Kenneth L. Kantor is an audio designer and businessman who co-founded the
Now Hear This (NHT) speaker company.
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated wit ...
(the human perception of sound) were of particular interest to Kantor, and this became the underpinnings of much of the design work he has done for several companies.
Career
After graduating from MIT with degrees Electrical Engineering and Media Technology, Kantor joined NAD in London. After this, he returned to the U.S. to head up the Research Department at Teledyne Acoustic Research and began a long career in audio, loudspeakers and acoustics. In 1986 Kantor co-founded and became
executive vice president
A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...
of
Now Hear This (NHT), a successful speaker company, based on "Focused Image Geometry", a fundamental new psycho-acoustic technology. He played a key role in formulation of the business, marketing and product development efforts. Other designs include the SuperZero, the first affordable,
high end
In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to n ...
bookshelf speaker
A bookshelf loudspeaker (or bookshelf speaker) is a compact loudspeaker, generally sold for consumer-grade home audio applications as part of a shelf stereo pair or home cinema, home theater package, that is compact in size and intended to be pla ...
according to ''
Stereophile
''Stereophile'' is a monthly American audiophile magazine which reviews high-end audio equipment, such as loudspeakers and amplifiers, and audio-related news.
History
Founded in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt. ''Stereophile'' is the highest-circulation ...
'';
the industry's first complete, matched
home theater system
Home cinema, also called home theaters or theater rooms, are home entertainment audio-visual systems that seek to reproduce a movie theater
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English) ...
; and a patent for in-ceiling loudspeakers that dramatically improved off-axis
frequency response
In signal processing and electronics, the frequency response of a system is the quantitative measure of the magnitude and phase of the output as a function of input frequency. The frequency response is widely used in the design and analysis of sy ...
. In 1990 NHT was sold to
International Jensen, where Kantor was promoted to Vice President of Technology.
Kantor co-founded Tympany Corporation and founded
ZT Amplifiers, a musical
instrument amplifier
An instrument amplifier is an electronic device that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal of a musical instrument into a larger electronic signal to feed to a loudspeaker. An instrument amplifier is used with musical ins ...
company. ZT uses proprietary DSP and amplifier technologies in a product line it imports from
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
References
*http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/232/
*http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/nht_a20.htm
*http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1293nht/
*http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71480
*http://www.onhifi.com/product/nht_m00.htm
*Ken Kantor, "DSP In Audio Technology: The Promise, Reality and Future of Digital Signal Processing." ''Audio Magazine'', Dec 1996.
*Ken Kantor, "50 Years of Loudspeakers." ''Audio Magazine'', May 1997.
External links
kenkantor.com- official personal site
ztamplifiers.comtymphany.comnhthifi.com
- Now Hear This official site
acoustic-research.com
- Acoustic Research
Acoustic Research was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that manufactured high-end audio equipment. The brand is now owned by VOXX. Acoustic Research was known for the AR-3 series of speaker systems, which used the acoustic suspension wo ...
official site
Ken Kantor Interview - NAMM Oral History Library (2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kantor, Kenneth
American acoustical engineers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)