Interview with Laurence Dickie – Founder of Vivid Audio and creator of the iconic Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus speakers

Introduction
We vividly remember the first time we read about the Nautilus — more than 25 years ago, in an old hi-fi magazine. We were blown away by what human creativity can achieve. Back then, we never would have imagined that one day we would stand face to face with the creator himself.

This moment proves something important: when passion fuels creation, fulfilment follows naturally.

We had the rare opportunity to speak directly with the man behind some of the most iconic loudspeakers in audio history. His insights were as profound as they were generous, and they may surprise you, too!

Below, you have the full transcript of our discussion, so without further ado, let’s immerse ourselves in the words of the great Laurence Dickie.

Soundnews: We want to ask some technical questions, because we’re technical guys, who also happen to be experienced DIYers, you could say.
Laurence: Excellent. Do you want a job?

Soundnews: It would be a dream job!!!
Laurence: Okay. Talk to me later.

Soundnews: Here we go, for starters, we were wondering, how do you measure the speakers at the end of production? Do you use Klippel?
Laurence: No, I use Peter Larsen’s Fine R&D. And in production, we use Fine QC. Peter Larsen’s company is Loudsoft. I don’t mind promoting him because he’s a very helpful person. The final measurement, which is what you asked [about], is actually done in the car park outside. That way, we get a big window, you can actually measure down to 10 hertz. It’s much better than an anechoic chamber.

Soundnews: Why the choice of materials for the tweeter, mid, and bass?
Laurence: Right. To me, the important thing is always to just have the break-up at a safe distance above the crossover point, as far away as possible. For the 50mm upper midrange in the GAYA, we use aluminium, 5056 aluminium. If you look carefully, the shape of it is a catenary dome.

It’s not a sphere but a catenary dome. And then around the edge, we have a high-stiffness, high-modulus carbon fiber ring. And the combination of the shape and the stiffening pushes the first break-up frequency, which almost doubles the first break-up frequency. So a traditional 50mm dome will resonate at about 11, 11.5 kHz. Ours goes off at 22 kHz. So it’s a really important difference. So that’s the mid driver.

The lower midrange, the 100mm one, that goes off at about 6k or 7k. The shape is, again, optimized using finite element modeling. And if you look carefully, the dome is a sort of elliptical shape. And that was shown to give us the best first break-up performance. The top end of a driver like this is limited by the dispersion. Because if it is truly moving as a piston, then by 3 kHz, the pattern is narrow.

And in Kaia, the reason for having the tweeter in a waveguide is so that the dispersion pattern matches the 100mm midrange at the crossover point. So this way, you get a seamless transition. We use aluminum cones for the bass as well. But, you know, the crossover frequency is 300Hz. The break-up is 2 kHz. It’s way out. It’s just not a problem.

Soundnews: What’s your target when designing something new? I know you said that you’ve talked about the big ones (MOYA) in the pandemic. Took you like 10 days to come up with the idea?
Laurence: Well, yeah, I was in quarantine for 10 days, going, what should I think of? Philip, my business partner, and I had been saying we needed a new top-of-the-range for some time, probably about three or four years. And finally, I was sitting here with nothing better to do. And I thought, come on, let’s have a look at this.

And my initial feeling was that it would be a double G1S. In fact, the working title was G0. It’s the next stage up. But as we started to look at it, the problem was that if you have four bass units, and you’re crossing over to this 125mm midrange, then of course, it has to be able to, at crossover point, produce the same amount of sound pressure as those four bass units at maximum sound level.

So, you can say, “Oh, I’ll just raise the crossover frequency to reduce the amplitude.” And the trouble is, then these two opposing bass drivers, the distance between them, and the frequencies, start to become an issue. So you can’t go too high because of that. And then there comes a battle between them.

So actually, I could probably engineer a larger midrange with more excursion. But what I thought was, why not put another driver in and make it a five-way? But as soon as it’s a five-way, you think, well, these four bass drivers are being wasted, let’s double them again and have eight. And then when you look at the progression, it all makes sense.

