AGD Productions Describes their Tube Amps | Featuring Plangent Processes – Transcript

00:06upstairs here with Jamie and Jamie Howard, Jamie Howard, what he got for us up here. He's allowing us to show us one of the best systems in the league. This is the best system on ever of the show, in my opinion, this is Mr. Garra. I'm Berkley Werner, yes, I'm the CEO and founder of A.G.D. Provection.

00:26We're here with all our portfolio products and we've been playing, actually, your music. I've been playing some. It's absolutely fantastic. Albert and I met several trade shows ago and this is the system that I was saying, I believe, crosses over.

00:41Oceanway is, that's Alan Sides, that's the guy who's telling me about, who does all the Disney recording and is a legendary LA audio engineer from the Pro Space. And as we've been talking about, in my opinion anyway, there's been some convergence between the audio file and the Pro Stuff.

00:58And one of the things also that's interesting about what we're trying to do, which is looking at tapes from 1955, 1965, and as recently as we could play a Teen Spirit if you're interested, and trying to take what was a mature technology from the tape machines from years ago and bring that up to the best DSP and the best analog.

01:22We're very much analog. We're very much the best DSP, the best performance. And then here is Alberta stuff, which is the fastest Class D. Yeah, it's actually Class A and Class A GD. It's a completely class on itself.

01:37No, maybe we can actually show that it's about doing help, I would say, to address the audity. And I met Jimmy. He was very intrigued by the design that I chose to go with. Do you have one for this night?

01:52Yeah, Gally and I tried. And again, I made a job because it's Class A GD. In fact, nobody actually can do something like this so far. And we use this as a 400 watt class D at 800 kW.

02:07It's a complete power stage integrated into a KT120 size tube. We decided to go with this for a couple of reasons, many more than a couple of reasons, but two fundamental reasons. There was certainly the marketing aspect of the problem, which was related to the...

02:24We assume that we just have basically five seconds to connect and to make our own impression, regardless if it's a version or if it's a subject or a sound or whatever. In five seconds, we basically decide if we like it or not, sometimes even faster than that.

02:40So in audio, the first impression is certainly the year, but also the look is very important. If I had built this Class D into a coffee can, it would have probably sounded exactly the same. But most likely no one would have been stopping by and being interested, not to mention probably I wouldn't have been able to...

02:57It's not sexy, right? Exactly, it's not sexy enough. So, you know, tube is by definition in audio the best sound I've been getting this kind of fame for so many years. And actually, indeed, it is actually a great sound. So, my first important objective was to not scare the customer, so to make sure that they were pleased by what they were seeing at least the first site.

03:20And then, of course, listening and getting to start asking the question. And the classic question was, how is it possible? It's a single trial. You cannot push so much carbon, so much power. And then I have to explain that it's not really a single, and the trial is actually a complete power stage.

03:37And then this actually helps to, you know, initiate a conversation to, you know, ease the sort of scare or fear or doubt about what we are showing. And that's really the important thing. The certainly important thing is why I decided to do with this is the availability.

03:55You can upgrade the powering stage, which I did already with the KT-88, with the new version, so people can actually simply upgrade by swapping the tube. And it's truly a plug and play. The socket is a socket that's been used for almost 100 years, so it's very reliable to be frank with you.

04:16It's glass, so it's completely isolated. There is a rule number one in every business you run is never kill a customer. So it's the only amplifier you can upgrade in a few seconds without retracuting anybody. And it's a very important thing. You preserve the customer base eventually.

04:33That's an important subject. It was not necessarily the second most important thing, but it was a byproduct of that choice. And it sounds really well. I mean, it was very funny the first time I met Al Janszaj, which is the gentleman that actually is landing me this wonderful speaker.

04:51He's, you know, Jimmy introduced him as well. He's one of the most famous audio engineer, but all around. And we went there listening to, I mean, trying to show my amplifier to a friend to make the connection. And we never met this gentleman.

05:07I never knew about that. I came from a completely different market semiconductor, which is much, much colder and cutthroat type of business than Al Janszaj. It's a not forgiving type of element. So, you know, typical relation with people and customer supply is very, very straight to the business.

05:22You never, if you don't spend time to do a cheat shot and other things. But anyway, so we met with Alan, and he was very, very, very impressed by the sound of the amplifier. He tested it for an hour without even saying a word.

05:37And I've not met this gentleman before, so I have no idea who the guy was. Then he invited me to his office. We went out from the demo room into the alley of this building. And I found something very weird. I look around and I saw this 20 meters by 20 meters corridor.

05:55And all the walls were basically full of, you know, platinum discs and awards. And there were 400 of them. So the gentleman had 400 or 500, you know, platinum discs. All of them, they are from 1979.

06:11It must be somebody. It was somebody. So I started thinking that maybe this guy knew something that I did not know. And eventually, so we became friends. He told me that my amplifier, and that was probably the best compliment. I don't know if it's complete or true. But he said that it's the only amplifier that you ever use that actually makes your speakers to sound the way you intended to sound.

06:32So he designed the speaker in a way. And as a designer of, you know, the most important part of the audio system, you want the speaker to really deliver the way you have recorded the music. And he's a sound engineer, so he records the music. So he was very, very happy.

06:48He said, okay, you can have my speaker every time, everywhere you want to show your amplifier. And that's why I'm so happy and very fortunate to know so great people, including Jamie, which brought me this wonderful record tapes that has been stored digitally, of course, and we played here.

07:07And we made a lot of people really jaw-dropping, because they never thought that they could possibly get this kind of soundstage and feelings, which basically is what you want to get when you listen to something. From something that was recorded 70 years ago, 60 years ago, 50 years ago.

07:26And it's interesting how this gentleman has been able to extract the purity of the record signal from tapes that are master tape, but old, by understanding the engineering of the machine that recorded this music and giving everybody now the possibility to appreciate the wonderful quality that he was at the time into this tape.

07:51We shall listen. Yeah, of course. That's the best way of actually judging if what I'm saying is just true or not. There you go. Exactly. All right. That sounds good. Let's take a listen. Thank you. Thanks.

08:05Ella Fitzgerald, Nirvana, Bill Withers.

09:42I mean, what was the last one I just learned about the listening and you? Chris Stapleton. Unbelievable. These guys are trying to make me cry before we do our final... But I have too much of... Emotional. Yeah.

09:57Too much of an alpha for that. Jamie wanted to thank you for introducing us to Alberto. Yeah. Thank you. If you could let us know what you got going on, working your magic in the future here? We have just finished White Stripes Elephant and Bill Adams, which I told you about, just came out last week.