Audio industry loses a legend

[Σπύρος Μπλάτσιος]

O ιδρυτής της Audio Note, Hiroyasu Kondo δεν βρίσκετε πια ανάμεσά μας...

One of the legendary figures of high-end audio, Hiroyasu Kondo, died in his sleep while attending the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Kondo-san, who founded Audio Note Japan in 1976, and built the world-famous amplifiers bearing his name, was a devotee of all things valve-based, and was sometimes referred to as 'the silversmith', due to the use of age-annealed silver in his equipment.

A few years ago he wrote that 'Sound is said to be propagated as wave motion. This is only true in a large room with no obstruction. In reality, however, sound waves move in much more complicated way, colliding and jostling here and there, sometimes in a whirl. We audio engineers should try to visualize in our head how the sound waves are behaving, which cannot be explained by electrical theory. There seem to be still countless unknown factors challenging audio engineers. The more you think about audio, the deeper it appears to become.'

Perhaps the most famous product he made was the amazing Ongaku amplifier – the name means 'music' in Japanese –, which he was still refining and developing right up to his death. The 27W per channel amplifier uses hand-wound silver in its output transformers, and despite its high price sold as fast as the company's factory in Japan could build it.

Kondo, the second son of a Buddhist priest, was a professor of electronic engineering and molecular metallurgy. He had suffered ill-health for some time, and appointed his close colleague Masaki Ashizawa as President of Audio Note Japan six months ago, after the two had worked together for 16 years. Kondo-san is survived by his wife, Kazuko, his son, Yuji, and his daughter, Hisae.

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