First-Hand:It All Started With Hi-Fi
Submitted by A. Michael Noll
June 11, 2025 © 2025 AMN
My career started with hi-fi audio, which then morphed into electronics and computers. It all started when a Benedictine monk in my high school Latin class played a phonograph record of Suppé’s “Light Cavalry Overture.” I was hooked, and my father and I hunted down a 78 RPM copy.
I was listening to the FM band on our Dumont TV set, and heard an incredible piece of music – something really wild with a French title. I went to the record department at the Bamberger’s department store in Newark. The salesperson instantly realized that I had heard Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du printemps.” I purchased the record, but it was one of the new LP 33 1/3 records – we only had a 78 RPM player. Ooops. So we had to get a player for LPs, and I discovered the power of recorded classical music, and started to learn about hi-fi.
I discovered a store in Newark – Hudson Radio on William Street – that sold loudspeakers and other hi-fi items. I started hanging around, and the audio manager (Johnny Janiga) hired me part time after school to be a hi-fi sales person. I continued to work there part-time after classes at Newark College of Engineering too. Johnny taught me much about sales – the purpose was to help a customer, even if a purchase were not made. When I approached a customer, I always said “Can I help you?”
There were many amplifiers on the shelves, all connected through an elaborate patch cord system to a many loudspeakers. I would set up two loudspeakers to be compared by the customer. I told them there was no “best” loudspeaker – what they liked best was all that mattered. This later got me interested in human factors and preference testing at Bell Labs – where I much wanted to work after graduation from Newark College of Engineering (NCE).
I recall when the first stereophonic LP phonograph record appeared. Customers would now need tow loudspeaker systems, a stereo amplifier, and a stereo phonograph cartridge. I predicted it was the end of monophonic hi-fi – which indeed happened. LP phonograph records came in slip sleeves with great cover art on the front and liner noted about the music on the back. They were impressive to see, hold, and read – unlike the much smaller album material that later came with compact disks.
British audio back then in the 1950s and 1960s was quite impressive. Wharfedale made speakers. The British made a flat panel speaker that had great sound. GE made a stereo phonograph cartridge with dual needles for 78 and for 33 1/3 and 45. We sold many British Gerrard record changers with GE cartridges. But most of hi-fi was designed and made in the United States. Jerry Winters made belt-drive turntables in New Jersey.
I joined the Audio Engineering Society and enjoyed its papers. Each year, there was a hi-fi trade show in New York City, which I would eagerly attend. Paul Grado would demonstrate his newest phonograph cartridge.
The bookshelf Acoustic Research (AR) speaker appeared, designed by Edgar Villchur. It was a revolution in low frequencies and overall sound – as an employee of Hudson I was able to purchase a pair at an employee’s discount. My father was a carpenter, and he obtained the plans and constructed with hand tools a folded-horn loudspeaker enclosure for an 8-inch Electro-Voice speaker. I still have and cherish the enclosure he made for me.
I became president of the hi-fi club at NCE. Johnny loaned us some stereo speakers, and we put on a stereo demonstration in a large room. Dr. A. E. Foster taught calculus at NCE and was an audio enthusiast – he was the faculty advisor to the hi-fi club. He used magnetic tape in his home hi-fi system.
I obtained books about sound, such as the book by John R. Pierce and Edward E. David, Jr. (“Man’s World of Sound”). They became my heroes. Years later I would be at Bell Labs, working in Pierce’s division and later in Washington working for David when he was Science Advisor to President Nixon. My dreams from hi-fi became reality.
I was fascinated by the visual spectral displays of speech and sound – visual spectrograms. I actually programmed a digital computer to create some on a TV-like scanned display. An analogue machine was invented and created what Larry Kersta called speech voiceprints. His technician was tony Presti, an extremely creative engineer. The term “voiceprint” unfortunately implied that they were as accurate as fingerprints – a big controversy back then. Although voiceprints might be used to dismiss a suspect, they were not precise and unique enough to identify a suspect firmly. But many machines were sold by Larry to police departments.
I discovered that tape recorders and electronics and computers were being investigated at Bell Labs to create music. Whether the sounds generated were really “music” was questionable, but it was all exciting to me. I became interested in using computers to create visual art.