Audio Products International Factory Tour
by Marc Mickelson, Doug Schneider, and Neil Walker

Taking a factory tour of Audio Products International is an enlightening experience. We often think that great speakers are the preserve of a demented gnome, Geppetto the speaker maker, slaving away in his little shop behind the garage -- or in the garage. This designer is dedicated to audio perfection through sheer artistry and an intuitive knowledge of good sound, and this certainly applies to the work done at API -- but this is where the analogy ends.

Then to now

API was born in the early '80s and is located in Toronto. It was formed by absorbing many small speaker companies, and its heritage of incorporating multiple organizations into one is something that remains today. However, API of 20 years ago is a much different company than it is today, and the product lines of many years ago were vast, but somewhat discontinuous. While the company's products may seem just as vast today, there is more common ground among them all than first meets the eye.

Like a good many Canadian-based speaker companies, API owes its roots to the research work of Floyd Toole and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). While the principles of that work into "what makes a loudspeaker sound good" have been rehashed in our pages many times already, it's most important to note that one of the most influential people in API's design group worked right alongside all of the researchers at the NRC -- Ian Paisley, who is as well known a Canadian speaker designer as any. He started designing speakers long before API and even the NRC's research. His first products, under the Paisley Research name, were small, two-way speakers in elegant cabinets, but Paisley's designs have evolved considerably since that time.

There's an interesting tale that has made the rounds at API about Paisley and his pursuit of perfection. Back in the days before many designers knew exactly what made a speaker sound good, flat frequency response measured on-axis was thought to be king. So Paisley designed what was thought to be the ideal loudspeaker, one with ruler-flat frequency response on-axis. It seemed logical, after all, and the on-axis response curve is still one of the the most basic of speaker measurements.

So Paisley built his ideal specimen, and it was flat. He knew it because he measured it in the NRC's anechoic chamber. And the result? It sounded awful. So awful, in fact, that he found it hard to believe. Paisley was beside himself and was bent on finding out exactly why this happened. According to the tale, this is when Paisley learned about a speaker's dispersion -- frequency response on-axis is one thing, but off-axis has a huge impact too. Paisley now leads research at API, and although the product lines he oversees differ in terms of their technology, the design principles stem back to Floyd Toole's "green book" ideals of wide bandwidth, low distortion and even off-axis dispersion.

And today the company Paisley works for is a giant: offices and manufacturing facilities, 350 employees, production lines, separate warehouse. All of this fosters speaker manufacturing on a grand scale -- a week's worth of product would equal a year's output of other successful companies or overshadow that of many small companies combined. There is nothing small about API's facilities, and as we found out, their ideas about what speakers should do and how they should be built are no less imposing.

Four lines, no waiting

API is now the headquarters for four speaker brands, each one well known and different in its aims from the others (another brand, Incognita, will be released in the future). This allows the four brands to share manufacturing facilities, while allowing API to offer an overall lineup of products that will fulfill the sonic needs and desires of a substantial number of audio and home-theater enthusiasts.

Mirage is one of the best known of the API brands, and those who know the name will also know that Mirage speakers aim at maximizing the dispersion characteristics of the sound and thereby minimizing the interaction with the room (how this is achieved is an article in itself). Mirage speakers not only have drivers firing forward, they have them firing out the back too. Of all the speakers API makes, Mirage speakers are probably the closest to what Paisley would now consider perfection.

Of great interest to us, as we were about to conduct our first blind-listening test at the NRC (the results of which have been published in E-Mag issue 4), was this Welker quote: "If we didn't do blind listening, we wouldn't be able to design speakers." Thus, for Mirage, "Hearing always outweighs measurements," another Welkerism.

Energy speakers are also high profile, although they don't fully embrace the 360-degree-dispersion goal of the Mirage line. John Tchilingurian leads the design team for this brand. Energy designs are only front-firing, but the designers do pay attention to dispersion characteristics. The key to the differences between the brands brings about one of the strategies of API. While some companies embrace a single design philosophy, API seems to wisely acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect loudspeaker -- no matter what the latest speaker-flavor-of-the-month reviewer embraces. As one designer once said when quizzed about his own speakers, "Nothing's exactly right; you have to pick your compromises wisely." With Energy and Mirage, consumers can choose which is best for their ears and rooms.

