How do you know if you need an 8,000,000 yen hi-fi?

How do you know if you need an 8,000,000 yen hi-fi? Sem Sinatra talks to Yutaka Miura, the boss of A&M Limited makers of the AIRTIGHT valve amplifier, to find out. Adam Lim took the photos.

In Takatsuki, just 20 minutes by train away from the centre of Osaka is A&M Limited, a manufacturer known for its high-end audio valve amplifiers, marketed under the brand name AIRTIGHT, founded in 1986.

Sem Sinatra interviewed Yutaka Miura, visited the factory and carried out a listening test to find out if he needed a new hi-fi.

The interview

Sem Sinatra (SS): I should say before we start that doing an interview in this audio world feels a bit strange to me. I’m a crazy music lover and I’m always hunting for new records and recommendations. But my audio components aren’t expensive by any standard. My record‑playing setup cost me about 70,000–80,000 yen: an Audio‑Technica AT‑LP‑120‑USB turntable and Onkyo Wavio powered speakers. As long as I enjoy the listening experience, I’d rather spend money on the music than on the equipment. So this kind of gear is really interesting to me. I want to know if I actually need to buy an expensive system to get more enjoyment.

Yutaka Miura (YM): Okay. Then we need to challenge you. Listening to music, whether high-resolution or not, on high-end equipment will definitely change your perception of the same song and the same recording.

SS: Today’s test is simple. I brought seven records. I listened to them at home and made notes. Then we listened to them on the photographer’s system, which is more expensive than mine, and made more notes. Today we’ll listen to them here and compare the results. But first, I’d like to ask you a few questions.

A quick history of A&M

SS: I believe the company has been going for 39 years.

YM: Yes, since 1986. It was started by my father Atsushi Miura and his colleague Masami Ishiguro.

SS: And it was started in Takatsuki on these premises?

YM: No, this is our third generation facility. It’s completely located in the city of Takatsuki. You can go up to our manufacturing floor, right above, where all our products are made by our amp builders, who are all women.

SS: I saw a video of the manufacturing floor on YouTube. Very interesting.

YM: Unlike men, many of them are geographically constrained and not able to do long commutes. They have to take care of their children after work and prepare meals for the family, or sometimes they have to take care of their parents. So moving out from Takatsuki was never an option for the company. One of our staff worked with us for 38 years and retired at 75. Her daughter now works with us. I live in Sakai, which is about an hour and 20 minutes away. At one point I considered relocating the factory to somewhere between Sakai and Takatsuki.

SS: Why not move to Takatsuki?

YM: My home?

SS: Sakai is important to you? You love Sakai?

YM: Good question!

SS: I guess you must love Sakai more than Takatsuki.

YM: It’s an interesting question, why? It’s always been here. It’s always been in Takatsuki.

SS: The only thing I know really about Takatsuki is the Jazz Festival, which I found out about maybe 15 years ago. Since then, my friends and I come every year and have a really nice day in Takatsuki, drinking, dancing and listening to jazz all day.

YM: My father decided to set up a factory here in Takatsuki for two reasons. His partner, Masami Ishiguro, lived here, and at the time many suppliers for companies like Luxman, Onkyo, Panasonic, and Sharp were based in this area, especially around Kadoma. So it made perfect sense to have the company in this area because of all the suppliers. They thought that having a factory here, they would be able to utilize all those suppliers. Originally they were not planning to even build amplifiers but that’s what ended up happening.

SS: And then over the years, your father decided to build more and more of the product inside the company building?

YM: Actually, it turned out that they were not able to get enough support from those suppliers, so they had to build everything themselves from the beginning.

SS: That sounds tough.

YM: Takatsuki is very well located, 15 minutes to Osaka, 15 minutes to Kyoto, with good highway access and it’s quiet, but land is expensive compared to other cities.

SS: My wife works here as a carer. Sometimes I come here on Fridays and we go out to eat. She says some areas are very expensive, with narrow roads. I know a little about Takatsuki but not that much.

YM: Unfortunately, the city of Takatsuki wants to turn the city into the birthplace of shogi (Japanese chess), instead of a holy place for jazz music.

