Hi-Five for Hi-Fi

The death of pioneering radio producer Norman Corwin, age 101, received some attention this week, but I’d like to point out another recent death. Edgar Villchur, only seven years younger than Corwin, was a pioneer in home audio. Villchur can take some of the credit — some would say blame — for the home hi-fi craze in the 1950’s that drove many a wife crazy, if not out of the house.

Villchur started Acoustic Research in Cambridge, MA, and his sealed box design, the so-called acoustic suspension speaker, proved that low frequencies could be reproduced in a home without a gigantic cabinet like another legendary speaker had, Paul Klipsch’s Klipschorn. The trade-off was efficiency. Acoustic suspension speakers require a lot of power.

In 1957, the year before Villchur introduced the legendary AR-3 loudspeaker, Herman Horne on Hi-Fi was a 3-part parody on The Stan Freberg Show, a radio series on CBS. The entire run of the show is on archive.org, but with only so-so sound quality. I’ve assembled the Herman Horne segments, taken from the Smithsonian Historical Performances CD collection of the show, and it’s obvious that only part 3 came from the original magnetic tape.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne01.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne02.mp3,http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Oct/HermanHorne03.mp3|titles=Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi,Stan Freberg: Herman Horne on Hi-Fi]

Note how Freberg changed the voice of the character, making it more comical in the second and third installments. A lot of what he made fun of about audio fanatics is still quite true today. I think the only real difference is there isn’t much of an emphasis on sound effects.