Sound Dynamics embodies Mirage and Energy principles, but aims at producing speakers limited to lower price ranges. While Mirage and Energy speakers can cost from a few hundred to several thousands of dollars per pair, Sound Dynamics speakers stay, with a couple of exceptions, under $1000 per pair, with many models in the $300-$600 range. Leading the Sound Dynamics team is Gord Van Kessel.

Van Kessel also designs the new Athena lineup. Like all the API speakers, these too are targeted at a specific market. These speakers are subwoofer/satellite combinations that "clamp" together, creating a more full-range speaker with a powered subwoofer. You can buy the satellite speakers first, then add the subs. This configuration is not all that new; many companies have offered this type of system before (although the "clamping" is particular to Athena). What is novel is the mix-and-match technology that Athena uses. While you would normally place an S1 satellite with a P1 subwoofer, you can mix, say, an S1 with a P2. You can also use two S1s with only a single P1. There are other combinations too. Besides this technology, there is something else about the Athena speakers -- they look cool.

The Athena lineup is lower in cost and offers innovative and contemporary products. While music lovers of any age can enjoy Athena speakers, it's obvious from their looks and reinforced in the company's advertising that they are aimed at a younger market, likely those buyers in their 20s and 30s.

Designing

Getting into the actual act of designing speakers at API would require a full-length report of its own. There are an astonishing number of products under development at any time -- subwoofers, speakers, amplifiers. You name it, it's all happening. On the day of our tour, John Tchilingurian was running frantically about as the new flagship in the Energy line -- the latest Veritas series -- was about to hit initial production. Suffice it to say that everything has to be just right. To bring a single product to production can take months, even years.

The areas where the designers work is close to the actual production area, likely because it all goes hand in hand and they must be close by as their designs go from computers to prototypes to full production. However, having a facility of this scope shows an advantage that a company like API has over many smaller companies -- they can design almost everything from scratch. This includes not only the cabinets and the crossovers, but also every bit of the drivers, like the windings of the voice coils. To make production just right, everything can be made just the way it has to be.

The company has an arsenal of technology to perform every type of measurement. The most interesting of all is what they call "the pit." It is effectively a large, open-back room with three of four walls made of concrete blocks. Speakers are measured from a stand that can be rotated in one-degree increments. The room is far from being an anechoic chamber; however, it can be made to "simulate" such by capturing the measurements on computer and "gating" the response using the appropriate time -- in other words, cutting the response before the reflection of the sound from the speakers hits the concrete walls and comes back to the microphone.

Welker shows the panel that holds the raw driver to be measured in the adjacent room

A view from the ramp to "the pit." The microphone array is computer controlled and allows the designers to do many measurements at once.

The tour

Our tour began in the API lunch room, where we talked with the three people who would lead us around API's facilities. Jason Zidle is the brand manager for Mirage speakers, performing a number of duties for Mirage. Jeff Percy handles PR for all of API, so he was a natural for leading around a group of eager journalists. Finally, Andrew Welker, one of the designers of Mirage speakers, rounded out the API entourage.

Any tour of a speaker-manufacturer's facility should begin with the raw materials, and at API, there are mountains of MDF from which the company fashions the cabinets for the speakers they create. On the day of our visit, there was more MDF than we'd seen anywhere, including our local Home Depot stores. But what was most surprising was that the MDF we saw, numerous stacks 10 feet or more in height, was only a five-day supply!

API's wood shop is massive, comprising three main areas that take the MDF down to size, so to speak, and thereafter create the cabinets for the speakers. The sizing area is where the large sheets of MDF are cut into the smaller parts that will make up the cabinets. API works on a massive scale, and as an example, they can produce 5000 cabinets for their small powered subwoofer in one day.

