Nelson Pass’ ‘perfect’ massless, full-range Ion Cloud speaker
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2019
- I first met Nelson Pass in 1980 (I was mistaken in the video when I said 1981) when he told me about his experimental Ion Cloud speaker. It was a diaphragm-less electrostatic design that used ionized gas instead of a diaphragm. Very high voltages were applied to tungsten filaments to ionize the air. Massively insensitive, the Ion Cloud needed kilowatts of power to get any sound out of it, it was said to be the most sonically transparent loudspeaker ever, but I never heard it. The biggest design hurdle was that it produced ozone gas, so much of it over the course of five days that it put Nelson in the hospital when he demonstrated the Ion Cloud at the 1981 winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Back then Nelson Pass was the President and Founder of Threshold, and was primarily an amplifier designer, so he used his Threshold 800A amp that could deliver up to 1,000 watts, and even with that much power the Ion Clouds didn’t get very loud.
Read about T Townsend Brown’s Ionic Wind, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biefeld...
Nowadays Nelson is head honcho for Pass Labs and First Watt.
www.passlabs.com/
www.firstwatt.com/
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Nurse: What brings you to the ER?
Nelson: Jazz
I know this can't happen all the time, but these types of shows are the best!
Great. More Nelson Pass would be appreciated.
Steve is King 🤴
You some how find the most fascinating people in audio to talk too 👍😎
Looking forward to your conversations with Mr. Pass!
He has no peer when it comes to the wealth of knowledge he has freely
shared with the DIY community over the years at diyAudio.com in the Pass Labs Forum.
I'll pass.
Ah, memories of the old days. I had dinner with Nelson back in 90-91, a gathering with Threshold.
Mr. Pass is an absolute legend, he's also quite the enthusiast. I remember he referred to the calamari as the "squiggly wiggly."
Today, I'm just the old grandpa reminiscing. This interview was fantastic.
I still own a Threshold S300 and a Fet 2 preamp that still work flawlessly..
The man behind decades of ( my favourites) the best sounding amplifiers.. (Glad to see he’s doing well)...what a treat
Nice to attach a warm humble human to the legend that is Nelson Pass. Looking forward to the next few Saturdays!
Love Nelson Pass. Thanks for this interview.
I love these interviews. The history of the high end, its development, and most importantly...the relationships behind the most influential minds and personalities of the industry. Keep up the great work Steve, Its greatly appreciated.
So happy you are interviewing my good friend Nelson Pass.I still have my plasmatronics Hill type 1 Helium. Nelson got poisoned from this crazy endeavour! Not very careful there ,ozone is pretty bad! So happy he survived Dr Solheim Marbella and Norway!
if your creation almost kills you..isn't that Frankenstein?
....so..we call it the "FrankenPass"?
Yeah! Mr. Nelson Pass! I could listen to him speak all day. He’d make a great hypnotist.
I look very much forward to the rest of the interviews. Thanks so much, Steve!
Great interview Steve Nelson one of the great original designers still around
Great vid! I still have my old GFA555 Adcom amp that was designed by Nelson. A vintage classic.
Nelson is the best! Keeeeepppppp it going..If he talks about refrigerators..I want to hear it. XP
A true Giant in our little Audio pond..... thanks for caring and sharing!
Such a nice man...... he actually responds sometimes personally to emails regarding his ampilfers.
Thank you for the great products Neslon Pass. I sure enjoy mine.
Many many thanks for this video and for the following. I was an early customer and follower of Nelson in the mid to end 70’s. I owned one the first 400A’s and used that to drive heavily modified Dalquist DQ-10’s. I really look forward to him talking about his journey. An audio legend in his own time.
My Threshold phono amp is my prize audio possession. $5 at a garage sale! Thx for the interview.
Vinyl Rundown - Nice find, Isn't it great when someone doesn't really know what they're selling.
english steve Well, it did not include the power supply which cost a few hundred. Widow just wanted it gone. She went from $5 to $4 the second I showed interest! Hooked to rega P7 for now.
Impressive, I had to pay $10 for a krell cd player at a garage sale.
Awesome stuff Steve! Can't wait to see the rest of the interviews. ✌️
Great interview Steve . Looking forward to the others. Very interesting . Keep up the good work !!
WONDERFUL! thank you steve and mr. pass. BIG thumbs up.
What a treat. More please!
Man, hearing from the pioneers of audio, in a relaxed situation, are my favorite interviews. Thanks Steve!
Great stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the series
The best interview yet. Keep 'em coming, Steve. Pass seems like a great guy who runs a great company which makes great products.
Absolutely DELIGHTFUL interview! I bet Nelson Pass has hours and hours of extraordinary anecdotes.
Very interesting, I like these interviews you do
Very cool interview with one of the REAL GREATS in audio. I was fortunate enough to hear Jon Iverson's "No Moving Parts" Loudspeaker when I worked for him many decades ago.
This was really wonderful Steve - thank you
What a wonderful interview. THANKS!
Great interview, thank you!
