottle of compressed helium gas (footnote 2), which is fed on demand to the plasma field when the speaker is
operating. (When the system is off, the helium flow is
automatically turned off.) The bottles must be recharged after each 300 hours or so of operation—representing s little under 6
months of 2-hours-a-day listening sessions. Refills cost around $30 per bottle,
which translates into an operating cost of 20¢ per
hour for helium alone.
For
people living within convenient delivery distance of a major city, there should
be no trouble locating a helium supplier. (You’ll find
them in the Yellow Pages, under “Gas—Industrial and Medical—Cylinder and Bulk,”
or under “Welding Supplies and Materials.”) For those people who live ‘way out
in the boonies, recharging may involve shipping the empty bottles to some
distant supplier and waiting, perhaps for weeks, for
their return. (Anyone who can afford a pair of the Plasmatronics should
certainly also be able to afford a second set of gas bottles to be put into use when the other set is away being recharged.)
Practicalities Each speaker
weights about 300 lbs with its fully charged bottles. And when both amplifiers
have been running for an hour or so, their combined heat dissipation dumps
about 3500 BTUs (just over 1kW) into the room—dandy on those chilly winter
evenings but a dubious blessing on a hot August afternoon.
With
all the design complexity, the question of reliability must inevitably come up.
As of now, the speakers haven’t been around long
enough to establish ay sort
of reliability record, although their ability to withstand accidental overloads
and foolhardy listening levels has already been demonstrated. They seem to be very rugged, but whether or not production
samples will be inadvertently sabotaged by a parts vendor remains to be seen.
Those
of us who have read alarming things about the toxic effects of ozone may wonder
how much of a problem it is with this system. Well, the Plasmatronics do generate
ozone, but in such small quantities that after three hours of continuous
operation, it could barely be smelled at a distance of 12″
from either speaker. This concentration of ozone is so far below the toxicity
(or of potential damage to rubber and plastics) that to worry about it may be
symptomatic of some degree of neurosis.
There
is provision for biamplifying the two lower-range cones, but this is one of
those rare instances where biamping is not recommended.
The built-in crossover has phase-correction circuitry; electronic crossovers do
not. As a result, biamping the Plasmatronics speakers introduces audible
frequency-response irregularities (which are absent when their own crossovers are used), neatly shooting down the system’s remarkable
blending of drivers.
Listening We auditioned two
versions of the Type 1 speaker over a 3-month period. The first was early
production, and while that part of the audio range covered by the plasma driver
was impressive (more details subsequently), we were unhappy with the low end.
The cones blended superbly with the upper range, but the bass was somewhat loose, floppy, and ill-defined. We were inclined to
blame that on the driving amplifier, which was one we had never been enamored of: the Audio Research D-100.
Subsequently,
Dr. Hill made changes in the cone portions of the system and
also found what he felt to be a better drive amplifier for them (the
Threshold 4000A), and that was the version of the system we auditioned for this
report.
So,
how does the current version sound? Quite simply, mind-boggling!
One’s first reaction is that there is just no
transducer there at all. You seem to hear through the system
to the program source. Stereo imaging and depth are as well
reproduced as form any system we have heard, and the most immediate
response to all this is that the system sounds incredibly alive.
Footnote 1: To a physicist, a plasma
is a volume of ionized gas. (An ion is an atom having more than or fewer than
its usual complement of electrons.) The gas within a plasma has an extremely
low density, relative to the gas surrounding it, Thus, when cool gas is heated to the plasma state, it expands in volume and
imparts a pressure wave to the surrounding, cooler gas. Using an audio signal
to vary the volume of the plasma produces the alternating compressions and
rarefactions of a soundwave.
Footnote 2: Helium is inert, odorless, and completely
harmless. Deep-sea explorers have breathed a 50/50 mixture of oxygen and helium
for days at a time without any effects other than a comical raising of the
voice pitches that makes grown men sound like Donald Duck. (Excluding nitrogen
from the “air” prevents a nasty diving disorder called “the bends,” which
results from the formation of nitrogen bubbles in the blood stream when a diver
returning to the surface undergoes rapid decompression.) The raising of voice
pitches is due to gaseous helium’s very low density,
which provides less acoustic loading the vocal cords
than does normal air, causing them to vibrate more rapidly.
Sonic details are reproduced with clinical clarity,
which is dandy with superb source material but a liability with the majority of recordings. Bass is deep, tight, and
gut-shaking, and the seams between the drivers are virtually
imperceptible—quite an accomplishment in view of the fact that two of
them are cones, with appreciable inertial mass, while the other, widest-range
one is completely massless (footnote 3).
Without running any curves, we would guess the low end
to be effectively flat to around 35Hz in a room of adequate proportions. (The
one we listened in was not. The tightest, deepest low
end was only audible in an adjoining room, which did at least prove that the
system was capable of producing that kind of
bottom.) Our only cavil about the sound concerned the system’s
brightness, which was too much. Dr. Hill assures us that the
system measures flat out to the bat’s radar region, and indeed
it sounded flat when we listened with the cartridge of his choice (a GAS
Sleeping Beauty Shibata). But with original tapes, and a cartridge we have
found to provide comparable brightness, we felt the sound from the Type 1 to be
brilliant almost to the point of stridency (although
without the teeth-setting edge that betrays the presence of spurious odd-order
harmonic content). For this reason, the system never quite captured the correct
musical timbres of most musical instruments—an attribute few audiophiles seem
attuned to anyway. (Take an audiophile to a concert and his first reaction is,
almost invariably, “My God, where are all the highs?“)
With
most speaker systems, some degree of exaggerated
treble is necessary to help overcome the innate deficiency of detail. It
is not necessary with the Plasmatronics, although we can well
understand how that brightness may be necessary to sell these speakers to the
kind of listener willing to pay $7000 for speakers alone (many of whom are
locked into cartridges whose own brightness range is attenuated). If we had our druthers, we would like to see (and
hear) this system equipped with a switch that would provide, in one position,
the kind of sound that we heard (by which we cover ourselves against the
possibility that it may sound less bright in other rooms), and in the other
position,, a more neutral musically felicitous sound.