SS: Why shogi here? Is there any history of…

YM: The mayor is just a big fan of shogi, so they moved the All Japan Shogi Association building to Takatsuki and they want to have a big shogi tournament in Takatsuki. But that’s okay.

SS: Well they can do that as long as they don’t interfere with the jazz festival. That’s really important.

YM: So people who are organising jazz festivals are complaining that they’re not getting funds.

SS: Yes, they had difficulty this year, didn’t they? They did some crowdfunding.

YM: That festival brings 60,000 people to the city.

SS: It’s always a really nice crowded fun day. Everybody’s friendly, you hear good music. How much fun can shogi fans bring to Takatsuki?

YM: I don’t know. All it can bring is very old men. Anyway, it’s going to take them some time to get that going. I’m sorry, I’m not really answering your question.

SS: No, it’s fine. I prefer to keep it conversational. I have plenty of questions. But I’d like you to tell me things about high-end audio that I might not already know, especially insights you personally find interesting. I’m not very comfortable with question, answer, question, answer. I’d much prefer to chat as if we were sitting at a bar somewhere, having a beer.

Early musical experiences: Queen, Cheap Trick, The Police & Walking on the Moon

SS: I wanted to ask you about your early experiences listening to music when you were young. For instance, the first time you heard some music, and thought, “Okay, this is really my music. This is the music I love. My father doesn’t love it. My friends and I love it. And it’s our music.” What kind of year would that have been and what were you listening to?

YM: My grandfather was the founder of Luxman, a very famous amplifier manufacturer in Japan and worked there for a long time. We always had audio equipment at home and music was all around. Then in 1979, my father was appointed as president of Lux Corporation USA, so the whole family moved to New York and lived there for three years. In the summer of 1979 we went to a summer camp. At that time, one of my friends had a big cassette tape recorder. He played me Queen’s “Live Killers” and Cheap Trick “Live at the Budokan”. Those albums hit me like lightning. After that, I listened to WPLJ, a rock station in New York, and discovered Led Zeppelin, The Who, and others. I missed the time of punk music but then new wave came along and The Police became a favourite.

SS: Before you heard Queen and Cheap Trick, were you listening to Japanese pop?

YM: Yes, but it didn’t affect me the same way. But it was Queen’s “Live Killers” and Cheap Trick’s “Live at Budokan.” And after that, Led Zeppelin, The Who and Van Halen, who was very big in the United States. Then the Police came and The Pretenders. And then I started playing guitar and learned to play “Walking on the Moon”.

SS: So in 1978, you would have been listening to records and then maybe cassette tapes as well?

YM: Yes, a lot of cassette tapes. I recorded from FM radio onto blank cassettes. I never bought pre-recorded tapes.

SS: Yeah, I think that’s a very, very universal experience to sit by the side of the cassette deck, ready to press the record button.

YM: These days you can check the internet and find out what song is playing. But at that time, if you missed the name of the song or artist, that was it. There’s a song called Blinded by the Light by Manfred Mann and the Earth Band. I had a tape recorded from the radio but never knew the song title or the band. It was 20 years later I finally found out.

SS: Yes, my memory from that long ago is quite bad, but I’m sure I also had that kind of experience.

YM: Another time, they were playing Split Enz, the Australian band “One step ahead”. But I didn’t catch the name of the track or the artist. So I started guessing and started buying some records. Of course, many of the records I bought were wrong, but I ended up buying Genesis’ “Duke” album because of that.

SS: I’ve done the same thing. I would go to my local record shop and maybe I had the name, but I forgot the name of the record in the shop. And I started looking through the singles. Maybe it was this one. This looks… sounds familiar. I’ll buy it anyway. And sometimes it’s really crap. Sometimes it’s really good. But it wasn’t the right one. But it was as good. A happy accident.

YM: Yes, happy accident. That’s a good way of putting it.

SS: During that time in Japan, were vinyl rental shops quite common?

YM: Yes.

SS: Okay, that’s interesting. That kind of thing didn’t happen in the UK. But in the UK, you could go to the library and borrow records free.

YM: Even for rock music?

SS: Yes, yes, everything. All classical, pop music, rock.

YM: You were lucky!

