Bryston Factory Expansion

hanks to all of you out there Bryston is expanding our manufacturing facilities. We have been experiencing substantial growth over the last two years and this increase in sales has necessitated a 65% expansion in manufacturing space.

There has been an increase in demand for amplifiers at both the professional studio level and the domestic level due to the interest in multi-channel sound. Where, in the past, there was a need for only 2 channels of amplification now there is demand for 5 or more channels. The film scoring part of our business especially is experiencing a large spurt as a result of surround formats such as DTS, Dolby Digital, THX etc.

Another area which has undergone substantial growth is our overseas market. We have been getting very impressive press and outstanding reviews in Europe and the Pacific rim. Finally, the United States market is expanding at a rate not seen by us in all our 30 years of manufacturing experience. The last year alone has seen a sales increase for Bryston in the U.S. of over 120%.

As you know, Bryston is a hand crafted product. We have been in a constant backorder situation for the last year and we certainly appreciate your patience. Our factory expansion will allow us to solve these problems and still provide you with the quality and reliability you expect from Bryston. We are training a number of new employees and should be fully functional by the time you read this.

Room Interface

here are a number of different theories out there regarding the best possible location for placing your loudspeakers in a typical stereo set-up. The purpose is to optimize the room-loudspeaker interface to reduce or eliminate the severe dips and peaks in the frequency response that are problematic when you place any loudspeaker in a specific room. One of the best I have come across is the so called "odd demension" formula.

A large number of problems arise when you attempt to place a given loudspeaker either front radiating designs or dipole designs - into a typical domestic environment. These problems are a function of the physical dimensions of the room. These room dimensions dictate at what point in the room a node or anti-node will occur. Dips and peaks can easily overwhelm the time and effort taken by the designer of a particular loudspeaker to have a flat frequency response within a respectable range, usually plus or minus 1dB.

Loudspeaker & Room Interference

If for instance, you place a loudspeaker with an excellent frequency response characteristic in the corner of the room you will increase response below about 150 cycles by 6dB. This condition is an obvious exaggeration but the same condition applies through-out the room, only to a lesser extent. Research on this placement problem has produced a method for reducing the nodes and antipodes in any given room simply by always positioning the loudspeakers within the odd dimensions of the environment.

As an example, if your room measured 18 feet by 14 feet you would take each of the two dimensions and divide them by an odd number. You divide 18 feet by 3 by 5 and by 7. This gives you 6 feet, 3.6 feet, or 2.57 feet as the three possible positions for placement of the loudspeaker within the long dimension of the room. Then divide 14 feet by 3, by 5, and by 7, giving you 4.67 feet, 2.8 feet or 2 feet as the other possible locations for the loudspeaker in the short dimension of the room.

As an example, lets take our 18 by 14 foot room and place the loudspeakers on the fifth dimension into the length of the room and the seventh dimension into the width of the room. The length of the room is 18 feet, therefore the fifth is 3.6 feet. The width of the room is 14 feet and the seventh dimension is 2 feet. The speakers are then placed at the point where these two measurements intersect.

This example would allow the loudspeakers to react to this room environment to a lesser extent than simply placing them arbitrarily in the room. Remember also that any of the other combinations should also be tried in order to find the best possible sound available for the room.

One point that must be stressed is that the, location in the room were the two dimensions intersect is the acoustical center of the loudspeaker not the front or back of the loudspeaker. If you look at the side of the loudspeaker try to imagine a line drawn through the magnet of the woofer and place that point over the marked position on the floor. Also draw a line through the woofer looking at the speaker from the front and place that point in line with the marked position on the floor.

If these rules are followed it will improve the acoustical quality for any given room because the nodes and anti-nodes are reduced substantially. There are a number of other optimization theories out there which I will discuss in future newsletters.

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