I first heard the Dayton Wrights in an audio store in Pittsburgh @1973. I think it was Opus 1(?). They were incredible. They did have a propensity to leak gas and sometimes the transformers would catch fire. Other than that they were amazing to listen to. Great interview.
This is wonderful. Looking forward to more.
The business needs more people like Nelson Pass 😁
I enjoy listening to Nelson talk. Love his products
Ingenious indeed. Chapeau that it worked!
Very informative video and awesome Residents shirt!
Great stories. Looking forward to the next.
Pass’ brilliance is iconic in the world of HiFi.
Or do you mean ionic.
TGG, Hahahaha, that too!
His EYES!! No telling how deep they go into amplifier wisdom:)
Terrific interview!
I toured Pass Labs in Foresthill. I saw them building amps. Seeing all of those Caps, transistors, etc. The way they assembled them into the boards, chassis, I literally had to keep sucking the drool off of my lips. Their quality is art. I heard about the other building that the speakers they had designed were set up in. I wish I would have toured that too but I didn't want to intrude. Maybe I could have had some Ozone =) They are very nice people who build extraordinarily exceptional gear. Foresthill is an inspirational scene.
This same tour is just begging to be done 😀 would love to see a tour of Nelsons amp collection and his huge stash of unobtainable parts us audiophile amp builder drool over like jfets, Sony vets etc. Speaking of Sony vets nelson has one of sonys very limited production larger vfet amps (moblocks I thunk). They are almost mythical as I think only a couple were made and Sony has one and nelson has the other. Another story here. Probobly would put his first watt sit amps to shame😀
Nice interview Steve. Great questions and intresting data shared.
It’s this kind of stuff that ensures hi-fi always stays intriguing
I want a set! Because it’s a perfect audiophile product!
Awesome conversation with him. I just had a talk with Nelson recently, and he’s such a cool person to talk to. Learned a lot from him. And being able to both talk about stuff that we both enjoy.
greetings from Brazil. Great interview. it's fantastic to know a little more of a legend.
Great interview and you got it to sound decent!
I have been trying to make one of these for years. Perfect for Car audio for me since it would clean the air as I smoke like a CHimney. I started work on mine back in Highschool. And when the Ionic Breeze came out? I was always trying to see how I could use this device to make sound.
I never got it to really work well. But I'm glad other people were able to get their electrostatic designs to work.
It would be GREAT for a SPL competition to see just how loud you could push an Ionic speaker.
best audio guru.... have obsessed over Pass white papers for ever.
Incredibly interesting great stuff steve
I owned a Threshold Stasis 3 superb amplifier Nelson is one of the top audio pioneers in my opinion.
This was great!
Speakers to die for!
...and toxic.
I've always wondered about new and interesting ways we could create sound without all these silly magnets and paper cones. Shame we still haven't struck gold yet. Thankfully there will always be men like Nelson Pass that will try thing nobody else has thought of.
Well some companies (namely Acapella Audio Arts and Lansche Audio) are using ion tweeters that operate off the same principle - ionizing the air and using magnetic fields to manipulate it. They sound cool!
Steve this is great stuff.
Listening to Nelson Pass is like listening to Richard Vandersteen. Two of the smartest persons in the high-end business.
Not only smart. But the way these two gays can explain their products are amazing.
Have you heard Richards explanation to his loudspeaker design you just can’t buy another speaker than a Vandersteen.
And if you have heard (or read) the explanation behind any Pass amplifier you just can’t buy any other amplifier.
I think the first application of this in audio was the Ionophone tweeter. I believe used a heated quartz element to create ions and used rf to modulate the field and a horn to couple to the air.
Great series of interviews. Wish I could hang around Nelson's shop and test his creative products on a daily basis. Beautiful equipment for sure. They have great names as is but perhaps a line named after Johannes Vermeer is fitting for at least one product.
Killer sound, Dude!
At 1:33 - "HIGH VOLTS nix fingerpoken" LOL
prob danish or NL
The Ion Cloud Speaker was probably really efficient when reproducing 100KHz! And of course, Nelson is an amazing inventor.
My buddy has a pair of his Rushmore speakers and a Pass preamp, they sound really good for a non-horn design.
Hey, your audio is loud and clear!
What a treat. See you next few Saturday mornings!
NP is a delight.
Hi Steve,
A episode needs to be covered in his burning amp diy festival he has every year where he shows off his new creations or ideas to the diy audio crowd. Also shows off many builders creations and many of the diy folks at diy audio like 6l6 (Jim Tiermann). Not many places where you get to sit and listen to some of the best minds (including the man nelson pass) in diy audio and interact with them. I wish to someday attend. Would love to make a big shout out to Jim Tiermann for his wonderfully put together build guides on pass labs forums for many of Nelsons amp designs he shares!
So what happened to the ION Cloud prototype? Is it still around? Inquiring minds want to know! (and see new photos of it!) :) Loved the stories about Dan and the Dayton-Wrights. Looking forward to more!
7:42 wraps audiophiles up in a nutshell.
Great stories.
I hope you had a chance to touch on his DIY efforts.