Actually, if you analyze the excursion for each of the drivers at the crossover point, they all fit beautifully together. So that’s really how it metamorphosed into this five-way system with eight bass drivers. When you look at the excursion, it all makes sense. A millimetre for the tweeter, two millimetres for the 50mm mid, four millimetres for the 100mm, eight millimetres for the 175mm, and twelve and a half millimeters for the bass unit at peak. Peak excursion. It all fits.

Soundnews: And that was your target, too?
Laurence: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It evolved. I mean, the initial target definitely moved, so, you know.

Soundnews: How do you reach those unique shapes? Does it all happen in your head, like inspiration?
Laurence: Yeah, let’s be clear, my designs were the first, the B1, which is that oval shape.

And then the Giya with the curly tops. They were my designs.

But when we came to designing this product (Kaya), a friend of ours, a business friend, said, “You know, you’ve sort of been lucky with your design so far, but it does divide opinion. Can I recommend that when you’re next doing a range of loudspeakers, you employ somebody who does design for a living?” Which was very polite, but I knew what he was saying.

So we employed these two guys, Christophe Herman and Matt Longbottom, and they came up with the Kaya range.

I said, and we obviously showed them what we’d done before, I said, the watchword will be accessible. Make a range of speakers that is accessible. So it’s lowering cost, easier to make for us, but it fits into the living room. And there was something else, but I can’t remember.

Soundnews: Make something that’s not so extravagant looking.
Laurence: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely, that’s it! So, from an industrial design point of view, just a little bit tamer, but still definitely Vivid Audio.

The one area where the acoustics really drives the shape is around the mid and the high, especially the high, because, of course, you need a smooth shape. And with Giya, you know, there it’s a smooth shape which just comes back. Here, it’s a smooth shape that goes out first and comes back. But it’s those soft edges that really are important.

After that, as I say, it’s a bit of an artistic license, really. But, you know, some people think that this loudspeaker has a rather big bottom. And that maybe we could have, perhaps from the side, made it just a little bit straighter rather than having this big, big bum.

Soundnews: Like the Moya.
Laurence: Well, of course, the Moya was also designed by the same guys.

Of course, that’s got a completely different design direction. But the smooth curve, yeah, actually, the Moya is just lovely for the smoothness. The shape that comes out of it is just naturally smooth, which was actually very easy to work with once we’d made the decision.

And then the four bass units, again, that was almost a given. I knew we were going to have eight bass drivers in four pairs, and I wanted to keep it modular. The prototype was modular, and we thought, “Do you know what? This is so easy to move around.”

Well, it isn’t easy to move around, but compared to one massive thing, let’s keep it modular. And I’m glad we did it. Because, you know what, some reviewers live in the funniest places. Beautiful, but with spiral staircases.

You know, sometimes you think, seriously, how is Wilson Audio going to get their XVX up these stairs? Or whatever. And because I’ve also been doing Pro Audio, and in Pro Audio, everything is carry, carry, carry, carry.

Soundnews: You’ve been doing Pro Audio?
Laurence: Yeah, I worked for a company called Turbosound in the UK.

Soundnews: They also use round shapes.
Laurence: The nose in the middle, of course. Yeah, that was for an acoustic reason. I did, actually, in the past, a bass bin for them, used at three parties.

After the conflict in Eastern Europe, the Balkan thing in the mid-90s, a DJ, Matt Black, commissioned us to make a PA to put in a bus and drive around Eastern Europe and put on parties (The Rocket Festival 2006). And so, I designed this sound system, which is made from drainage tubes, big polypropylene corrugated drainage tubes, and then inside it, it has a red nose.

And it’s quite distinctive, but it kicked ass. And the funny thing was, when they crossed the border into Slovakia, there was a military filter, of course, on the border. And when you see a picture, you’ll know what I mean, but he was about to open the doors, and my friend Marcus said, “What you’re going to see may alarm you. But honestly, it’s a loudspeaker, it’s for music.”

