American Audio

@bdp24 , it started well before Bill Johnson. How's about Paul Klipsch, Edgar Villchur, Joe Grado, and Saul Marantz. Bill did take it a step further but he certainly did not start high end. Mark Levinson demonstrated that you could charge silly money for Hi Fi gear and get away with it but the real master was John Curl.

@mijostyn: I fully understand your point, but with all due respect I was drawing a finer distinction. I made the statement "Bill Johnson instigated the high end revolution in electronics with the introduction of his tube designs in 1970" intentionally and deliberately to draw a line-in-the-sand between high end and mass market hi-fi. Johnson introduced his all-tube product line at CES in 1970, and receiving a shocked reaction. Tubes, in 1970?!

Remember, by 1970 Marantz had discontinued the Model 7 tube pre-amp and model 9 and 8b tube power amps, replacing them with solid state models. Bill Johnson's 1970 introduction of his model SP-2 pre-amp and Dual 50 power amp was the first shot fired in the war between what we now think of as high-end and mass-market consumer hi-fi products.

J. Gordon Holt reviewed the ARC SP-2C pre-amp and Dual-50 power amps in Stereophile in 1971, declaring them the first electronics he had heard which he adjudged superior to the Marantz Models 7/9/8b (his reference standards at that time, along with the KLH Model 9 ESL and QUAD ESL loudspeakers). In his reviews of the Dynaco PAT-4 solid state pre-amp and ST-120 solid state power amp, Holt stated he still over-all preferred the sound of the PAS-3 and ST-70 (both of course tube). By that time Stereo Review and High Fidelity magazines were touting the superiority of solid state over tube, using static measurements as their yardstick. High end vs. mass market.

Sure, the birth of high end sound could be traced back to the introduction of the QUAD ESL in 1957, but at that time ALL hi-fi was high end. Know what I mean? By 1970, things were considerably different. The all-in-one receiver had displaced separate pre-amp/power amp combos, and acoustic suspension loudspeakers were what everyone I knew owned. 

At the beginning of the 1970's there were new, small hi-fi shops just starting to open, catering to "advanced" audiophiles, selling mostly small, high end brands: Audio Research, SAE (at that time high end ;-), Infinity, ESS, Magnepan, SME, Decca, etc. THAT is what we think of as the birth of the high end, NOT the 1940's-50's hi-fi pioneers.

By the way, I myself bought only one piece of Levinson/Curl gear: their first collaboration, the little battery-powered pre/pre-amp (JC-1?), made for boosting the signal of low-output moving coil cartridges such as the Supex I bought in 1974. 

Hi-fi had two beginnings -the late 40s/early 50s (gear-Marantz, HK, HH Scott /Corner horns /LP low surface-noise).

Then the early 70s when these brands went mass-market -or went out of business. Luxury-looks and higher prices were the feature. No advance in SQ, except the panel speaker w/ its greater transparency.

But IMO, it’s now questionable whether the panel was an advance over the prior best -horn for stereo (not corners). Like the Altec’s that Art Dudley used in the last 7 years of his life or the Klipsch Lascalla/Cornwall. Holt would say that the horn was the reference, as of the early 70s.

Of course, by the mid-70s he and Pearson went completely for the panel. But the panel seemed to have too many negatives, until Roger Sanders improved (the ’stat) around 2007-08. Magnepan got better too and more clean-power further improved these designs.

IMO, high-end of the 70s+80s greatest achievement was the discrete-circuit output-stage. For solid-state, this replaced the horrible-sounding op amps from the 60s. More voltage and much better sound. But since most high-enders used classic tubes in the 70s, they didn’t ’notice’ this advance until the 80s, when SS gear got more respect.