Over in the detailed-machining area, the CNC routers shape the rough pieces into the parts that will make up each cabinet. API employs a number of these expensive machines, some of which are equipped with automated mechanisms for moving the stock between each pass. After the CNCing comes the V-grooving, where the parts are grooved so they can be folded and fit together. We've done other speaker-manufacturing tours over the course of our years in existence, but we've seen nothing equal the scale of API's woodworking operations.

API also designs and makes its own drivers, and some of these are incredibly advanced, like the woofers we saw for various models of Energy speakers. There is a long production line for producing and testing the various drivers, each worker performing a specific task in the driver-production process. Having this capability on the premises is an incredible luxury to API designers like Andrew Welker, who can have a prototype driver in his hand in a day, not weeks or months.

Next to the line for driver production is the speaker-building area, where the carts of parts and drivers are turned into the various models of speakers. We found this area especially interesting because of the sheer number of models that API makes -- and their different configurations. A Mirage Omnipolar speaker is very different from an Energy model, and yet the two may be built one day after the other. Production runs are a day long, although they may be extended to a second day when API needs to catch up with orders of a particular model. As with the building of drivers, workers perform a specific function on the line, and at the very end the speakers are tested by computer to ensure that each one fits within a certain tolerance. Then around the corner they go and they're packed for shipping.

When you have thousands of speakers rolling off a line, quality control is obviously of  paramount importance. As with most other companies, tests are done at API along the way -- for example, a frequency-response sweep is performed using a properly calibrated microphone in an isolated room. As well, API has a reference cabinet area that houses reference versions of the cabinets for every speaker produced. This allows line managers to check what's being built against the reference if need be.

API's warehouse, where all of the finished and packed speakers will reside before shipment, is massive -- 65,000 square feet. It's actually a physically separate building that is joined by a long walkway housing a conveyor belt. We were in awe -- as speakers were piled on pallets, which in turn were stacked as high as 30 feet. When you think of audio as being a small concern, seeing the sheer number of boxes in API's warehouse will make you adjust your ideas.

The speakers are transported to the warehouse on a computerized conveyer system that seemingly maneuvers the speakers from one end of the factory to the other, reading bar-code information from the end of the box and directing the speaker to where it should go in the warehouse. It was interesting to see these large boxes lumber down the conveyor only to have a gate open or close and direct them to where the system has decided for them to go.

Part of the loooong conveyor system to the warehouse

Where they are stacked up awaiting shipping to listener's rooms

Listening

After touring the API factory and talking with designers from the various lines, we drove some 40 minutes outside Toronto to Jeff Percy's house, where we were able to hear the Mirage OM-5 speakers. Percy's house is glorious -- think "antique in which you can live" -- and the room in which we heard the OM-5s was very large, something in the neighborhood of 26' x 20'. The speakers were set up at one end of the room in front of a very nice sofa -- Percy lives in his listening room too, unlike so many audiophiles -- and we couldn't help but think that this room was perfect for the largest Mirage speakers in terms of utility and sound.

It was clear that the OM-5s were speakers to be lived with as they threw a stable soundstage from practically anywhere in the room. In fact, one of the best spots was at the far end of the room and in the corner, directly across from the left speaker. The bass the OM-5s were capable of, with their dual powered woofers, was crushing, no doubt aided by the very large room in which the speakers were playing. We immediately asked for a review sample of the OM-5 and OM-7, the latter being smaller and unpowered, and we should be publishing reviews sometime in 2001.

Parting thoughts

We've said it many times -- high-end audio is a cottage industry. Not so at API -- unless your idea of a cottage has a 65,000-square-foot warehouse attached. This is speaker manufacturing on a grand scale -- and the products produced bear the earmarks of this larger-than-you-may-think philosophy. API goes through exhaustive research that turns out four distinct product lines that will cater to various buyers' budgets and ideas of how a speaker should be designed and sound. No DIYers can replicate this, and very few companies would be foolhardy enough to try, as the stakes for survival would be too high. We were wowed by our time at API, and we suspect any audiophile would be too.

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To find out more about Audio Products International
visit www.miragespeakers.com , www.energy-speakers.com , www.athenaspeakers.com , and www.sound-dynamics.com.