http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/163/index.html
www.duntech.com.au/
08-27-09: Pryso (Thanks Audiogon)
A little more background might be of interest.
John Dunlavy originated Duntech in Texas (Dallas in the late 1970s I believe) with a 3-way, large box speaker (but not 6' tall like later models) which was adopted as a reference speaker by Big Bert White at Audio Magazine. The Duntech line was next expanded to include one or two wall mounted models (but fairly shallow, looking not unlike a picture frame) supplemented with a floor mounted woofer box. I'm not aware of any "quirky products".
By the mid 1980s, Mr. Dunlavy had moved his company to Australia and began developing the Sovereigns, Princesses and smaller models in the line up. Due to their size and weight, most of Duntech speakers were very expensive to ship, particularly to a major potential market like the US. So in the early 1990s Mr. Dunlavy returned to the US to supervise construction of a new, lower priced model in Utah, the Black Knight. After roughly a year, and for reasons I'm not privy to, he decided to separate from Duntech Audio which remains in Australia, and form a new company Dunlavy Audio Labs (DAL) in Colorado. With DAL he initiated the SC series which eventually numbered from I to VI. Like his floor standing Duntechs, the SC speakers were tall D'Appolito array, time and phase coherent designs. This suggests why there is such a similarity in sound between the two speaker lines. He went on to develop several additional speakers, not all of which made it to the market place. One of those was self-powered, tri-amped, with digitally compensating crossovers. While not inexpensive, in my opinion the DAL speakers were built more to a price point.
Thanks Audioguy (What's Best Forum)
Unfortunately after age and health forced him sell DAL, it failed within a year under new ownership.
I've heard many of these speakers and while I have a few favorites, I respect everything I know of that John Dunlavy designed. don't know all of the reason they went out of business but the primary one was, in my opinion. lack of marketing and marketing expertise. They were at the opposite pole of Apple Computer. Even in Apple's very early days of the Apple II, they recognized the need for good marketing and had a great marketing team and program .... and still do.
The marketing guy that worked for John when I was around was a guy named Andrew Rigby. He was handcuffed in his abilities, almost never spent much time with the dealers so could not do product training, sales training, etc. In fact, until the very end, John NEVER did any advertising. A year or two before they went toes up, he did place a few ads in Stereophile. There were also ads in Widescreen Review but that was a deal struck between John and the Editor of WSR "donating" 5 SC-V's, two Tower Subs and one other speaker in exchange for advertising space.
I also don't think John and Joan understood some of the basics of cost accounting. For example, the pair of SC-VI's that I purchased for personal use spent about THIRTY HOURS in the anechoic chamber. Every single pair of speakers he built went into the chamber, one speaker at a time and unlike most other speaker companies, each crossover was hand built for that specific speaker and set of drivers and unless John personally examined the chamber results, the speaker would not ship. That's all represents a huge expense and that was not taken into consideration in his pricing model.
As good as his speakers were, they still needed to be marketed and were not. At the opposite end of that spectrum in the speaker business, one only need to look at Dave Wilson. While he certainly makes a fine product, without great marketing, he would not be doing well either.
The finishing touch was John's health. He developed dementia or Alzheimers and just wasn't able to run the ship, but lack of marketing was still what put them out of business.
Because we had a good relationship, Joan and John invited me up to Colorado Springs to look at buying his company. The problem was John's company without John was no company at all, so I chose not to move in that direction.
www.duntech.com.au/
08-27-09: Pryso (Thanks Audiogon)
A little more background might be of interest.
John Dunlavy originated Duntech in Texas (Dallas in the late 1970s I believe) with a 3-way, large box speaker (but not 6' tall like later models) which was adopted as a reference speaker by Big Bert White at Audio Magazine. The Duntech line was next expanded to include one or two wall mounted models (but fairly shallow, looking not unlike a picture frame) supplemented with a floor mounted woofer box. I'm not aware of any "quirky products".
By the mid 1980s, Mr. Dunlavy had moved his company to Australia and began developing the Sovereigns, Princesses and smaller models in the line up. Due to their size and weight, most of Duntech speakers were very expensive to ship, particularly to a major potential market like the US. So in the early 1990s Mr. Dunlavy returned to the US to supervise construction of a new, lower priced model in Utah, the Black Knight. After roughly a year, and for reasons I'm not privy to, he decided to separate from Duntech Audio which remains in Australia, and form a new company Dunlavy Audio Labs (DAL) in Colorado. With DAL he initiated the SC series which eventually numbered from I to VI. Like his floor standing Duntechs, the SC speakers were tall D'Appolito array, time and phase coherent designs. This suggests why there is such a similarity in sound between the two speaker lines. He went on to develop several additional speakers, not all of which made it to the market place. One of those was self-powered, tri-amped, with digitally compensating crossovers. While not inexpensive, in my opinion the DAL speakers were built more to a price point.
Thanks Audioguy (What's Best Forum)
Unfortunately after age and health forced him sell DAL, it failed within a year under new ownership.
I've heard many of these speakers and while I have a few favorites, I respect everything I know of that John Dunlavy designed. don't know all of the reason they went out of business but the primary one was, in my opinion. lack of marketing and marketing expertise. They were at the opposite pole of Apple Computer. Even in Apple's very early days of the Apple II, they recognized the need for good marketing and had a great marketing team and program .... and still do.
The marketing guy that worked for John when I was around was a guy named Andrew Rigby. He was handcuffed in his abilities, almost never spent much time with the dealers so could not do product training, sales training, etc. In fact, until the very end, John NEVER did any advertising. A year or two before they went toes up, he did place a few ads in Stereophile. There were also ads in Widescreen Review but that was a deal struck between John and the Editor of WSR "donating" 5 SC-V's, two Tower Subs and one other speaker in exchange for advertising space.
I also don't think John and Joan understood some of the basics of cost accounting. For example, the pair of SC-VI's that I purchased for personal use spent about THIRTY HOURS in the anechoic chamber. Every single pair of speakers he built went into the chamber, one speaker at a time and unlike most other speaker companies, each crossover was hand built for that specific speaker and set of drivers and unless John personally examined the chamber results, the speaker would not ship. That's all represents a huge expense and that was not taken into consideration in his pricing model.
As good as his speakers were, they still needed to be marketed and were not. At the opposite end of that spectrum in the speaker business, one only need to look at Dave Wilson. While he certainly makes a fine product, without great marketing, he would not be doing well either.
The finishing touch was John's health. He developed dementia or Alzheimers and just wasn't able to run the ship, but lack of marketing was still what put them out of business.
Because we had a good relationship, Joan and John invited me up to Colorado Springs to look at buying his company. The problem was John's company without John was no company at all, so I chose not to move in that direction.