SS: Yes, that was the system in the UK. Because the library system for books was very, very strong. And at some stage they just decided to start to have records which you could borrow for one week, just like a book, then take it back.

YM: Wow.

SS: So I guess that’s why we didn’t need vinyl rental shops.

YM: Ah, okay.

SS: I have records from English public libraries that were later sold when they stopped lending. I’ve also bought many LPs in Japan with rental stickers on them. I use gas‑cigarette‑lighter fluid, pour it over the labels, and peel them off very carefully. I do all this kind of stupid, crazy stuff. But I’m surprised that even the records from rental shops are often still in good condition. Sometimes the insert is taped to the sleeve, but the record itself usually still sounds fine. Maybe the ones I buy were unpopular and hardly anyone borrowed them.

YM: Some rental record shops specialised in very maniac types of music. I guess it was just the owner’s preference. So that was interesting. I was able to listen to most of the music that I wanted to listen to on record and record it onto on tapes. Unfortunately, I threw away my cassette collection.

SS: Me too, me too. I had a huge box, a lot recorded from the John Peel show.

YM: You should have digitised your tapes before throwing them away.

SS: A lot of the sessions got released on record and CD later. Almost all the good stuff. But yeah, it was kind of, it was difficult to throw away those cassettes. But I just, I think at some point I no longer had a cassette player.

SS: So now, now that I’m going to ask something about the equipment now. Okay. Why does anybody want to make a world-class valve amplifier? But more important than that is, what is so special about valve amplifiers?

Why make a world-class valve amplifier?

SS: I’d like to ask something about the equipment now. Why make a world-class valve amplifier? What’s so special about them?

YM: When my father founded the company in 1986, valve amplifiers were in decline. Lux had been acquired, and the new owners wanted to stop producing them. My father disagreed, he believed valve amplifiers sounded better, so he left and started his own company. Many people say valves are outdated. But musicians still use them, Marshall and Fender guitar amps, valve compressors, vintage microphones.

SS: Do you believe valve amplifiers always sound better or warmer?

YM: Not necessarily. Valves can add harmonics, which changes the sound. And that makes the valves sound very different from solid-state. It’s true, and it’s false too. Solid-state is more “perfect” in measurement terms, but perfect doesn’t always sound best. You can feel it in the sound. It’s like a Stradivarius violin, you can’t fully measure why it sounds better, but you can hear it. And some say that’s something to do with harmonics.

SS: That’s similar to the vinyl versus CD debate. The amount of sampling that is required to make a CD versus the sound which comes off a very imperfect piece of plastic like an LP. Technically, the CD may be more faithfully reproducing the music, but people hear something extra. I don’t know what I hear. I don’t know what other people hear. But maybe one of the reasons that people love records rather than CDs is because they’re feeling something unique. Their body knows that there’s something there, but they don’t know what it is. So it feels a similar kind of discussion. And if so many people really believe it and, as you say, musicians also love the sound of the valves inside old amplifiers, not necessarily expensive ones, but even fairly cheap old Selmer‑type guitar amps that have a very special sound, maybe there’s something to it.

YM: The same with condenser microphones. Theoretically, they cannot capture the correct sound, but professional recording engineers still use those vintage microphones and they get amazing results. As far as records go, I think every record published before 1979 was recorded using full analog recording. But it was after 1980 when Sony launched their very first digital recording system, everything started to change to digital. If you prefer music made before 1978, it’s better to listen to records. In studios in the past, recording machines had a level meter with a little red lamp. If the level went up too far, the lamp would blink. So the recording engineers tried to adjust the gain so that the frequency of this red blinking would be minimised, while keeping the level as high as possible. In case of digital, if you exceed a certain threshold, you get very ugly distortion. So engineers started to lower the gain and applying a lot of compression to the recording. I think this makes a big difference to the sound. It was around 1980 to 1985 when this transition from analog recording to digital recording occurred. Now everything is fully digital and engineers are trying to incorporate old, good equipment into the recording process. Modern recording, if you listen to digital, is all very clear but some CDs, reproduced from a recording before 1978, sound terrible, especially early CDs.