Considering
the current chaotic state of the high-end” audio field, few listeners will get
any real idea of what these speakers can and cannot do until digital program
sources become more widely available. Anyone endeavoring to evaluate the
Plasmatronics at a dealer’s will be at the mercy of the dealer’s
often-misguided choice of associated equipment. There is, in fact, more than
just a possibility will sound better than it really is,
because of the current popularity of deadish but tipped-up phono cartridges
that will tend to offset the speaker’s brightness and underscore its remarkable
detail.
The Type 1’s literature specifies a maximum
output level of 107dB, which looks pretty good but not
outstanding. In truth, we found it possible to achieve clean signals
up to a peak SPL reading of 116dBA before overload became audible. That may not
be disco-type output level, but to any other listener it is one hell of a lot
of noise—particularly when we consider that live music form acoustical instruments
rarely exceeds 100dB when heard from an audience seat,
even a very close one.
incidentally,
“overloading” the Type 1 system does not cause the usual startling snap or
crackle of amplifier clipping or voice-coil bottoming. When overloaded, the
system—literally—runs out of gas and progressively
limits the amplitude of signal peaks, in much the same unobtrusive manner as
the peak limiters used for years by virtually all commercial record companies.
Conclusion Is this
loudspeaker worth its $7000 price tag? Maybe. There is no doubt
but that there is $6500 worth of technological know-how
and constructional hardware in a pair of Plasmatronics Type 1s, but whether or
not they are worth that much to you as a consumer depends on what you value,
and how much. If you are hyper-critical of imaging, inner detail, transient
response, and high-end openness, be assured that this
system will give you more of those things than any other currently available
system. If you are a bass freak, these won’t
disappoint you, though they may not make you as happy as a large
transmission-line system or a monumentally dimensioned horn system.
But
if you are more of a music listener than a detail fanatic, you may well find
that there is much in the grooves of most discs that is best left unheard. And
if you are picky about the accurate reproduction of
timbres, you may also—depending on the characteristics of your program
sources—be more or less put off by the Plasmatronics’ brightness. We suspect,
though, that most audiophiles will find these speakers to provide the most
mind-blowing listening experience they have ever known.
Further
Thoughts Although
not the perfect transducer, the Plasmatronics Type 1 represents a significant
advance in the state of the audio art because it eliminates, once and for all,
the need for detail “enhancement” in the program material an
ancillary electronics. If, and when, this standard of detail
reproduction filters down into the lower-priced equipment areas, multimiking
and the use of “hot” microphones to offset detail smearing in playback systems
will no longer be necessary. This could pave the way for a new kind of
audiophile recording, in which performing groups can be
presented at a natural distance, to provide blending of the sounds
without loss of definition. The result will probably be
what we’ve all claimed to be seeking: The sound of live music. Whether or not
we will all like that sound is moot. . .
Footnote 3: Well, not quite
completely. The gas mixture has some thermal
inertia, which causes a gradual rolloff of frequencies above about 30kHz.
However, the rolloff is much less rapid than the rolloff that occurs above the
resonance frequency of a mechanical transducer.
There’s are more urban legends surrounding the
Hill Plasmatronics 1A than most any other speaker. Perhaps
this is a result of so many wanting to hear a pair, but so few actually
having the opportunity to do so.
Perhaps it’s time we some of the “legends” to rest.
False.
“I was a dealer for Plasmatronics and have heard many
wild tales about this speaker. First. It was not a health hazard. The odors
produced by the arc were not ozone which I was told
was not produced in quantities large enough to be harmful, said Dr. Hill, but
was mentioned by jealous competitors to restrict sales of this speaker by
making it appear as producing unhealthful gas.
I
listened to them for over four years and suffered no ill effects. They did
produce an odor, but it was not ozone. My demo room was not well ventilated and I can assure you that a man of Dr. Hill’s
integrity would go broke rather than market a speaker dangerous to a person’s health!
You
can bank on the word of Dr. Hill and my experience
over several years as a reference to their safety. I have never seen a
testimony or legitimate fact sheet which proved they were unhealthful. Some
competitors and critics were simply uptight about the
Hill accomplishment and resorted to untruths to defeat sales of this radical
but ingenious design.” – Carl
Miller
“That’s correct, virtually no ozone. Now here’s an example of something that made lots of
ozone…” - Nelson
Pass
False. According to one who was there, 52
pairs were built in total. Four
pairs were packed off to a disco in Singapore. Many
of the others
were sent to California, Chicago, White Plains, and Coral Gables.
Alan
Hill always said most speakers were shipped overseas.
At one time there
were at least 14 pairs in the US. Thirty years
on, who knows?
But
we know of at least five sets still running in the USA!
“I
owned 2 pairs, and one of my business partners had a third pair”- Nelson Pass