What truly separated him from others, however, was his ear. Once the dealers became believers, the AR-1 forever changed the hi-fi industry.Īlthough Kloss was a gifted designer, much of his success was a triumph of perspiration over inspiration. Surely some kind of trickery was involved, because everyone knew that good bass could never emerge from such small, bookshelf speakers. The AR-1 was so far ahead of its time that early demonstrations to retailers were met with suspicion. Until that time, in order to realize good-sounding bass, audio designers would have had to resort to building speakers the size of a refrigerator. The system was exceptionally good with low frequency sounds, which were crucial in the reproduction of classical music, yet it did not sacrifice quality in the rest of the frequency range. Anton Hoffman, provided $5,000 in seed money, and Kloss supplied the facility, an abandoned furniture factory in East Cambridge where he was already operating a cabinet and speaker-assembly shop.ĭeveloping Villchur's idea, Kloss designed the first acoustic-suspension loudspeaker, the AR-1, which used air in a sealed cabinet to better produce sound than any product before it. His teacher, Edgar Villchur, had an idea for a new loudspeaker, and after Kloss was discharged from the service he teamed up with Villchur in 1953 to found Acoustic Research to develop and manufacture it. While stationed in New Jersey, however, he a took a night course in high fidelity at New York University. Drafted into the service during the Korean War, Kloss dropped out of MIT and would never complete his degree. He purchased woodworking tools in order to make furniture for his apartment, but instead became involved in audio, building enclosures for a speaker system designed by an MIT professor and his student to improve the sound of live FM broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. To support his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he entered in 1948, Kloss worked part-time for a contractor. As a boy, he was a precocious builder, adding rooms and bathroom fixtures to the cabin he shared with his mother and two sisters. Legendary audio engineer Henry Kloss was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1929 and raised in the area. In addition, the company sells through its own catalog and a sister Web site,, and Creative Labs distributes its multimedia speakers around the world. Cambridge SoundWorks sells to the New York market through an exclusive distribution deal with J&R Music and Computer World, a major electronic retailer in the city. Products are sold through 24 retail locations, with 12 located in Massachusetts, seven in California, three in New Hampshire, and two in Maine. is a subsidiary of Creative Technology and manufactures a wide range of speaker systems for home stereo, home theater, car audio, and personal computers.
Located outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Cambridge SoundWorks, Inc.
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