SS: I think you can always find an argument to support your choice. I think generally music sounded better overall in the 60s and 70s. Records generally just sounded really, really good. Especially for me, 1968, 1969, 1970 almost every original record from those years, just sound so good. Nice and thick and warm sounding.

YM: I guess partly because the whole process chain was analog. And also musicians had to play one song through completely. Now it’s digital. You can re-record just this section, just this snare drum. You can just swap it over, but it doesn’t always fit perfectly. It fits time-wise, but not feeling-wise. Because you came back one week later to fix one bar of music, you don’t feel the same way. You need to play the song all the way through. For old music, typically it’s all studio live recording. No over-dubbing. I used to use a Fostex 4-track cassette multi-track recorder. And once you overdub the music, then your sound quality starts to deteriorate.

SS: I also had a Fostex Multi track recorder, the X15 with the orange transparent lid, which you lifted to put the cassette in.

YM: I think making a valves amplifier and solid state amplifier is the same process. And I’m not saying which is better. It’s up to the customer. People say “who makes valves anymore””? but there are so many countries and companies still making valves. And these small valves, there’s still huge a demand for them in guitar amplifiers. So I don’t think valves will be discontinued anytime soon. There are so many kinds of valves and only certain varieties of valves are still available. But those, I guess, will not go away.

SS: I’m guessing that the old jazz kissas (Japanese cafés with very expensive sound systems that play jazz records), most of the equipment in those places would be valve amplifiers. I’m thinking of somewhere like Jam Jam in Sannomiya. Whenever I’ve been in there, the sound has been absolutely incredible. And I didn’t look at the equipment, so I don’t know. But maybe, I think the guy who owns that shop likes his very old equipment. So actually, I don’t know that that shop had valve amps, but whatever equipment he had, I mean, he had speakers this big and maybe twice this big. So if you own a shop where people are basically coming to sit and listen while they drink their coffee, then your sound quality had better be good, otherwise they won’t come back a second time.

YM: Right, and your choice of music has to be good. But I think it doesn’t matter if it’s a valve or a solid state amplifier. We do this not just for a hobby, but for our business as a commercial product. Sound and sonic performance have to be amazing. The design has to be beautiful. The build quality has to be very high. And even if you open up the bottom cover and look inside, we want it to be high-quality workmanship.

SS: If you’re sending an order overseas and it breaks down, then does the customer have to send it back to Japan for you to do the repairs?

YM: Sometimes, but not always. But we don’t use any microchips or specialty devices in our products. Anyone who has basic knowledge of amplification circuits can repair our equipment. So even if we disappear, I’m sure our amplifiers can be used for many, many years.

SS: So are you saying that maybe it’s just a question of preference? Do you think some people, when they listen to a solid state amplifier, really prefer it to the sound of a valve amplifier?

YM: Yes. Some people like valve amplifiers, some people like modern solid state amplifiers. It’s really up to the listener. But of course, I am in the business of selling valve amplifiers. I like our product. But if you’re a music lover, listening to the songs with a valve amplifier, I believe it will give you a different taste from what you are used to. And I hope you will hear this difference today.

SS: OK, so on the subject of listening to music and preference, how do you personally decide if you like a piece of music? Do you let your brain think or do you allow your body to decide? Or do you have a different way of listening and deciding, yes, this album is amazing. How do you decide?

YM: We do this as a business. So we have to do things from many perspectives. If we like the sound, but it does not match with what the customer in general expects from it, that’s not good for business. If you are only listening to what your customer or client says, that’s not good either. So you have to make an amplifier with good specifications. Sometimes you have to compromise with your colleagues. We develop our product with people, so sometimes you have to compromise with what they say, but sometimes you have to assess what you think needs to be done. But the bottom line is we want to make a product that can be used to enjoy music, not listening to music from only a critical standpoint.

SS: That’s reasonable.

YM: When you listen to music, you want to relax. Sometimes you want to feel the emotion of the artist, so we want to make a product capable of presenting that to the audience.

SS: In a way that can most closely communicate the artist’s emotion through the recording to the listener, so that they feel that the musician is talking directly to them?