And he opened the doors, and there were a few military guys, and they just threw themselves to the floor. Because, as you’ll see, it looks like they’ve got red missiles, in a silo, ready to launch.

Anyway, that’s something that’s there. I enjoy doing Pro Audio as well. And while I was at Bowers & Wilkins, I started work on a sort of horn loudspeaker, which I named the Polyhorn. And then when I worked at Turbosound, we actually developed that into a product.

Soundnews: And what product was it?
Laurence: It was called The Aspect, and then it was followed by TFA-890.

Soundnews: And the part with Pro Audio at Bowers, what happened there?
Laurence: Oh, they didn’t do it. That was one of the reasons I left Bowers, because I wanted to develop B&W Pro. I mean, you get JBL Pro, why not have B&W Pro?

Soundnews: You get Dynaudio Pro.
Laurence: Yes, right. I mean, just to me, it’s natural. Maybe one day Vivid Pro, I don’t know, we’ll see.

So the original owner, in 1992, the owner at the time, Robert Trunz, thought it was a great idea, and he supported me in my work. Same as the Nautilus, actually. He supported me with my Nautilus.

But the rest of the management team didn’t agree. They thought that it was not their core business, and so as soon as Robert left, they told me to stop all this nonsense with professional audio and get back to doing hi-fi.

And it was too early. I still had a scratch, an itch to scratch. I needed to do something, so I left the company and developed the drivers that we actually have in Vivid today. They were drivers for studio monitors, not initially hi-fi. So they go loud.

Soundnews: The essence, basically, of Vivid is PA!
Laurence: Yeah. Studio monitor. Studio monitor! Actually, the Turbosound high-frequency unit, compression driver, is the same diaphragm as the Vivid D50 midrange. It’s exactly the same diaphragm. I’m not going to do it twice!

Soundnews: And now, for the final part, can you tell us about crossovers?
Laurence: I love crossovers.

Soundnews: The heart of the loudspeaker.
Laurence: Well, it really is. When I first joined B&W, I was given the job because I’d been working on active crossovers for fun, as a hobby. And they wanted to develop active crossovers and active B&W loudspeakers. So that’s why I got the job.

And as far as I was concerned at the time, it was the only way to do a crossover properly. And the Nautilus, of course, was active. But then when I joined Philip in South Africa, and he said, “Dick, if we make this funny-shaped speaker in South Africa, which has no reputation for audio, in an active-only format, honestly, we may as well burn the money and go fishing.” He said, “It’s a complete waste of time.”

So, we have to do a passive crossover. Now, at the time, the first network analysis and optimization software was becoming available. We got a program called Leap. And I started to get into this thing. I realized, actually, I rather enjoyed it. It’s something rather wonderful. Because you set a target response. And you say, “Optimize.” And you sit back.

And at the time, I was smoking. So you sit back and immediately see the thing finding the optimum. And they’re really accurate! That was the thing. You then go and build it, and it works! So then I really got into crossover modeling. And I’ve never looked back.

I tell you what, with Moya, five-way crossover… it was quite narrow bands. To do it by hand would be impossible. And it took me five weeks. Even using Leap. It was going backwards and forwards as well.

Soundnews: And how many prototypes? Did you manage to do it on the first try?
Laurence: No. Oh God, no. No, no, no. You have to go around the loop a few times. I mean, it didn’t work absolutely. As in, the prediction (of the Leap software) wasn’t exactly as the measurement at first.

And, the problem was I hadn’t… I think I’ll keep the problems to myself. Because it’s one of the things, in retrospect, you think, “That’s a schoolboy mistake.”

Soundnews: What do you look for when designing them? So, what kind of slope do you use? And what kind of phasing? Phase matching?
Laurence: Well, I go for Linkwitz–Riley 4th order. Because they’re in phase through crossover. At the beginning, when I was starting this Vivid Audio thing and that first product, the B1, I wasn’t completely sure what crossover slopes I’d want.

