A Tribute to Roy F. Allison (1927-2016)

Acoustics researcher, writer and
loudspeaker designer, Roy Allison, age 88, died March 1 in Manchester, New
Hampshire after a long illness.  

Allison was born in Milford, Connecticut
on May 6,1927.  He was the oldest in family of 12
children.  Upon graduation from high school, Allison enlisted in the
US Navy Reserve and served from 1944-1946; he spent his first year of duty in
intensive electronics training and for the remaining year and a half, he was a
a radar-electronics instructor.

Following his service, he attended the
University of Connecticut from 1946-1949, majoring in electrical engineering,
leaving one year shy of a degree in order to support his wife and new
baby.  He was subsequently recalled to the Navy in 1951 to serve for
eight months during the Korean conflict.   

In 1949, Allison became a draftsman and
staff writer for Radio Communications (Radiocom, Inc.) and was
named editor in 1951.  Radiocom changed to “Audiocom, Inc”
and began publishing High Fidelity magazine in
1953.  He became a contributing editor to High Fidelity while
continuing to be editor to other trade publications, including TV and
Radio Engineering, and Communications Engineering, and
beginning in 1955, Audiocraft  magazine.  By 1954,
Allison had become associate editor of High Fidelity and audio
editor in 1957.  By 1959, however, High Fidelity magazine
moved on to new owners and was sold to Billboard Publishing, but Allison had
elected to stay with his original publishing company, Audiocom, Inc.

Allison’s writing clarity and electronics
knowledge led to a meeting with Acoustic Research co-founder and president,
Edgar Villchur; in March, 1959, Allison joined AR as “assistant to the
president.”  This position was to be as public-relations
assistant to Villchur, but soon after working in AR’s repair department,
customer service and production engineering, he solved several large
production/shipping issues that developed with the AR-2 speaker, and he became
chief engineer in 1961.  After plant manager Harry Rubenstein left AR
to return to teaching in the fall of 1964, Allison assumed this
position.   Abe Hoffman, former AR president and Allison Acoustics
Vice President, commented in 1962 that Roy Allison and Gerald Landau (sales and
marketing) were brought into Acoustic Research as understudies who could step
into management at the appropriate time, and this proved to be forward thinking
on the part of Edgar Villchur. 

In 1967, at the time of AR’s acquisition
by Teledyne, Inc., Allison was made vice president of engineering and
manufacturing, a position he held until he resigned from the company in
1972.  During these years, Allison established AR’s renowned quality-control
program, warranty policies and designed (or managed the development of)
the AR-3a, AR-4, AR-4x, AR-2x, AR-2ax, AR-5, AR-6, AR-7 and AR-LST loudspeakers
in addition to the line of electronics products, including the AR Amplifier, FM
Tuner and Receiver and the hugely successful AR-XA Turntable.  

In late 1972, Allison left Acoustic
Research and spent approximately a year studying the interaction of
loudspeakers and rooms.  With newfound knowledge of the effects of
room boundaries on loudspeakers—now well-known as the Allison Effect
“boundary dip”—he felt that he could use this knowledge in the
design of a new line of loudspeakers that would address these issues, and
co-founded—and became president of—Allison Acoustics, Inc. in March,
1974.   He subsequently filed for a patent on his design, US
Patent 3,983,333 and published disclosure articles on his research and
findings. During this time, Allison also designed a new midrange and tweeter
unit with exceptionally wide dispersion, and a patent was applied for this
design as well.  Allison was responsible for the development and
production of Allison Acoustics loudspeakers that were considered to be among
the highest-quality products available at that time, including such models as
the Allison: One, Two, Three and Four, and subsequent models of that
range.  Leading high-fidelity publications, as well as
consumer-testing organizations such as Consumer Guide and Consumer
Reports, consistently rated Allison speakers at or near the top in
performance and quality.  In the late 1980s, Allison’s new flagship
model, the IC20, received France’s Dispason d’Or top award for
excellence.  Allison Acoustics closed in 1990.

Roy Allison continued with speaker design
into the early 1990s, forming RDL (Room-Designed Loudspeakers) and subsequently
RAL (Roy Allison Labs), a mail-order organization.  By 1993, Allison
retired from the day-to-day grind of loudspeaker engineering and production,
and he began outside consulting work in the loudspeaker industry with clients
such as JBL, Cambridge Acoustics and BIC. 

Allison was intelligent, clear-thinking
and largely self-taught in acoustics and mathematics.  He was an
excellent and precise writer, and during his career, he authored over 100
articles in audio trade magazines and papers in peer-reviewed audio and
engineering journals, such as theJournal of Audio Engineering Society (JAES)
and the Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA).   In
1962, he wrote a fine book, High Fidelity Systems: A User’s Guide,
first published by Acoustic Research and later reprinted by Dover Publications
in 1965.  In 1973, Allison was elected a life Fellow of the Audio
Engineering Society for his contributions to the understanding of interaction
of loudspeakers and room acoustics.  As well, Allison was an IEEE
member.

Acoustic Research

Acoustic Research, Inc. (“AR”), co-founded by
Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss in the summer of 1954, became one of the great
pioneering hi-fi speaker companies in the history of audio.  Not unlike Hewlett-Packard’s genesis of California’s
silicon-valley electronics businesses in the late-1930s, Acoustic Research, on
a smaller scale, spawned many of the great loudspeaker companies in the Boston
area of New England during the 1950s and 1960s, such as KLH, Advent and later,
Boston Acoustics.

From AR’s start in 1954 came the AR-1, the first
acoustic-suspension loudspeaker, followed by the smaller AR-2; in the late
1950s, AR introduced the AR-3, a speaker incorporating the hi-fi industry’s
very first dome tweeters, an engineering innovation that has since become
standard practice, even to this day. 

By the early 1960s, these relatively small AR speakers—capable
of reproducing powerful deep-bass response and wide-dispersion, low-distortion
treble response—replaced many of the huge refrigerator-sized Bozak, Klipschorn,
E-V, JBL and Altec Lansing speakers to became the new standards of sound reproduction in the home. The timing of the new small AR speakers was perfect,
as it coincided with the 1958 introduction of two-channel stereo, which
necessitated the placement of two reasonably-sized speakers in the living room.
The world of high-fidelity sound reproduction changed forever.  

During Roy Allison’s 13-year career at AR, he made many important
contributions to the U.S. speaker market, introducing many new
“industry-standard” AR speakers such as the AR-3a and the AR-LST.  After Allison left AR he started his own
company, Allison Acoustics in the 1970’s, and continued making excellent
loudspeakers, many of which became “standards” in their own right.

Roy Allison – Missed but NOT  Forgotten

Through the years, Mr. Allison was highly
regarded in his industry and characterized by a kind, soft-spoken and
self-effacing demeanor—always thoughtful and generous.  He put the
customer first, always, and he will be missed in the high-fidelity loudspeaker
industry as one of the premiere designers of the formative audio years.