YM: Yes. Some companies are trying to 100% reproduce what is recorded on the media, the LP or the CD. No minus, no plus. Our product might not be the same; we might be adding certain qualities, or subtracting others. But we want our product to sound very special. If you take a digital photograph, sometimes you increase the colour a little bit. Let’s say you take a photo of a summer forest. And in your brain, you have the impression that this green is burning and coming towards you. If you take a high resolution photograph, you see green and you see all those trees and leaves. But you’re not getting this overwhelming green and freshness of the forest. We want to express this amazing green. It’s very interesting that there are many ways of doing this while you are keeping these very nice measurements, not exaggerating the frequencies and dynamics.

SS: I understand what you’re saying. Maybe if you played the master tape of a recording session through a huge pair of speakers, maybe that’s not what a listener at home is expecting to hear. They might be expecting to hear something slightly different. Or you compare two systems, a studio playback system and a really nice home system. They’re not always going to choose the studio system because maybe the studio speakers are too true. And there’s almost too much information. Some of the frequencies are not as nice as the consumer thought they might be. But once the music has gone from master tape to record or CD and then is then being played back by the home system, which the user, I hope, bought because they thought it sounded generally like a nice sound to them, then I can completely understand how they might prefer that to the original playback in the studio.

YM: I don’t think it’s a matter of comparison. Sometimes there’s no point in comparing. If you listen to a system and the music that you love sounds great on it, then you’ve found the right system for yourself.

SS: Exactly. Yes. It’s not a matter of the size of the system, the price of the system. If you like it, that’s perfect. That’s the system for you.

YM: Yes, and the amplifier is just a device, but this device can be with you for the whole musical journey of your life, so we want to create something simply designed. Products need to be designed well in order to be loved by users for a long time.

SS: It’s very clean and beautiful. And it looks slightly strange to a person who doesn’t look at audio, expensive audio stuff. It’s like a tiny factory that you can see from when you’re coming from Kansai Airport back to Osaka. And you can see on the left hand side all the factories. It looks very cool.

YM: Obviously the sound needs to be superb, so we use only traditional physical parts, no modern parts such as memory chips or CPUs. These CPUs change models every two years or every year maybe. And once it’s discontinued, it will be very difficult for you to get a new compatible chip 20 years later. No matter how good the condition of this product is, you won’t be able to continue using it once this chip is damaged. You would have to throw it away and buy a new one. Our products only use traditional resistors and capacitors. You might not be able to find the exact original capacitor or resistors 20 years from now, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find a replacement it quite easily. So our amplifier will be a lifetime product for you.

Are you an Osaka style company?

SS: This may be a strange question, but because our website is called osaka.com, I want to ask, is there Osaka style in any part of the production process or the design process? Or the business process?

YM: Because I lived in Tokyo for a total of 16 years, in the United States for 12 years, I’m not really a born and bred Osaka guy, so I can’t really say.

YM: I think we want people to view our product as more of a casual product. Of course, it’s a high end, very expensive, but again, this is just a device to reproduce music and we have many people using our product for 20 or 30 years. And we still provide services and overhaul for our serial number 001, that we made 39 years ago.

SS: I’m sure that people who love their equipment that much, they’re going to feel like that equipment is like a member of their family.

YM: I view our product more like we are making musical instruments, not just the electric appliances.

YM: In terms of our style, as a company, we are more down to earth, which I think is a much more Osaka way. Nobody wears a uniform or a suit. I’m the only person in the office who wears shirts like this.

SS: I don’t think anybody who is buying audio equipment wants to see people in suits. Or a uniform. It’s not relaxing.

A quick factory visit

YM: Would you like to meet our family upstairs?

SS: Yes, please.

YM: It’s a small factory. We have 13 people working in total. On the manufacturing floor, we have six workers, all women, all mothers with children.

YM: In the factory we have about 500,000 components.

Final questions

SS: I have two more questions.

SS: Have you ever thought that you could persuade somebody who doesn’t particularly want to buy this kind of equipment to do so?

YM: I’m not trying to visit individual homes, carrying an amplifier and saying “hey, do you want buy one of these?” and try to do a sales talk and try to push our product to somebody. We’re always waiting for the customer’s approach.

SS: But I guess you go to audio shows and the customers come to you because they want to hear your equipment.