But, you know, we did it with LR4, and it really worked. I always use LR4. Yeah, and that’s the complete response. So it’s a loudspeaker and a crossover.

So, you know, when I set my target function in Leap, I measure the loudspeaker and the impedance of the loudspeaker. So I put that in the software, and then I associate a bunch of passive components, and optimize the values of those passive components. So the final acoustic response is fourth-order.

And the great thing about modeling is that you can keep track of the impedance as well. So you don’t get any horrible notches. So the result is that. Other people play video games; I am simply optimizing crossovers. It’s probably a bit sad.

Soundnews: It’s a good decision because you get to create great products.
Laurence: Well, yeah, I mean, obviously it’s always a matter of taste, and who am I to tell people what is right? But I’m very happy with what it gets.

Soundnews: As you know, the instrument in reality is just one. So the real sound is uniquely defined and clearly identifiable as being one.
Laurence: Yeah, we are getting into complex grammar, because the real sound is three-dimensional, and unfortunately, the loudspeakers, you know, they’re not really filling the space with three-dimensional sound yet.

Soundnews: Do you have a future target?
Laurence: Well, you know, even going back to my days at B&W, I thought we should be doing wave field synthesis. Actually, even before the term wave field synthesis was in common use, I thought: lots of little drivers to create one loudspeaker, which, in theory, can make waves going in every direction.

So the potential exists to really reproduce the wave field of a concert hall. The only thing is, then: how do you record it? And it’s actually a really interesting thing, because, well, maybe the best answer is to record the musical instruments anechoically, and then synthesize the concert.

Because otherwise, can you imagine if you’ve got 4,000 little speakers in an array, and having to record 4,000 tracks from 4,000 microphones, it would become somewhat cumbersome. So maybe the best way is to synthesize it acoustically. It’s probably not something I’ll ever actually get around to doing. You know, sit there dreaming about it while other people do the work.

Actually, there’s a company, it’s called HOLOPLOT, and the inside of the Las Vegas Sphere has those speakers all over it. And that’s wave field synthesis. And apparently it works very well.
Soundnews: Okay. And for the final question, what reference do you have when you compare your new designs?
Laurence: Do you know what? We don’t… no, no, we don’t, we just listen. The thing to do is to take the prototype home and just live with it. Just, you know, have it in the background. You’re chopping, chopping, chopping vegetables, you know, listening to music.

We used to have this thing at Bowers, and I still believe it. We called it “the other room test.” And actually you can be sitting in another room and think, “Oh, that sounds like somebody’s actually playing a piano.”

And so at Bowers, we had the listening room right at one end of the building, and we’d be sitting in the workshop, the laboratory, soldering components or whatever, and think, “Oh, that sounds good.” And you’d actually go up and say, “Yeah…”  and it was a good test.

And so I have my speakers in my living room, and I’ll be there, as I say, preparing food, off-axis, completely off-axis, thinking, “Oh yeah, that sounds good.”

Soundnews: And then you know that’s the moment! Evrika!
Laurence: Yeah, yeah. I don’t necessarily think that sitting in front of your two loudspeakers, absolutely, is the only test. I think you have to live with and around [them].

Look, I’ll tell you, at this show, I’ve seen some horn speakers which look magnificent. But the problem is, the coverage pattern is so narrow.

Soundnews: Yeah, that’s where we met, in fact, wasn’t it?
Laurence: Yeah, yeah. Acapella. And I actually quite like the sound when you’re bang on-axis. And with all that bass, of course, the bottom end is lovely. But as soon as you move off-axis, it just really falls apart…. Anyway, here we go!

Closing Words
We are incredibly grateful to Laurence for taking the time to speak with us – openly, candidly, and with that spark of passion that reminds us why we fell in love with audio in the first place.

We look forward to hearing the MOYA at the Warsaw show, and just as Laurence said: “Play it loud, as I like it!“

Thank you again, Laurence! Until next time!