That ozonizer isn't exactly the sonic device I had in mind to keep kids off the lawn, although probably more effective since the earbuds killed their high-frequency hearing ... PaPa is most definitely a true visionary! ;) Thx Steve!
These sound similar to the speakers John Iverson had built, that he had plugged directly into the utility pole and it was dimming the lights for a few blocks.
I have still a pair of old Snell speakers :)
I couldn't help but think that a high voltage bar-b-cue grill could have the potential to be kind of maybe a little um, dangerous?
Then I noticed the sign at the bottom. *NIX FINGERPOKEN* That should be enough to deter anybody from touching it...
I remember reading about those speakers in Stereophile when they were at a show, if they were the same ones. They termed them plasma speakers being driven by 1000 watt Mac monos that were at clipping at rather low volume.
michael garrison Yhat sounds like another speaker from France called the AHL Toltheque which was shown at CES in around 1990. I remember seeing it, and the meters on the McIntosh amps were pegging the end stops at background music listening volume. Nelson would of course have used Threshold amps
I have a Pa Slabs power amp. Very good it is too!
I didn't know David Crosby designs amps and speakers!
Nelson Pass was on to something with the Ion Speaker. It is a step to something very advanced. The speaker can sound different depending on the altitude because thin air and dense air in high altitude vs. low altitude will change the sound.
In the 90s, I remember a lot of interest in plasma arc tweeters, even some websites with DIY projects. I also recall a wild type of "thermionic speaker" that looked like some kind of Futterman nightmare. I believe they were OTL design, but with NO speaker connection. Instead sound emanated directly from the output tubes, which were some incredibly massive transmitter types, like several orders of magnitude beyond an 811A. They were glass enveloped and not water cooled. Do you or Nelson recall these at all? There was a line on the website stating that when playing, the room would feel "fresh, like after a spring rain" or something to that effect. Probably dangerous as well. I once had my house treated with massive amounts of ozone after a fire and can verify the ill effects on breathing. Also, that extra oxygen atom wreaks hell on photos, plastics, etc, etc..
Thank you so much. This is fascinating. A video engineer I used to work for circa 1985 had seen this speaker (I think this is what he was describing) at CES. His amp was designed by Nelson Pass, too. It was the first time I'd heard the name. He also told me about a speaker he'd seen demoed in Vegas that used some sort of FLAME to produce sound. Anyone have any idea what that might be?
And FFS, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, go to Steve's Patreon page and subscribe. I watch nearly 100% of his videos and felt like a jerk not joining his Patreon. He never mentions it anymore, so I will. www.patreon.com/Audiophiliac
Again, this was awesome, and thank you.
Steve, I see you are working on all cylinders regarding your TH-cam channel.🤓 Great interview and not the same old Andrew Jones interview!🤯🤔🤗 Not that there is anything wrong with Andrew!
wow yes, I remember article .
How would the sound change with different air densities? E.g. high and low weather systems and high & low humidity.
Back in the late 1950’s Dukane company had the Ioni plasma based tweeter product that received glowing reviews. There were two problems with it. The first was that one of the components had a limited lifespan and needed frequent replacement, which was designed to be user replaceable, but was expensive. The second was that it produced a discomforting amount of ozone gas. For these reason, it was not a commercial success and its marketplace availability was short lived.
I am still looking for a speaker system that can properly reproduce the sound of the classical bowed double bass with its full and true timbre without sounding like a ball park Hammond organ playing the Mexican Hat Dance during the 7th inning stretch. The only speaker that could do this was the KLH-9 in a double pair configuration driven by Futterman design OTL tube amplifiers and the Berning TF-9 preamp.
Make me proud to be an audiophile. That’s for posting this Steve. 💜💜💜
Comes with a gasmask.
I want those load resistors. That's hilarious how big they are...
I'm working on an active speaker which is powered by a gasoline motor, there's just a slight problem with carbon monoxide poisoning.
Just pipe it up a chimney stack you are good to go.
A genuine visionary and a true altruist in the DIY community.. cant thank him enough for what hes given to us all.
If I remove the glass tube from my output valves, will I get the same effect (but cheaper)?
Ha ha!
Electrostatic U.F.O. prototype that can repair the hole in the ozone layer.
I knew someone working on a « plasma » loudspeaker with the same ozone problem, it was interesting but non practicable at all. Leedh’s speakers have membranes but Milhaud managed a rather good trade-off , you should hear its loudspeakers
Expensive and Toxic and Unobtainable...irrational, yet makes perfect sense.
Girls same
How'd you like Sea Ranch? I didn't know that Nelson Pass was my neighbor.
Beautiful!
@@SteveGuttenbergAudiophiliac I hope that you got to spend some time in and around Sonoma County. It's an incredible slice of heaven and I feel blessed to live here.
@@cosmonaut9942 My aunt and uncle had a chicken farm in Petaluma during the 60s. I always loved visiting them. A tad too warm for me, though.
If ever there was a real world Gandalf The White, then hands down it's sire Nelson Pass!!!
What of the Hill Plasma speaker?
TAK1313 the plasma part was a tweeter, the ion clue was full range