YM: Right. So what I do is I play music that I like and I play music that I think can express the sonic performance of our product. And that resonates with people. They experience a similar musical experience to me and sometimes people think “oh, the product is lacking this and this” and that’s also fine. Everybody has their opinion. I don’t push people but I hope there will be a completely different music listening experience.

YM: Young people nowadays mostly only use headphones and earphones. My son and daughters don’t even have a stereo set or speakers. To me that feels very, very strange. But if you experience this sound using a speaker and an audio set, you get very different experience.

SS: Do your children go to concerts?

YM: Yes, a lot.

SS: So in that situation they’re hearing music from a very large speaker system and when the music is powerful enough you can feel the sound waves hitting your chest.

YM: Right.

SS: So they know it’s a physical experience if they get that feeling. So I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want to have something of that at home. But then I’m an old man …

YM: Listening to music at a concert is also different because the sound of the concert comes through a PA system. And many times the bass is boosted, the drum is very well equalised. So it sounds very different from what you hear in the studio, practice studio or home. So I don’t know which is the real sound or which is better. And some people say “oh live concert is everything.” I don’t 100% agree with that. Sound at a concert is sound at a concert. It’s different from sound which is recorded on vinyl record and CD.

SS: Actually, I think it’s probably just something particular to the younger generation now. They don’t feel that they need a hi-fi system to listen to music because they have all their music on their phone.

SS: Do you think that young people who started listening to music in the digital age are starting to get more interested in analog equipment when they get into their 30s?

YM: It’s mostly above the age of 55, because it’s expensive and also, to have this kind of system you have to have a certain room size. And of course, if you have small kids, you probably won’t have the space to devote one room for your audio system and the time listen to music alone, but there are some young people in their 30s who use our products. Maybe, they’ve already spent some time with other equipment and then for some reason in their 30s they have enough money.

SS: I would imagine a customer rarely goes from no audio equipment straight into this kind of equipment.

YM: No, young people, novices, buying our equipment is quite rare. I think most people take other paths before buying this kind of audio equipment. They start listening to music on their smart phones, but it does not mean it can’t be used by those who want to start buying audio equipment. If they are lucky enough to have the opportunity…

The audio test!

Following the interview, we adjourned to the listening room, where we listened to a selection of records we brought with us, on the A&M system consisting of Transrotor ALTO TMD turntable (1,396,500 yen), ATM-300R power amp (3,230,325 yen) and B&W 800 D3 speakers (2,205,000 yen). Total cost ¥8,326,815 JPY (approximately $57,000 USD at the time of testing).

Previously I did the same listening test on my home system and photographer’s system. The results are displayed below.

The listening experience

What an absolute pleasure, to be able to hear a selection of my favourite music on such a fantastic system. Sat in a comfortable armchair with the speakers about 6 metres away, the quality of the sound was, as it should have been, gorgeous and perfectly balanced in terms of EQ.

I doubt very much whether we were taxing the system very much at all, and it was a real treat to hear the volume cranked up much higher than it’s ever possible to do in an ordinary apartment in the centre of the city.

Results

As you can see below, 2 tracks reliably produced frisson (also known as “the shivers” or goosebumps or in Japanese, 鳥肌 meaning “chicken skin”), a feeling I trust to relate to me what music I really love without my brain interfering, for me on each of the three systems.

However, I was hoping for something truly revelatory from this listening session, to be genuinely surprised when hearing new details in the very familiar music we brought with us, or some other completely new side to the experience, which didn’t happen.

Conclusions

Everyone hears music differently and you might find that listening on this kind of equipment radically improves your aural pleasure. If that’s the case, you’ll have to consider whether the financial cost justifies the increase in enjoyment. For me, it didn’t happen. I did, however spend an extremely interesting and enlightening afternoon in the company of a very friendly and knowledgeable audio company boss. I encourage you to take the test for yourself!

How to visit AirTight

Listening sessions at AirTight are by appointment only.

Address: 1-20 Demarucho, Takatsuki, Osaka 569-0076
Tel: 072-668-1760
Business hours: Monday – Friday 10:00-17:00
Map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/J6MifcWkU7nuYcQK9
Web: http://www.airtight-am.net/